J’Lani’s journey into psychology
January 29, 2025
Priest is people too!
January 29, 2025
By Daniel Francis
Have you ever been in a situation where you were faced with a goal and in your mind, you were 100 per cent certain that you would complete this goal? It could have been a small or big goal. Maybe you were in the zone, and you felt this unshakable sense of confidence that you would complete what you set out to do. Maybe you are riding that new year high.
You have set your goals for the year, and you currently feel like nothing can stop you from achieving those goals. In those moments of complete certainty and confidence, why do we feel like we could achieve what we set out to do yet with other goals, of seemingly lesser difficulty, we lack the confidence and the follow through?
I have felt this indomitable confidence recently towards my health endeavours. I have always been health conscious but late last year into the new year, I decided to take it one step closer by making it a lifestyle.
Making health consciousness my lifestyle meant that it not only takes priority but simply becomes a part of who I am. In following through with this transition, one of the goals was, barring no great physical damage, that I would not miss a week of exercise and keep 80-90 per cent of my meals healthy. When I set this goal, I felt an indomitable will take over. I knew that I would 100 per cent achieve this and I have isolated three key factors that got me to this point. I want to share these with you, so you can re-create them yourself in any area or for any goal.
The first element is understanding your depth. Simply put, this means analysing what you have done in the past concerning this area of your life to see what worked, what didn’t, and why.
So, focusing on exercise, I looked at why I missed gym in the past, what excuses I told myself, what was my mindset or environment like when I was exercising consistently, etc.
I began listing out these positive and negative factors and for the negative factors, I created a game plan for what I would do when met with them. For example, a major reason I would miss a day of exercise was that I told myself that I was pressed for time in my busy seasons and rationalised that I should do work instead. My plan for busy times is now to shorten the workout; it’s better to do a short workout than no workout.
The second element was being very intentional about wanting this goal to not just be me doing activities but for it to become a lifestyle. If the goal is just a set of tasks on the days you are less motivated, it’s easy to not do it.
However, if you begin accepting this goal as a part of who you are, when you fail to do it, you are essentially going against who you are. To effectively do this, you have to do the new action often enough that it becomes a habit.
It begins feeling like a part of what you normally do. In my case, I had to stop looking at exercise as just me going to the gym a couple times a week and eating a few healthy meals.
I needed to start saying that I am a health-conscious person. As I also vigorously prioritised exercising a certain amount each week and eating in a specific way over some weeks, it began feeling like my usual way of doing things. So yes, this process takes time.
The final element which I mentioned above is that you must learn to prioritise. You will need to prioritise this goal for a few months for it to build into a habit and then eventually into a lifestyle. You won’t need to prioritise this over other things indefinitely, but only until you feel it is now on autopilot.
Now that I feel like exercise and eating well are just a part of me, I can now focus on other aspects that I want to build into a lifestyle like frugality, praying and reading my Bible every day, reading and writing every day.
You can now put all your energy into adding one new aspect and keep compounding different positive lifestyles until you become a new person. You add on the faith that God will help pave your way forward on this positive lifestyle change and nothing will stop you.
Give it a try. Instil that indomitable confidence in your actions by using these different elements.
Daniel Francis is a millennial helping other millennials. He is a two-time author of the books The Millennial Mind and The Millennial Experience, and an entrepreneur. Over the past four years, he has served as a Personal Development Coach whose work targets Millennials and helps them tap into their full potential. He is also a self-publishing coach and has guided hundreds on self-publishing their book successfully.
LinkedIn: Daniel Francis
IG: o.m.publishing
Website: www.ompublishing.org
