to finally achieve your big goals - dr liz carter€¦ · the better you understand what fires you...

©2015 Dr. Liz Carter, All Rights Reserved www.DrLizCarter.com

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TO FINALLY ACHIEVEYOUR BIG GOALS

By Dr. Liz Carter

YOUR UNIQUE

.com

Punch through the dip to achieve big change by leveraging your own natural born "Element" to finally achieve success.

Missing “Element”

http://www.drlizcarter.com


So, when do you decide

to make a change?

The answer is simple:

whenever you’re ready.

Any time of year is great point to decide you want to start pursuing your goals! No matter how large or small, goals give us concrete steps toward our biggest dreams.

Why, then, every time, do so many of us lose our gumption after a few weeks (or if we’re lucky a few months)? Our big goals often represent our deepest desires, so why on earth can’t we stick with them if they’re so important?

Because we don’t know ourselves very well.We think we do, but we don’t.



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Picking the Right Goal Success Tool that Fits YOU

We get hit pretty hard with advertising aimed at helping us achieve our goals. “Try this program! Try this gadget! We promise you’ll achieve [insert dream here] in 30 days or less!“

Does this sound familiar? People are capitalizing on your desire to improve yourself. And, hey, sometimes it’s great. Sometimes a program or a gadget just clicks for you; maybe it’s the right time in your life, or maybe whatever was offered really changed you at the core. Fantastic!

This is not a reality for most people. In our super interconnected world today, we’ve got many tools at our fingertips to help us achieve our dreams. How do we know which one to choose? By its popularity? How it fits into our budget? What our friends are using?

I’m going to share a little secret with you here.

The tool is not the answer to achievement. Understanding yourself is.

You could give the same tool to 100 people and only 20% might benefit. Tools give us a means to pursue our goals. However, we need to ask ourselves if that tool is right for us.

And we’re not very good at this part.

We commonly get caught up in trappings that just aren’t useful to us.

• What’s trending — if so many people are trying it, shouldn’t I?

• What we haven’t heard of before — well, I’ve tried everything else, let’s give this new thing a go!

• What our friends and family are doing — if people close to me are benefiting and we share the same values and traits, shouldn’t I benefit, too?



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Let’s Use an Example

One of the most common personal goals — I know you’re thinking it! — is weight loss.

“I want to lose X number of pounds by X date.”

Fantastic! This is an amazing and wonderful goal that is well worth your time and effort.

What is the most common tool people choose to help themselves lose weight?

Say it with me now — a gym membership!

This is a great tool for some, but not the right choice for many. Countless people start strong in the first couple weeks only to peeter out by the end of the month. A valiant effort is made to achieve their goals — schedules are rearranged, alarm clocks are set earlier, other hobbies are moved about — they have made the time and committed to their goal.

So why does their momentum fade? Remember when I said earlier that a tool might only be appropriate for about 20% of people? I didn’t just pull that number out of thin air.

I got it from another time-honored tradition: Chinese medicine. A system of medicine that is approaching 5000 years old.



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The Missing Element Keeping You Stuck

Chinese medicine is built around 5 different elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.

These elements not only make up the natural world but are reflected in humankind as well. We contain all the elements, but usually one or two are predominant in each individual. They influence our physical make up as well as our mental and emotional attributes. These attributes are called constitutions. They are how we see the world and how we react to it.

Fire

Water

Wood

Metal

ElementsTO SUCCESS

5Earth



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When I said 20% of people might benefit from a given tool, I was basing it on the fact any given tool usually only works for one element. So, you’ve got a 1 in 5 chance of a tool being correctly matched to your constitution. Not great odds, right?

What if I told you there was a simple way to learn how to pick the tools that work for you? Or even adapt some of them to meet your specific needs?

That would save a lot of time and effort, right?

Tons of your hard-won motivational energy could be used toward a method that was truly sustainable for you.

Motivation is the keyword here. Each constitution or element has their own unique motivational factor.

The better you understand what fires you up to achieve your goals, the more success you’ll have. Knowing yourself is absolutely necessary for achievement.

So, what are these motivational factors? Let’s dive in!

We’ll start with the 20% that would be most likely to benefit from a plain old gym membership: the wood constitution. But keep in mind - a gym membership is just a practical example to show you a real life situation. You can learn from these examples no matter what your objective is.



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A wood constitution’s motivational factor is progress.

Driven and hardworking, wood people have a lot of perseverance and commitment to action. They are excellent planners and thrive on consistency and set schedules.

Wood is all about momentum, so once they lock onto a target and get their wheels rolling they can be unstoppable. A gym membership offers them the exact tool they need to make progress: consistent hours and equipment so they can set a routine and stick with it. Their stamina is impressive. They are excellent planners and enjoy laying out a roadmap of workouts 6 months or more in advance. Once a plan is set, wood constitutions are itching to execute it.

The need for progress is a natural fit for a gym membership, which is why it is the easiest for wood people to walk right in and succeed, compared to other elements. Wood people don’t need a trainer, a workout buddy, classes, or lots of variety. A treadmill and some weights can be sufficient, depending on their goals. Play to these strengths, and you’ll be well on your way to achieving your goal.

Wood



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How to make our gym example work for you:

Set a specific time in your schedule to work out. Consistency is key.

Have a plan to follow — research a program or routine and plot out your course for the next few months.

Track your routines; measurements help to document progress and show your gains to keep you motivated.

Roadblock: beware of a changes in your schedule. Upsetting routine can upset progress and aggravate a wood person. If there are enough interruptions, they can lose their power of momentum and get stuck.

Now, on to those constitutions who don’t fit into the standard gym model quite as well. By recognizing your different needs, you can figure out ways to make a gym work for you, or explore entirely different activities that play to your strengths.

Wood

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A fire constitution’s motivational factor is connection.

Free-spirited and lively, fire people need others to keep them motivated. If a fire person signs up for a gym membership, working out alone to the same set of exercises at the same time every day like a wood will drive them bonkers. They’ll start chatting up other gym members, the front desk staff, meander around the locker room, and become generally unfocused and unmotivated.

Is their weight loss goal still important to them? Absolutely.

Then what’s holding them back?

They aren’t playing to their strengths as a fire! There’s no reason to feel guilty or ashamed of having different needs or motivations. We just have to be aware of what our needs are.

We need to either completely change the tool we are using or adapt that tool to meet our needs.

Most people try to do the opposite. They continue using the tool and blame themselves for loss of motivation or they try to adapt themselves to the tool.

We place flawed expectations upon ourselves to fit a square peg into a round hole just because it’s what everyone says we should do.

Fire



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Fire people thrive in a jovial atmosphere where they share experiences with peers and interaction is encouraged. Structure and discipline is not their strong suit, but when other people enter into the equation, suddenly focusing becomes much easier for them. Fire people value freedom and flexibility, and need to factor this into their gym time in terms of schedules and activities.

Fire constitutions would benefit from considering gym alternatives that focus solely on group activities: Cross Fit, a yoga class, and team sports are all good examples.

However, if you want to stick with the gym, here’s how to make it work for you:

Get a workout buddy and look into what group classes your gym offers. You need others to keep you motivated.

Give yourself flexibility around your work outs. Realize that you need a more free-form schedule. A set routine every day only makes you feel confined and anxious.

Discover activities that you love. This is true for all constitutions, but especially fires. You find new experiences and experimentation delightful, and it allows you freedom to explore and find what really works for you.

Roadblock: beware of not being present. Fire people can get caught up in the moment and not consider the consequences of their actions. Pushing yourself while working out can be appropriate, but if you’re not paying attention you can easily push so hard you injure yourself, which will derail your goals.

Fire

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An earth constitution’s motivational factor is harmony.

Compassionate and caring, earth people need peace within themselves and around them in order to pursue a goal.

If given a choice, they will always put the needs of others ahead of their own, which can make consistently committing to self improvement and self care very challenging. What an earth person has to understand is that there is endless need outside themselves. Giving to and supporting others is a beautiful quality, but there comes a point where it becomes self-sacrifice. Helping others becomes a hindrance and creates exhaustion, overwhelm, and negative feelings. It destroys harmony.

To succeed in any aspect of self care, including using that gym membership, an earth person must do the unthinkable: make themselves a top priority. When an earth constitution starts to care for themselves, harmony can once more be achieved. By nurturing the self, feelings of exhaustion and burn out disappear, and that natural peacemaking, compassionate person reappears.

Earth



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How to make a gym work for you:

Find someone who will help you be accountable, like a trainer or a friend. You can easily become overwhelmed by the needs of others. Checking in with someone helps you avoid getting derailed from your goal.

Think about what self care means on a given day. Is it going to the gym? Is it taking time for yourself to write in a journal and process your feelings? Dedicate self care time daily, and fill it with whatever version of nurturing the self makes the most sense to you.

Like a fire, you also need a bit of flexibility in the timing of your workouts. Follow your feelings and mix it up throughout the week.

Roadblock: be aware that your first instinct is not to support yourself, but to support others. However, the best way to help others is to help yourself. Learning to care for yourself is a skill set that takes time to build, so be patient with yourself.

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A metal constitution’s motivational factor is propriety.

Propriety, as defined by Webster’s dictionary, is “appropriateness to the purpose or circumstances; suitability.” I like to paraphrase it as “doing the right thing at the right time.”

Now we get into the quandary of what is “right.” Metal people have extremely high standards and strong moral principles, so they often truly do know what is right (in the moral sense) in a situation. And they hold themselves and others strictly to this course of action. Sometimes a little too strictly.

Because of their strong sense of morality, metal people tend to be deeply introspective and analytical. They can trend toward perfectionism as they weigh decisions and try to find the exactly correct solution. They are highly sensitive to their environment and often pick up on details others seem oblivious to. All these details are collected and analyzed in order to inform their sense of propriety. This sensitivity and constant analyzing of the world means metal people need a lot of time to process on their own.

In terms of goal achievement, metal people will go through layers of analysis to find the answer. “Is this goal the right thing for me at this time?” “Is it right for my purpose?” If the purpose is to lose weight, of course a gym membership could help you achieve that purpose. However, it might not be the right tool. This often overlooked question is the key question a metal person needs to ask themselves.

Metal



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Timing, as mentioned earlier, is also important. Fall is the season metal constitutions are most inspired to make changes. Metal people are very mindful about what they commit to, and it often takes them much longer to commit as they carefully weigh all the pros and cons. However, when they do commit, it is often an abrupt transition with no backpedaling. They make a decision, and boom! It’s done and happening without looking back. This black and white view on the world and the process of change can be frustrating if a metal constitution is unaware that’s how he or she operates.


Consider working out at home. Or find a gym that isn’t very busy or go at non-peak times. You don’t need to be around people to achieve your goal, and often find them distracting to your purpose.

Choose a practice that lets your mind process. Something meditative, like tai chi, yoga, running, or walking can be key for you. It gets the circulation going while allowing your mind to unfold the events of the day.

Don’t force it. If you’re not ready to make the change, honor that feeling. Dialogue with yourself about it in a journal so you can understand why and choose a time and tool that make the most sense for you.

Roadblock: Be wary of becoming too attached to your regimen. Metal people have a tendency to become dogmatic about whatever discipline they are pursuing. Schedule adequate rest days, and keep the critical self-talk to a minimum.

Metal

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A water constitution’s motivational factor is security.

Intense and charismatic, water people’s lives revolve around the need to feel secure in themselves and the world.

This stable foundation is often elusive for them in that they tend to see the world as a place that never offers enough security. Emotionally, this translates to living in fear. Water people move through life in a fairly constant state of fear because subconsciously they don’t believe they will ever feel secure.

They can be paralyzed by this fear, but often they oscillate between being fearful and being completely fearless. Many times they settle deeply into a state of fearlessness, because it is a much more powerful position that allows them to achieve their goals. Water people in this state are thrill seekers and risk takers. They might be able to start out at a gym, but it will quickly become too mundane for their ambitious and sometimes dare-devil tastes.

In this way, water constitutions don’t tend struggle with goal achievement. They are powerfully motivated to avoid feeling fearful constantly. They will move ruthlessly, and often recklessly, toward their objective. Fear plays on our basic survival instincts, and this is the deep and powerful motivator that water people harness. A water person must be mindful of the path they choose to reach their goal and make sure they don’t harm themselves in the process.

Water



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A water person is possibly the least suited to a gym membership because of this risk taking drive.


You find comfort in having total control of your environment, as it helps to dissipate fear. This might mean giving yourself time to get comfortable in a new gym environment, working out at home, or becoming a class instructor or trainer.

Constantly challenge yourself by mixing up your routine; you need to feel stimulated — what many others would consider overly stimulated. Consistency is not appealing to you.

Understand that you have a tendency to push yourself to extremes. You might rigorously work out every day for 2 weeks without realizing it. Understand you need time to recover after these pushes.

Roadblock: Be aware that it is very easy for you to select overly dangerous activities. You are drawn to adrenaline rushes like rock climbing, sky diving, base jumping, and scuba diving. Be sure to develop your skill set in these activities before pursuing them full force.

Water

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Punching Through to Success

When it comes to setting goals it’s worthwhile to understand that the same tool is not right for everyone. It’s easy to blame ourselves for just not being able to stick with something.

If you’ve fallen off the goal horse, so to speak, chances are the method you are using isn’t the right one for you. Of course, sometimes life circumstances truly get in our way and delay our dreams for a bit. But if there is a repeated pattern of missing out on what you desire most, it’s worth a deeper look into how you’re going about the process.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Surprisingly, we do this quite often when it comes to pursuing our dreams. This usually occurs because we’re presented with a few common tools not suited to our needs, and are encouraged to use them.

What We Really Need to do is Ask if this Tool Will Work for Us

Think about what motivates you. Does whatever tool you’re using encourage that motivation? Does it feed you? Does it excite you to keep on persisting?

Sometimes tools can be adapted to work for you, like I explained above with the gym example. And sometimes, you just need a fresh start and a new idea.

This often seems like the more challenging path, and it is. But it reaps you much greater rewards because it actually helps you stick with it!



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Choose the Right Tool to Transform Your Common Speed Bumps into Assets

When you do, you work to your best advantage. Suddenly, the process becomes smoother than it’s ever been.

It’s high time to start feeling like an achiever and accomplish that goal! When you understand your natural strengths and predilections, you’ll put yourself on the path to success. And it will be easier than ever before.

Most importantly, you’ll finally start valuing your motivational factor. It’s an essential part of who you are that should be appreciated! The more you work with it, the easier achievement becomes.

So, what’s your big goal? How do you feel about achieving it?

Discover more online at http://www.drlizcarter.com

Hi. I’m Dr. Liz Carter.I’m here to help you go from just surviving

to fully thriving. Achieve all you want out

of life through better health and a deeper

understanding of yourself and others.

Here, take my hand. Let’s get started.



to finally achieve your big goals - dr liz carter€¦ · the better you understand what fires you...

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