Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Preliminary Review: the Sedona Method, getting rid of crap around goals
Follow @mcphoo
Tweet
We all set goals; we don't always achieve them. What's with that? It may not be because we don't have a great plan; it may be because we have a whole lot of beliefs and related crap around those goals that keep us from achieving them. Likewise sometimes we feel flat, stuck, and can't imagine getting to a new place of success.
Recently, i've been experimenting with an approach called the Sedona Method to check out issues around goals, and i've been surprised both by what i've been finding, and what's been coming back. The following is a very preliminary review/overview.
[UPDATE: overview detailing more specifically what's in the tin and experiences five months on now posted - Aug 09] [UPDATE AUG 2014 - there are NO affiliate links in this post unless indicated - and yup, five years i can't believe it - i'm still finding this approach incredibly valuable]
Overview:
The Sedona Method kinda kicks the can of Positive Thinking and/or Visualization (or something called "The Secret" (!) which is aka "the law of attraction" - if you just think about it and "draw it in" you can have it).
The reason this challenge to "positive thinking" is intriguing from a health/athletic perspective is that sport psychology is infused with visualizing the goal; wanting the goal; tasting the goal. Wanting it badly enough. Perhaps these are folks who also think no pain, no gain?
To be fair, we've heard the great stories of lance armstrong and other cancer patients visualizing their cancer getting smaller; going into remission; going away. So there's likely much to be said for visualizing a goal. But the Sedona method suggests that we "bank in the bank, not in the head" - that we can get so into a visualization that we avoid what it frames as Right Actions. So how do we get to Right Actions?
Here's the surprise: we actually need to let go of the goal first and foremost. And that seems totally at odds with positive thinking's "draw it in."
Let go of the goal? Isn't the whole point of having a goal to achieve a goal?
The intriguing thing here, at least to me, is that letting go of the goal is a process of checking out what comes up around the expression of a goal.
Indeed, the whole way of expressing the goal is critical. For instance, the sedona approach is particular about avoiding framing a goal as "i want" rather than "i allow myself to." Why? "want" actually means "to lack" and to express a goal in terms of a lack apparently just assures that lack. Would you rather have the goal or want the goal, asks Hale Dwoskin who leads this process. Gotta give props on that one.
SO letting go...
Once you have a goal either as general as "i allow myself to have incredible health all the time" or as specific as "i allow myself to press the 24kg this term" the next step in the process is to check out FEELINGS around this goal - maybe it's disbelief; maybe it's fear; maybe it's a desire to fit in. A big (albeit simple) part of the process is just to get those sometimes uncomfortable feelings (lusts, fears, whatevers) sufficiently in view to be able to do something about them so they stop clogging the pipes.
So once those feelings are honestly identified, they can be addressed. And in the sedona method, being addressed doesn't mean figuring out WHY they're there. It means letting go of them, and letting them in and looking at them until they can be let go of, dropped.
That makes it sound so simple: dropping feelings as easily as one drops a KB after kenneth's vo2max workout. Right. Imagine someone saying "i'm really afraid of failing to make this lift by this date" or "i'm really afraid of not getting this contract" and someone says "can you allow yourself to have those feelings? and just for now, can you let go of that feeling as best you can?"
That's it?
Dwoskin's approach is that feelings are just that: feelings. Beliefs likewise are things that we choose to have. And they can get in the way of us being in the world and achieving our potential. Our success. Even *good* feelings, if we try to hang onto them, can be problematic, and reflect a kind of desperation that comes of a "scarcity rather than an abundance mentality."
To get back to the positive visualization thing for a sec: suppose we want to achieve that lift and we see ourselves making that lift, but in the background of our mind are feelings of fear, failure and all sorts of crap that gets in the way of our Right Action (in this case, rest, recovery, sensible practice). Imagine how much better our efforts would be if we got out of our own way.
Part of getting out of our own way in a goal process may also be to find too that the particular goal we had was not *our* goal, but came from somewhere else. That for us there may well be some other health goal we feel better about, but haven't let ourselves go for it, because it's not what we thought we should be doing.
Preliminary Review
Over the past month, i've been going through the Sedona Method 4 part course that promises to help with effortless wealth, health and relationships. This is not an overnight thing: there are 20CDs in the course and that's a lot of listening, pausing to work further on stuff, coming back to parts and so on. So a month is barely time to get through it all when i can only come back to it in the evenings. That's why this is such a preliminary review.
Intriguingly, the place that so far has had the biggest impact from this practice is relationships - at home and especially at work. This has been an unlooked-for bonus (despite being part of the package). When there's crap up at work, there are bound to be LOTS of feelings - lots of wants especially and wishing things were different, wanting people to be different. blah blah blah. How useful is that? where's the right action in that? SO being able to work through some of this (that is, "let go" of a lot of stuff) has been grand.
As for the wealth, well i really like the abundance instead of scarcity mentality. For one thing, that perspective takes the stress level way down - and what good has stressing out about a deadline ever done to get the thing done? And lots of good stuff has been coming in from surprising and unlooked for places.
As for health, well, i'm just getting over the worst cold of my life, but after not being able to move for days, and about 2 weeks away from serious kettlebelling, i came home to press the 20k twice yesterday. That's a record. And heck i wasn't even trying :)
I haven't had the knowledge/time to apply the approach to a specific goal, but i'll come back to this topic as stuff emerges. So far, the benefits in the little time i've spent with the program are really positive.
I'm keen to look at this approach with respect to staying with healthy living, and how it may help my clients who have an on and off the wagon approach to health and fitness.
Flake Alert
I'm really glad that this approach is not just "draw it in and the universe will provide." Maybe it will; maybe it won't, but in my experience there's a ton of combinations of the right place and the right time, and that fate favours the prepared mind, and so on and so on. So what i like about this approach is especially the notion that we have stuff, and that that stuff can be insidious in getting in the way of our achieving our success. Here's a simple simple process that can help surface and chuck that stuff; that helps us operate on the stuff where we have absolute choice about what we do. And that helps us take Right Action - another concept i like. It's not about pushing or forcing or begging. It's about getting with the Right Actions to achieve the goal once the stuff is out of the way. How simple, clear and sensible is that? Why would it need to be harder than that? We love our drama?
Getting Started on the Cheap with Letting Go
If any of what i'm saying is resonating with you, and you'd like to check out this approach, there are a bunch of ways to do it. You can dive right in and get the 4 course package, or you can get a sampler.
There are some free downloads, and examples on the website. There's also the book version (amazon us affiliate link || uk amazon affiliate link)- for me i found listening to the course more effective, but different learning styles
REQUEST: If you got to the end of this post, i'd really appreciate hearing from you about what you think - too - if you're interested in giving this approach a go. That would be a boon to thinking about incorporating this into training with others.
If you do get the CD or the course, let me know what you find. Or if you're already using this approach, please post a comment on how it's going. And all the best with your success.
-------------
Follow up Review: Sedona Method 5 Months on - more detailed review of what's in the package, including overviews of the Sedona Method Course, Effortless Wealth and SUccess, Effortless Relationships, Effortless HEalth and Well Being, , how it's laid out, and experiences/progress with the courses. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
We all set goals; we don't always achieve them. What's with that? It may not be because we don't have a great plan; it may be because we have a whole lot of beliefs and related crap around those goals that keep us from achieving them. Likewise sometimes we feel flat, stuck, and can't imagine getting to a new place of success.Recently, i've been experimenting with an approach called the Sedona Method to check out issues around goals, and i've been surprised both by what i've been finding, and what's been coming back. The following is a very preliminary review/overview.
[UPDATE: overview detailing more specifically what's in the tin and experiences five months on now posted - Aug 09] [UPDATE AUG 2014 - there are NO affiliate links in this post unless indicated - and yup, five years i can't believe it - i'm still finding this approach incredibly valuable]
Overview:
The Sedona Method kinda kicks the can of Positive Thinking and/or Visualization (or something called "The Secret" (!) which is aka "the law of attraction" - if you just think about it and "draw it in" you can have it).
The reason this challenge to "positive thinking" is intriguing from a health/athletic perspective is that sport psychology is infused with visualizing the goal; wanting the goal; tasting the goal. Wanting it badly enough. Perhaps these are folks who also think no pain, no gain?
To be fair, we've heard the great stories of lance armstrong and other cancer patients visualizing their cancer getting smaller; going into remission; going away. So there's likely much to be said for visualizing a goal. But the Sedona method suggests that we "bank in the bank, not in the head" - that we can get so into a visualization that we avoid what it frames as Right Actions. So how do we get to Right Actions?
Here's the surprise: we actually need to let go of the goal first and foremost. And that seems totally at odds with positive thinking's "draw it in."
Let go of the goal? Isn't the whole point of having a goal to achieve a goal?
The intriguing thing here, at least to me, is that letting go of the goal is a process of checking out what comes up around the expression of a goal.
Indeed, the whole way of expressing the goal is critical. For instance, the sedona approach is particular about avoiding framing a goal as "i want" rather than "i allow myself to." Why? "want" actually means "to lack" and to express a goal in terms of a lack apparently just assures that lack. Would you rather have the goal or want the goal, asks Hale Dwoskin who leads this process. Gotta give props on that one.
SO letting go...
Once you have a goal either as general as "i allow myself to have incredible health all the time" or as specific as "i allow myself to press the 24kg this term" the next step in the process is to check out FEELINGS around this goal - maybe it's disbelief; maybe it's fear; maybe it's a desire to fit in. A big (albeit simple) part of the process is just to get those sometimes uncomfortable feelings (lusts, fears, whatevers) sufficiently in view to be able to do something about them so they stop clogging the pipes.
So once those feelings are honestly identified, they can be addressed. And in the sedona method, being addressed doesn't mean figuring out WHY they're there. It means letting go of them, and letting them in and looking at them until they can be let go of, dropped.
That makes it sound so simple: dropping feelings as easily as one drops a KB after kenneth's vo2max workout. Right. Imagine someone saying "i'm really afraid of failing to make this lift by this date" or "i'm really afraid of not getting this contract" and someone says "can you allow yourself to have those feelings? and just for now, can you let go of that feeling as best you can?"
That's it?
Dwoskin's approach is that feelings are just that: feelings. Beliefs likewise are things that we choose to have. And they can get in the way of us being in the world and achieving our potential. Our success. Even *good* feelings, if we try to hang onto them, can be problematic, and reflect a kind of desperation that comes of a "scarcity rather than an abundance mentality."
To get back to the positive visualization thing for a sec: suppose we want to achieve that lift and we see ourselves making that lift, but in the background of our mind are feelings of fear, failure and all sorts of crap that gets in the way of our Right Action (in this case, rest, recovery, sensible practice). Imagine how much better our efforts would be if we got out of our own way.
Part of getting out of our own way in a goal process may also be to find too that the particular goal we had was not *our* goal, but came from somewhere else. That for us there may well be some other health goal we feel better about, but haven't let ourselves go for it, because it's not what we thought we should be doing.
Preliminary Review
Over the past month, i've been going through the Sedona Method 4 part course that promises to help with effortless wealth, health and relationships. This is not an overnight thing: there are 20CDs in the course and that's a lot of listening, pausing to work further on stuff, coming back to parts and so on. So a month is barely time to get through it all when i can only come back to it in the evenings. That's why this is such a preliminary review.
Intriguingly, the place that so far has had the biggest impact from this practice is relationships - at home and especially at work. This has been an unlooked-for bonus (despite being part of the package). When there's crap up at work, there are bound to be LOTS of feelings - lots of wants especially and wishing things were different, wanting people to be different. blah blah blah. How useful is that? where's the right action in that? SO being able to work through some of this (that is, "let go" of a lot of stuff) has been grand.
As for the wealth, well i really like the abundance instead of scarcity mentality. For one thing, that perspective takes the stress level way down - and what good has stressing out about a deadline ever done to get the thing done? And lots of good stuff has been coming in from surprising and unlooked for places.
As for health, well, i'm just getting over the worst cold of my life, but after not being able to move for days, and about 2 weeks away from serious kettlebelling, i came home to press the 20k twice yesterday. That's a record. And heck i wasn't even trying :)
I haven't had the knowledge/time to apply the approach to a specific goal, but i'll come back to this topic as stuff emerges. So far, the benefits in the little time i've spent with the program are really positive.
I'm keen to look at this approach with respect to staying with healthy living, and how it may help my clients who have an on and off the wagon approach to health and fitness.
Flake Alert
I'm really glad that this approach is not just "draw it in and the universe will provide." Maybe it will; maybe it won't, but in my experience there's a ton of combinations of the right place and the right time, and that fate favours the prepared mind, and so on and so on. So what i like about this approach is especially the notion that we have stuff, and that that stuff can be insidious in getting in the way of our achieving our success. Here's a simple simple process that can help surface and chuck that stuff; that helps us operate on the stuff where we have absolute choice about what we do. And that helps us take Right Action - another concept i like. It's not about pushing or forcing or begging. It's about getting with the Right Actions to achieve the goal once the stuff is out of the way. How simple, clear and sensible is that? Why would it need to be harder than that? We love our drama?
Getting Started on the Cheap with Letting Go
If any of what i'm saying is resonating with you, and you'd like to check out this approach, there are a bunch of ways to do it. You can dive right in and get the 4 course package, or you can get a sampler.
There are some free downloads, and examples on the website. There's also the book version (amazon us affiliate link || uk amazon affiliate link)- for me i found listening to the course more effective, but different learning styles
REQUEST: If you got to the end of this post, i'd really appreciate hearing from you about what you think - too - if you're interested in giving this approach a go. That would be a boon to thinking about incorporating this into training with others.
If you do get the CD or the course, let me know what you find. Or if you're already using this approach, please post a comment on how it's going. And all the best with your success.
-------------
Follow up Review: Sedona Method 5 Months on - more detailed review of what's in the package, including overviews of the Sedona Method Course, Effortless Wealth and SUccess, Effortless Relationships, Effortless HEalth and Well Being, , how it's laid out, and experiences/progress with the courses. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
PDF
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The Anti-Goal and First (things First) Principles
Follow @mcphoo
Tweet
Rannoch the Profound has a post about what happens to folks to scuttle their training:
Rannoch's observation got me wondering if one of the limiting factors that contributes to this OCD training effect is The Goal. This is not to say that goals are bad at all, but they can become mental mine fields when not treated appropriately. The voice in the head becomes:
That's kind of voice sounds irily reminiscent of procrastination/perfectionism. When the goal feels too daunting to achieve well, just leave it to the last minute and blame the fact that you didn't have enough time; or worry worry worry the little details (see "getting intrigued") rather than the big picture. Fear, fear of failure, of therefore being a failure is the thing in either case, and so inertia, it seems, sets in.
Goals have a lot to answer for. In a sense, perhaps, as Stephen Covey might put it, it's a trust issue with ourselves: if we don't meet our commitment to our goals, we break faith with ourselves till we give up on ourselves. Frequently we may coat the cost of this failure by "getting intrigued" (described towards the end of this post on complexity ). Where we say oh this isn't right; that isn't right; i'll do it tomorrow when the moon and the stars are aligned and i feel better.
For myself, this failure can be a particularly trying place to be if i can look back and see past successes, dedication, effort. So what's wrong with me *now* that that's not happening?
Maybe a better question to ask is what needs to be in place to re-establish relations with ourselves to feel that success of having done it than that dread of another day gone and the Goal further dishonored.
Maybe some of us who have already figured out that working out is important for our health, our spirit, our commitments, have to be to get to the headspace where the Real Goal is first to remember how to keep faith with ourselves and second to find a path back to doing that in terms of our fitness, health, well being. Perhaps it's as simple as re-setting the goal temporarily to something we KNOW we can accomplish, perhaps just to move something today. To move ourselves, a kettlebell, a rock - through space, perhaps multiple times in a row or throughout the day, and that that *is* a good thing, not only because it really *is* better than nothing, but because we said we would and we did.
Progressively, repeatedly, soon, the groove to that larger goal may just return, when we build our own confidence back up that we can keep our commitments to ourselves and we can trust ourselves with larger challenges.
In the interim, while simply keeping the commitment to move something in a day, we can give ourselves the space to figure out what may be acting in our lives right now such that we've been falling off the wagon; over complicating it, and what perhaps NOT to repeat once we get back in the groove such that we wind up back in the pit - if that's a recurring place to be.
A book i find helpful in this space is Stephen Covey's First Things First. The book talks about the importance of understanding why we *do* things, not in terms of some schedule like life as a perpetual to do list, but in order to define and move from principles. Don't prioritize your schedule; schedule your priorities is a phrase from the book. How do we determine our priorities? Based on what principles? what is our compass?
These questions apply here, in working out, too, i think. If we're not doing what we know to be right and good for our well being, and our ability to serve those we love, then something's askew, no?
Asking such questions can be a rather profound process. Covey suggests a number of ways to engage what can be very challenging work, where not working out is a symptom whose more profound causes may need investigation.
But in this meantime of engaging that process, and assuming that part of it may just be this loss of faith with ourselves to follow through on our commitments to ourselves, here's to everyone who's having a moment of doubt and self criticism. Let's give ourselves a break and all promise to do one push up, one swing, one pistol - one something - together in five minutes, and build on that.
Congratulations to us, we did it. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
You are trying get moving, not launch a rocket.
So many people seem to struggle with this. If the conditions aren't optimal they simply abort.
Give me 10 minutes and a kettlebell. Not so hard.
For those with workout OCD, it stops progress in it's tracks. The requirement to have everything in it's proper place prevents them from so much as breaking a sweat. This anabolic anxiety permeates everything they try to do. Plans are great but if you are fixated on a having all the ingredients for particular outcome you are missing "all that heavenly glory".
Rannoch's observation got me wondering if one of the limiting factors that contributes to this OCD training effect is The Goal. This is not to say that goals are bad at all, but they can become mental mine fields when not treated appropriately. The voice in the head becomes:
I *have* to do this kind of workout today because of this GOAL i have for date X, and if i can't train that way because of whatever (including just being pooped) then what's the point? anything "less" than the prescribed load, volume and moves is just failure (to serve teh goal), so why bother? I'm such a loser, aren't i?
That's kind of voice sounds irily reminiscent of procrastination/perfectionism. When the goal feels too daunting to achieve well, just leave it to the last minute and blame the fact that you didn't have enough time; or worry worry worry the little details (see "getting intrigued") rather than the big picture. Fear, fear of failure, of therefore being a failure is the thing in either case, and so inertia, it seems, sets in.
Goals have a lot to answer for. In a sense, perhaps, as Stephen Covey might put it, it's a trust issue with ourselves: if we don't meet our commitment to our goals, we break faith with ourselves till we give up on ourselves. Frequently we may coat the cost of this failure by "getting intrigued" (described towards the end of this post on complexity ). Where we say oh this isn't right; that isn't right; i'll do it tomorrow when the moon and the stars are aligned and i feel better. For myself, this failure can be a particularly trying place to be if i can look back and see past successes, dedication, effort. So what's wrong with me *now* that that's not happening?
Maybe a better question to ask is what needs to be in place to re-establish relations with ourselves to feel that success of having done it than that dread of another day gone and the Goal further dishonored.
Maybe some of us who have already figured out that working out is important for our health, our spirit, our commitments, have to be to get to the headspace where the Real Goal is first to remember how to keep faith with ourselves and second to find a path back to doing that in terms of our fitness, health, well being. Perhaps it's as simple as re-setting the goal temporarily to something we KNOW we can accomplish, perhaps just to move something today. To move ourselves, a kettlebell, a rock - through space, perhaps multiple times in a row or throughout the day, and that that *is* a good thing, not only because it really *is* better than nothing, but because we said we would and we did.
Progressively, repeatedly, soon, the groove to that larger goal may just return, when we build our own confidence back up that we can keep our commitments to ourselves and we can trust ourselves with larger challenges.
In the interim, while simply keeping the commitment to move something in a day, we can give ourselves the space to figure out what may be acting in our lives right now such that we've been falling off the wagon; over complicating it, and what perhaps NOT to repeat once we get back in the groove such that we wind up back in the pit - if that's a recurring place to be.
A book i find helpful in this space is Stephen Covey's First Things First. The book talks about the importance of understanding why we *do* things, not in terms of some schedule like life as a perpetual to do list, but in order to define and move from principles. Don't prioritize your schedule; schedule your priorities is a phrase from the book. How do we determine our priorities? Based on what principles? what is our compass?
These questions apply here, in working out, too, i think. If we're not doing what we know to be right and good for our well being, and our ability to serve those we love, then something's askew, no?
Asking such questions can be a rather profound process. Covey suggests a number of ways to engage what can be very challenging work, where not working out is a symptom whose more profound causes may need investigation.
But in this meantime of engaging that process, and assuming that part of it may just be this loss of faith with ourselves to follow through on our commitments to ourselves, here's to everyone who's having a moment of doubt and self criticism. Let's give ourselves a break and all promise to do one push up, one swing, one pistol - one something - together in five minutes, and build on that.
Congratulations to us, we did it. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
COACHING with dr. m.c. 
