Why You Should Treat Your Goals And Dreams Like Muffins

Guess what? As a thankyou for being an inaugural Woman Incredible reader I just made you a batch of warm, fresh, gooey, chocolate-raspberry muffins. Surely you’ll eat just one? You don’t have to tell anyone – I won’t! Did I mention they’re organic? All natural, raw cacao for the chocolate, gluten-free flour and they’re even sugar-free! Go on – I did make them especially for you …

What’s that now? Oh, you’re eating low-carb at the moment. Fair enough. Besides, they’ll probably be cold and hard by the time I get them to you anyway.

Oh well.

But answer me this anyway. Let’s say you did eat the muffin. Perhaps you thought about it for a moment or so beforehand, especially if you are following a low-carb approach to nutrition. Or perhaps you didn’t really think about anything at all except for the tantalising wave of desire at the idea of fresh, warm, gooey chocolate-raspberry muffins. Either way, you eat it – or not – and life goes on. You don’t spend a week evaluating whether or not you really want the muffin, or perhaps if you’d prefer a different flavour, or whether you thought you wanted the muffin until you got it and realised you actually wanted carrot cake.

And maybe you don’t eat the muffin this time because you’re not hungry or you just don’t want it, but you certainly don’t continually avoid giving yourself a treat, right? Even the strictest of us have a night off now and then, and we take it for granted that we deserve to do this; that it can even be an important part of getting lean.

Wouldn’t life be just dandy if we approached goals and milestones in this way?

do or do not. there is no try.

In the launch post of this blog, strength coach Rachel Guy gave this immensely popular tip: “Do or do not. There is no try.” Imagine how your life might be if you made simple and fast choices about the big important stuff, not just about whether or not to get caught up in a muffin-moment. Just imagine …

• you might have ticked off some big goals rather than simply talking or daydreaming about them
• or you could have changed your mind and moved on to something else
• you certainly wouldn’t have spent hours and hours thinking about whether it’s the right goal or dream for you, and pre-considering everything that could hinder you from achieving the goal
• and you might even have the mental energy and head-space to consider something new once in a while
• and even to just, well, do it. To make your life happen – now.

stop kidding yourself

Last week we talked about determining your values and what makes you feel most alive, most yourself.

This week it’s time to be brutally honest about why you are not actually living your dream life. All of these things you say you want; these things that you’re passionate about – why haven’t you got them? Why aren’t you living your dream life, or at least parts of it? Do you really want it? And if so, who are you kidding? How badly do you want it?

Perhaps you’re like me in that you can get distracted by other goals.

You stop to have a Snickers* on the way to the muffin shop for example, and so you don’t feel right spending more calories on the muffin even though that’s what you really wanted. Or you plan to have a muffin but keep putting it off for another day, telling yourself you still need to focus on perfect nutrition for a bit longer before you can give yourself a break. Or you stand nose-pressed up outside the glass of the muffin shop battling with yourself about whether you should or shouldn’t but just can’t bring yourself to make a decision. So you don’t have a muffin and you waste so much time dilly-dallying that you miss out on anything else as well.

what are your dream-wasters?

Think back over the past week as an example – what are the things that take you most easily away from your most important tasks and goals? Do you get caught up in email, admin, Facebook? What else?

Let’s get real here.

If we’re talking about an actual muffin, and you really really wanted one; you’d been dreaming about one for days and you’d made up your mind 100% that you were going to have one –

Wouldn’t it just be a simple matter of doing what it takes to get one? Even if you had to forego the Snickers, or battle through the Myer food hall**, or do a silly dance in the middle of your office block because a co-worker promised they’d buy you one if you did, or even if you had to bake the darn things yourself. If your heart was truly set on getting that muffin and your mind made up, woulnd’t you just, well, do it?

The idea of expending so much mental energy over whether or not you’d eat a muffin is ridiculous of course.

But so is the idea of spending so much energy over whether or not you’re going to fully and consistently strive toward your goals and dreams, but then never actually doing so.

I hope you care more about your goals and dreams*** than about muffins.

So, tell me. Do you really want it? Really? And what are you going to do about it?

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