Motivation is one thing, Mobilisation another.

Goal Achievement – M3

Our last note” “Resolutions are not goals” sought to help to clarify your motivation for change or growth in a meaningful way, your Outcome Goal (G1)

Knowing what we want is one thing, taking action in pursuit of what we want is another thing entirely. “Life’ always seems to get in the way. If achieving what we want involves significant change in our routines or habits, then we need to make the action items really easy to do. If they are not easy to do then procrastination is likely and we leave it to do later (spelled “n-e-v-e-r”) or tomorrow (defines as; “a mystical place where everything will be better or easier than it is today”). The Mobilisation process establishes your Performance Goals (G2) and Process Goals (G3)

Mobilisation – Pathways thinking; setting Performance Goals (G2)

Performance goals are essentially milestones, they are points at which you will measure progress. They must be points at which measurement is tangible, so that you can see the pathway and feel that you are making progress toward your goal. You will need to establish percentages (5% better at..), numbers (2kg lighter), dollars ($10k more..), dates in the Calendar. How much of what, do you need to gather, improve, change, by when? Does that pathway look realistic? Are your measurement dates close enough together to keep you keeping on and far enough apart to allow you to see meaningful progress? Are they going to provide meaningful information or just annoy the people you are trying to lead or coach? (hint – if you are trying to reduce weight as part of your goal to play more with your kids, don’t measure your weight daily, measure monthly or weekly so that you are not demoralised by normal daily fluctuations.)

Having clarified your meaningful goal (G1) and your performance goals (G2), its time to make sure that you take action, persistently, to meet your G2’s on the way to G1.

Mobilisation – Agency thinking; setting Process Goals (G3)

Process goals are the physical actions that you will take to make progress. Some of them are taken on a routine basis (to create a new habit perhaps), some may be specific actions on the path.

What actions will you take or change? How will you behave? When will you do this? Who will be there? How often? Importantly, reality test, what WILL get in the way?

Is this a new action for you? if so, what are you not going to do so that you have space for the new activity (few of us have spare time in our days), maybe you will not watch tv for as long as usual? What will trigger you to take action? Can you add the new behaviour onto an existing habitual behaviour?

Is this a different action to replace an existing habit? If so, what triggers the existing behaviour? When does this usually happen? Where are you when this happens, who are you with, when does this usually happen?

Both the above scenarios involve choosing to act, to do it in the moment. So make the choice as easy as possible, make it binary (this or that) and doable, if you want to do more pull ups, measure how may you can comfortably do now and add one to it. Knowing you have a choice and making that choice in the moment of truth are two very different things, so make it easy to choose. Have a visual reminder to trigger the right choice perhaps. (I have a chin up/pull up bar on my bathroom door – every time I go to the bathroom I do six pull ups on my way out). Here you are looking to accept that you are human and will want to avoid difficulty, so make the choice do-able and easy.

Now imagine what will get in the way, something always will, tomorrow will have the same barriers and obstacles as today does, so make it easy to choose the one you really want.

Finally, can you see yourself doing it, actually making the choice you want, in the moment where the temptation to procrastinate is greatest? If so, great, lets try, put the effort in. If not, then review your Motivational Goal; (G1), and your performance Goals (G2) – do you need to tweak these so that they are more enabling?

When you are imagining the moment, the place, who you are with, the time, you are creating a “memory for the future” a picture that your “Elephant” (Unconscious mind) can follow, when the time comes. Now you have set the scene for successful progress toward your Goal, your resolution has a chance of success. There is a third element that you need to look at – Maintaining Momentum, which we will examine in the next post.

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