When we think about what is possible to achieve, what kind of limits do we set for ourselves?
When we evaluate what we can do, whether it is in our work and businesses, our health and wellness, our finances, or in our relationships, what kind of ceiling do we put on ourselves?
How many times do we realize that the limit we put on ourselves is much lower than what we could achieve?
Limits.
It's incredible the power expectations have on our ability to perform and continue progressing forward. Whether the expectation is set by ourselves or someone else, we use that as a barometer to determine how successful we are. If we hit our expectation, then it was a great session, meeting, quarter, or year. If we come up short, then we work to assess and figure out all the reasons we could have done better or more.
But what if the limits we set aren't high enough? What if we could be more aggressive in what we believe we can achieve? Would it change the preparation, commitment, and effort we put in?
As we think about the limits and expectations that we set for ourselves, especially with this decade coming to a close, let's push the envelope on what we think we can achieve. Let's set limits that will require us to lock in and engage in the habits and behaviors that will set us up for a monster 2020.
The challenge for this week is to assess two areas where we want to increase the limits we have for ourselves. This could be in our health and wellness, our sleep, our stress management, our finances, our relationships, or our work. Think about and evaluate what expectations and limits we have in those areas. Are we selling ourselves short because we are not challenging what is possible? Even if we fall short of achieving our goals, we will most likely be in a better position than keeping the status quo.
Once we have identified the areas where we really want to push our comfort zone, we can work backwards from the desired outcome to identify the specific behaviors and habits that will challenge us. Choose actionable items that are easily trackable on whether or not we completed them. These habits don't have to be big changes! The smaller we can break down the decisions we make on a day-to-day basis, the more likely we are to be successful in pushing towards our new limits.
If we are going to have a great 2020, it starts with assessing our own limits and what we can accomplish! To push ourselves to the edge of what we are capable of, we have to set our expectations to a new level. There is no better time than now to do just that!