How to eat an elephant or why you need to plan. Ambitious goals?! how to eat an elephant...

How often do you from your own "I" hear the denial "This is unreal" ...? I am sure that for the majority, this statement is best friend and an adviser in life ... I confess to you honestly, up to a certain point, I was also among them, until one day I decided to change my psychological attitude to a new, beautiful, successful one: "I CAN!!!"

This skill does not come easy… Echoes of past thinking often try to break out and convince: “You don’t need it, relax, don’t read books, don’t enter the same river twice, watch TV, you’re fine anyway…” But ... All my adult life I was accompanied by an important rule:

MADE A PROMISE - KEEP IT. CAN'T DO IT - DO NOT PROMISE!!!

The lack of motivation in life turns a person into a spineless creature, lying on the couch with a remote control in his hands all day and night, wasting his life ineptly, on his inaction ... Take a close look at this picture:

Your life belongs to you ... Those who have already dealt with goals clearly know: “Convincing your own “I” of the reality of the goal is much more difficult than achieving it ...” So, one of the components of the “” © method is that the goal must be LARGE (You must have ambitious goals) ... And at this stage, many begin to experience discomfort, looking at the target as a HUGE ELEPHANT, whose weight is many times greater than your own:

Scary…? How did the primitive ancestors of mankind, with primitive weapons in their hands, manage to “fill up” a mammoth before…? The answer is simple, they are very wanted to eat and feed their family, and, most importantly, they never had the thought: “Killing a mammoth with their bare hands is unrealistic ...” They took it and did it ... So, we already have an “elephant” (our global one) ... But, how eat it...? We call for help all our culinary abilities (), and, we come to simple solution: "Piece by piece" ... The letter "A", in the method of setting and achieving the goal "" ©, means "Algorithmic" - breaking the global goal into subgoals ... Let's look at an example. Let's say the level of sales sales representative over the past six months, it has fixed at the level of $20,000 per month, moreover, he believes that it is already unrealistic to increase it ... Having carefully studied and analyzed the situation, you came to the conclusion that it is quite possible to increase 25% to the “hard-core” figure of $20,000 ... So , let's look at the conditions:

1. Sales volume = $20,000 per month;
2. Number of clients = 100;
3. Working week = 5 days;
4. Number of clients per day = 20;
5. Number of manufacturers in the portfolio = 5.

Goal = to increase the volume of sales per month to $25,000… The most interesting thing begins when we announce these plans to our subordinates… The image of a “HUGE, INCREASABLE, Irresistible ELEPHANT” immediately appears before our eyes. Let the Humane Society forgive me, but my answer will be: “Chop the elephant into pieces ...” Our task is to switch thinking from ... So, the figure of $ 25,000 looks intimidating at first glance ... And if it is broken down into weekly subgoals (4 weeks in month)…?

As a result, we divide 25,000 dollars by 4 weeks and we get the volume of sales per week = 6250 dollars ... It is perceived easier, but it still looks not entirely optimistic ... Continue, do not stop ... Now, break the weekly plan into every day ...

What is the end result...? We divide 6250 dollars by 5 working days a week, and we get the figure = 1250 dollars a day ... Already better ... I think the visualization is enough not to turn the “elephant” into a mass of cells, we will continue to figure it out without pictures ... How many clients a day do we work on ...? That's right, 20... What's stopping you, divide 1250 by 20, and get $62 per client... Is that all...? And there are 5 manufacturers in the portfolio... Yes, yes, divide 62 by 5... What do we get...? Quite right, some $12 per manufacturer. Now compare the two numbers, and listen to the psychological reactions:

25,000 dollars = 12 dollars

Surely your own "I" will answer: "The only thing left of the elephant is the legs and ... the trunk." I gave an example of how this method works when setting a goal for a month in order to demonstrate its effect. You can apply it to yearly goals by breaking them into quarters - months - weeks - days, etc. Remember only person with whom you need to learn to negotiate is YOURSELF!!! You can do this, and the word "unrealistic" will leave your lexicon forever. Another IMPORTANT NOTE to work with this method: “If for some reason you didn’t fulfill your goals in a day, then transfer this difference to the next day, and, without fail, try to fulfill them ... Don’t let your brain convince you of the unreality, the ultimate BIG GOALS".

So, in your "cookbook of recipes for success" add one more:

1. We take a "fresh elephant" (global, large goal);
2. We check it with the “” © method (well, so that it is GMO-free ());
3. Finely chop it into pieces (sub-goals). Fractions should be as small as possible;
4. We season it all with DESIRE, BELIEF IN YOURSELF AND RESULT;
5. Tightly close the lid called "I CAN";
6. And simmer until fully cooked (we limit the goal to a specific time);
7. After the specified time, you will have the opportunity to inhale the aroma of VICTORY (primarily over yourself), SUCCESS, INSPIRATION, MOTIVATION, thereby increasing the degree of FAITH in your abilities.
8. Stay HEALTHY and bon APPETITE...

Looking at this photo and applying it to our today's topic, I want to say the following: “If you want to prove to yourself that the goal (elephant) is unrealistically big, put it in the forefront, and be content with excuses in life (for breakfast, lunch and dinner) ... » In order to become Successful, Abilities, Talent, Healthy Self-Esteem, Purposefulness, Desire should always be in the forefront ... Compared to such priceless gifts that a person has been awarded, no elephant can be compared, as a maximum, he will be on an equal footing with you , which means that it is really possible to defeat him ...

Finally, a little parable… Having created Man, God told the apostle: “If we give Man all our Wisdom, he will uselessly squander it in his life. So I made a decision, we'll hide it securely. But where…?” The apostle suggested: "Let's hide it on top of the very high mountain"... To which God replied: "No, sooner or later, a person will overcome it" ... After thinking, the apostle said: "Let's lower it deep to the bottom of the ocean" ... No, God answered, a person will find an opportunity to sink so deep ... "After a while God said: “Let's hide Wisdom far in the depths of the human soul, and only the one who gets it will be able to dispose of it with dignity ...”

Always remember this... Before every GOAL, before every obstacle, firmly declare: "I CAN DO IT!!!" Be happy!!!

Thank you for your precious time spent in my company!!!
Sincerely, Andrey Zhulay.

Life balance! How to balance your life...

in continuation of the theme of fluffy tails. Having worked with the list of your unfinished tasks, you will clearly find in them those that do not fit into the period of half an hour or an hour. They require significantly more time and involve multiple steps. They are so voluminous that we sometimes do not know which side to approach them. Such elephants. And since they are also not very urgent, the interaction with them is postponed and postponed.
As a rule, these are things that are actually important. Yes, they do not burn on time, but they can qualitatively change our lives. They can take her to new level. They require us to overcome and effort. And so all the time I want to allocate more time for them to deal with them with sense, feeling, arrangement. We are, as it were, internally preparing for them. We are gaining strength.
Yes, we are getting ready to eat the elephant instead of already eating it. More precisely, we are preparing to live, instead of already living.
This is very familiar to me too. And now there are several such elephants in front of me. And for the second week I have been “keeping them in the freezer” instead of starting to “butcher the carcass”. And this is the second week when the outside world with its affairs governs me, and not I govern the outside world based on my goals. Sad? A little yes. What drives me when I do this? My desire for solidity. Sometimes redundant. It may be something else for you, something of your own.
Why am I sharing this? To the fact that elephants arise in each of us. More precisely, anyone who wants more from life. Because we tend to swim against the current. And sometimes the current is stronger, and we allow it to carry us away. Like in my example. The main thing is to catch yourself in time and start rowing in the right direction. To your goals. And if we want more, then our goals are usually ambitious. Ambitious for ourselves at this stage of life. We kind of challenge ourselves. A challenge, but will I be able to master this elephant or not?
So, back to big things (elephants). They can be overpowered by eating them piece by piece. Break a large project into a number of large chunks. And then each large piece is divided into several smaller ones. And each small for several small tasks. You will get a diagram in the form of a tree. And every small task is a specific deed or action that can be done using the quick shot method. And there, in small pieces, you yourself will not notice how the big elephant begins to decrease in size.
The main thing is to start by taking a little time each day to think through the plan for "butchering the carcass", and then to complete the tasks on the elephant. Give this task the status of a priority and complete it as early as possible before the rest of the cases. Then there will be a feeling that you live based on your interests.

Sounds creepy, right? Elephants are cute animals, why hurt them. Calm down, "eat the elephant" is a metaphor that helps us cope with various tasks and achieve goals. Dreams are dreams, but it's so cool when they come true, agree?

Surely you are familiar with situations when you are passionately eager to get something, but do not know where to start. Or you don't want to, but you have to, you have to do it. master foreign language, learn how to play the guitar, pass the history exam with an A, buy a beautiful expensive bag, tidy up the room. As soon as you imagine the scale of how much work is to be done, your hands fall down. What - let everything remain in fantasy?

We do not give up, but are looking for ways to overcome the stupor before doing great things and conquering the world. One of these techniques is “eating the elephant”. Big things are called "elephants" - after all, they are far from fragile creatures. It's hard to get them right away. Dividing into "pieces" - small stages that are overcome sequentially, one after the other - is much easier and more enjoyable.

An example is preparation and successful delivery exam. We determine what to do: read textbooks, learn formulas or dates, complete test tasks, study with tutors. Further, each of the tasks is divided into small ones: read n pages a day, etc.

Sometimes good intentions fail due to the fact that we are bored and lazy to move in small steps. We only see the “light at the end of the tunnel,” so far away that we don’t have the patience to get to it. Learn to plan and track intermediate results, enjoy them.

5 pages read per day - although intermediate, but the result.
150 pages read per month is the result.
10 learned new foreign words per day is the result.
The 1000 rubles that you earned in a week looking after the child of your neighbors is the result.

Hooray, I'm done, I fulfilled the plan! If you focus on time - for example, daily cleaning of housing for half an hour - still formulate what results you are striving for during this period. Today, in 30 minutes I will water the flowers in the apartment (total No. 1), wash three T-shirts (total No. 2) and wash the dishes (total No. 3). Otherwise, there is a great temptation to get carried away not by the quality - the fulfillment of the plan, but by the quantity - "a waste of time". As in a joke: “The main thing when throwing away trash is not to start looking at it.” Formally, you spent half an hour cleaning, but in fact you didn’t manage much, being distracted by nonsense.

From the intermediate results, progress is made - towards the main goal, and the "fire" of our motivation, interest in not stopping, but continuing to act, is maintained. “One board, two boards - there will be a ladder.One word, two words - there will be a song.