Will the Thrill

(First---thank you to Kindra, a new friend/colleague who visited me at the Health Fair yesterday. I really appreciated her being there.)

A writer on one of the forums I belong to opened a discussion today about losing the excitement of his novel when he worked on the research for it. This made me think about other conversations I’ve had with clients, friends, and, yes, even myself, about losing enthusiasm when it comes to the small daily steps of accomplishing our goals.

Looking at the end result of my vision…say, seeing my mystery series on the shelf at Borders, always fills me with excitement. I can close my eyes and visualize just where it will be. I can smell the crispness of the first printing, hear the just-perceptible crack of the spine as I open it to scratch my pen across the front page with my very first autograph. Ahhhhh…that feels so good! So real! So inspiring! (In fact, I’m tempted to end this blog here and start editing the book!)

It’s an empowering visualization---and we all have them for our goals (at least those of us who have stopped to work on and set our goals).

But when it comes to getting those big visions down to “It’s Monday morning and today I have to read a chapter in this really dry book on Victorian etiquette in rural Britain and I don’t want to,” we wonder where all that excitement went.

Sometimes the small, daily steps to the big, overall goal are left-brain, while the excitement and the visualization of the goal are right-brain. We get to Monday…or Tuesday…and need to accomplish the left-brain activity to achieve the right-brain exciting vision. And we’re totally at a lack for motivation, excitement, energy, empowerment…you name it. We want another cup of coffee. We suddenly remember the bathroom needs cleaning. There’s one more dust bunny behind the couch.

What went wrong?

What went wrong is that we left our right brain relishing in the exciting visualization and handed all the rest of getting-there to the left brain. The left brain doesn’t hold emotions. The left brain can’t get excited, even if it wants to.

The solution: get the right brain involved in the left-brain daily to-dos.

How? Connect back to your original visualization. Feel the excitement of success at the goal again! Refresh yourself with all the sensory connections you originally felt when choosing the goal.

Then use that excitement to empower the left brain to accomplish all those daily to-dos that will get you to the goal your right brain chose originally.

The hardest part of this process is to remember to do it. After a while, if you practice it regularly, reconnecting to that right-brain excitement will come naturally.

And the everyday to-do list will look like a page of check-marks!

Now…I’m off to edit a murder story! How about you?

--Batya