Pushing Yourself Forward - Full Text Answers
By Alex Fayle

Last week the Lab-Rats explored their fears and pushing beyond them. This week, it’s about pushing beyond our self-imposed limits. As I described in my post Pushing My Limits, in 2006 I did National Novel Writing Month for the first time and although I ended up not reaching my 50,000 word goal, I did write 40,000 in a single month, which was more than I’d ever written in my entire life.

That being said, here are the questions for this week:

1. Do you need to push yourself to do things, or if you’re passionate about something, do you just go off running and get it done?
2. If you do have to push yourself, what are some of the techniques you use to stretch the boundaries of your usual efforts?
3. If you do set a goal and you don’t quite reach it, how do you react? Are you proud of yourself for trying? Are you upset that you didn’t reach the goal? Or do you experience a completely unexpected reaction?

Brett’s Response

Your post hit it right on the head for me, because of my attitude towards fear - if things are not life and death, it is possible that things won’t get done.  It is easy to just watch the sun set and get back to things tomorrow.

So, to answer your questions this week:

1. I do have to push myself, usually after the first month or so for the longer projects.  The initial passion is intense, and so shorter tasks are easily completed.
2. So, in order to do this, I use a few techniques - I have a vision board, so I can see the final end state, and I have a year-calendar that I use to play “don’t break the chain” - I also use spreadsheets to track subtasks of my bigger projects, to make sure things are progressing as planned, or to see where things are slipping.  By breaking things down into smaller tasks, it is easier to keep the fire burning.
3. If I don’t quite reach a goal, I don’t beat myself up over it - I will try to learn from it and figure out why I didn’t get there, then see what I need to do to adjust my course to get there - or maybe see if I can do without that little subtask.  If necessary, I just put it right back at the top of the list of things to do.

So far, this kind of thing works pretty well for me.  I believe I’m doing reasonably well at moving towards my main goals, with all of the stuff going on to keep me from working at it full time!  If it were just me, I figure I’d be sitting on Waiheke Island right now, drinking a cold Monteith’s…

Crista’s Response

1. Do you need to push yourself to do things, or if you’re passionate about something, do you just go off running and get it done?When I am passionate about something there is no pushing required.  Author, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who writes about the state of flow describes it as ‘a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption into an activity.’ Unfortunately, for those around me, when I’m in flow there is sometimes nothing else.
2. If you do have to push yourself, what are some of the techniques you use to stretch the boundaries of your usual efforts?I think there’s a difference between being called to do something and being driven to do it. When I’m called, I am swept away by a sense of energy that allows me to overcome obstacles and face challenges that seem impossible if I’m driven.  And typically, if I need to push myself, it’s a sign that perhaps I should evaluate what I’m doing. When I’m driven, it’s usually an outside force from other people’s expectations and demands that are creating chaos and force the pushing.
3. If you do set a goal and you don’t quite reach it, how do you react? Are you proud of yourself for trying? Are you upset that you didn’t reach the goal? Or do you experience a completely unexpected reaction?When I don’t reach an important goal, I don’t let it go. Probably to a fault sometimes. If the goal isn’t important to me though, I have no problem walking away from it. Sometimes I’m proud of myself for trying, but it really depends on what it is. The really meaningful goals seem to get accomplished in my life and the rest fall away. For example, I sometimes have a mental list of goals I’d like to accomplish on any given day. Usually, they are the little things that allow me to stay organized. When I don’t get to something on that mental list, I don’t worry about it unless one of those things affects someone I love.

Urbane Lion’s Response

1. Do you need to push yourself to do things, or if you’re passionate about something, do you just go off running and get it done? Huuum, no easy answers to this one. Pushing myself over my limits was a regular occurrence when I was a business owner. These limits were either mental or physical fatigue. Has you can guess, the Xmas season for a caterer is an extremely busy season. We would do about 25% of our annual sales in just 3 weeks. Because we were pumping out the same menu over and over again, passion was not part of the equation and going over my limits was not an easy task. When you are both physically and mentally drained, it’s very hard to push forward. But, the orders had to be filled and the pressure of being “the Boss” and having to lead by example was enough to keep me going. Every time I would push myself over my limits I would do a “post-mortem” of the situation and implement tools or new business guidelines to avoid having to go through those situations again. But of course, fix one thing and another thing will breakdown!

2. If you do have to push yourself, what are some of the techniques you use to stretch the boundaries of your usual efforts? The carrot trick works for me every time! The pride of a job well done give me such a high that just the though of it is enough motivation for me to push forward way past my limits. Also helps if there is a financial compensation associated with it too!

3. If you do set a goal and you don’t quite reach it, how do you react? Are you proud of yourself for trying? Are you upset that you didn’t reach the goal? Or do you experience a completely unexpected reaction? I must say that any goal that I have not reached didn’t have great importance in the first place. If I can’t see the purpose of a task, it is very probable that I will quit after the first few obstacles. Of course, I do feel disappointment but, if I didn’t believe in the project in the first place, that feeling is short lived. I will however analyse every situation to see if something can be learned from that failure.

Someday Lessons:

• To ensure things get done, systems are good - just remember that your system will likely be different from someone else’s and don’t expect them to use yours.
• If you don’t reach a goal, you didn’t really want to reach it in the first place. Rationalization or truth?

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Get rid of your Somedays and make the big change you’ve always dreamt about. Check out:

• The Someday-Busting Coaching Services
• The Dream Discovering Ebook by Alex Fayle

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