I had a hard time writing this blog because I was lacking momentum. A few life things came up – new clients, a new house project, and a little family situation. While none of these things were catastrophic, they were just disruptive enough to kill my momentum. So I responded in a fairly unproductive way…I spent a little more time playing phone games and watching TV, ate a few extra chips, and slept a bit more than usual. As a coach, one would think I would be immune to such mental hijacking, but the reality is that I am just like every other person, or at least like every person who isn’t 100% disciplined, 100% of the time.
So what did I do to get my momentum back? I connected with my support team (accountability partner, coach, friends, and hubby) to get back to my plan. Here are a few things I encourage myself and my clients to do when they lose momentum.
Get refocused on your values, purpose, and goals
At the start of whatever you are working on, you probably had lots of energy and excitement. There was likely a connection between the goal and something internal. There was an alignment between what you value, the life you are creating, and/or a goal that would satisfy an internal need. Spend time revisiting your values, purpose, and goals to recreate the connection you once had.
Leverage existing habits
You have had momentum before and you will have it again if you stop doing what stalled you and re-start doing what gave you momentum before. Make a list of the specific things you stopped doing, including; the time of day you did them, the location where you did them, and what you did before and after. For instance, before my stall I was getting up at 6:30 doing bible study, journaling, planning for the day, and getting ready. I stopped getting up on time , stopped doing the bible study and journaling, and there were even a few days I didn’t plan my day but instead just went meeting to meeting. When I got back to my daily habits, I was back in the zone of being productive and moving forward. I was working off of “muscle memory” and the momentum came back.
Take incremental steps toward the goal
When your momentum is stalled you may lack focus or worse yet, focus only on the end goal instead of the next step. Breaking the goal into milestones or incremental steps, allows the brain to understand what it actually takes to complete the task at hand. Without identifying the steps, you may feel overwhelmed and/or procrastinate but not really understand why. For instance, I had “February Blog ” on my to-do list. Inherently I knew all of the steps (identify key takeaways, research, develop stories associated with said takeaways, have someone proofread it, and post it to the website) but the only thing on my to-do list was a single line item. My brain knew the task was bigger than that one item summary. Once I got real with myself and actually put “identify key takeaways” as my item to do, I was able to complete that and move to the next step. I felt accomplished and knew I was one step closer to actually finishing the “February Blog”.
The bad news is, life is life and we will lose momentum from time to time. The good news is that if we take the steps of refocusing on our values and purpose, leveraging our habits, and then take incremental steps toward our goals, we will get our momentum back.
If you would like to create more momentum toward a career and life you love, let’s connect for a discovery session and explore if coaching is a good fit for you now.
Wishing you a successful month and 2021!
Blessings and gratitude,
