I spoke on this recently.  Each year or stated time frame, we set certain goals.  It’s easy to make goals, not so easy to keep them.

The tricky part, is about building on these goals, taking steps to progress forward towards the intended results, day by day.  It’s about the staying the course, and despite the easiest of goals, we sometimes get caught up with everything less important.  Things crop up, stuff happens, one day goes by and we think it’s okay to just let it be, and another day goes by.  Before we know it, a week, month and a year is over, and we “transfer” our goals to the following year, in the hope of doing it better.

Hope probably isn’t getting us anywhere.  But what has Loving Monday Mornings got to do with it?

Can you visualize it?

If I asked you what would it take so that you would get out of bed on a Monday morning, excited and grateful for the day – given the space to dream, you might have an idea of the things you would do for the day, what your room will look like, what your morning will look like.

The simple truth is that if you can’t visualize what a great start to a great day would look like, you can’t visualize yourself achieving your goals.  And when the going gets tough, how can you remember why you do what you do to take daily steps towards your goals?

Can you say it?

Amongst all the list of goals, what are 2 – 3 words that you can attach to it?  These are themes or keywords to trigger the original motivations or inspiration of the goals.  Every morning and anytime you need a reminder, it probably would not make any sense to run through the list of the goals line by line.  But with the 2 – 3 word themes – inspiration, action, health, well-being, love, passion, fun, wholeheartedness etc. – these can be recalled easily and serve as one-word mantras to propel you forward when it feels like you’re swimming against currents.

Mine for 2014 are inspiration, fun, wholeheartedness.  What is yours?

Can you feel inspired?

When days get rough and the days call upon you to draw inspiration, would the well be dry?  Reading daily (biographies or inspired authors), even for 5 pages a day, means a daily deposit into the bank of inspiration.  The bank is not necessary on times when the mornings and days feel great, but are often neglected during the times when the mornings and days feel dreary, which coincidentally are times when they are needed the most.

I’ve read Michael Jordan’s the last three months.  And now, have books Saint Germain and the Dalai Lama lined up.  Authors I fall back on for inspiration belong to a wide range (which I will write more about in the Build My Library section), but to name a few quickly: Paulo Coelho, Mitch Albom, Wayne Dyer, Napoleon Hill, Deepak Chopra, Robin Sharma etc.

Along with that, get a favourite music playlist in easy access.  Music, favourite music (of which I go through phases as anyone else does), picks me up whenever I need it and whenever I play it.

Is it worth it?

For whom are your goals being set?  This is different from setting your goals because someone else things you should.  This is about looking at how big your goal is.  Is the goal selfish, or does it serve others? Does it make you bigger than you so that you may serve others – your kids, your parents, your family, you friends, your neighbors, your students, your colleagues, your bosses?

Setting goals and keeping goals means making a little progress on it every single day

Progress doesn’t mean we ‘win’ every day at the goal, sometimes we make mistakes.  But progress means we move ahead, we figure out what works and what doesn’t work, but we don’t. stop. moving. forward.

And loving Monday mornings, loving what you do, doing what you love, loving your goals and every step you take in it, is what a great day is all about.  And when you look back to the year, you will have great stories to tell of the goals that you achieved and the miracles you created along the way.  Enjoy the journey and enjoy your morning.