Use Emotion to Achieve Anything

When the average person decides they are going to do something, they figure out what they need to do and do it, generally unemotionally.  They go to work every day and the tasks they need to accomplish are either laid out for them by the company they work for or as the day progresses, things they need to do will come to them.  Very often people will get to the end of the day and say that “the day got away from them.”  A number of things had to get done and often the things they wanted to do or needed to do either got done poorly or not at all.

This can go on for years in people’s lives.  They don’t pack a lunch and either have to go to a vending machine or pick up food somewhere.  They unemotionally choose something that is fast and easy to eat, without thinking about the nutritional or economic value of their decision.  This also can carry over into dinner where at the last minute, no one wants to cook so something gets picked up or delivered from a restaurant.

They don’t feel their best physically because of the way they eat and the fact that they are not doing any kind of movement or exercise. 

They are not saving any money and feel like they are not getting ahead financially because they are not making any plans for investing their money.

They are reacting to situations.  At work they are reacting to work being given to them.  For meals they are reacting to their feelings at the time and what is easiest to prepare and eat.  With their money they always feel that there is “more month left at the end of the money” and they have nothing left to invest, let alone enjoy themselves with some of it.

This has occurred to all of us at some points in our lives and can make us feel helpless.

There is hope however, for all of us that feel like we are not in control of our situation and want to make a change for the better, and that is to attach emotion to the goals we want to achieve. 

Hell Yes or No

High achievers often call this the “Hell Yes or No” principle.  The meaning is very simple: when you want to do something that is important to you, decide if doing it will make you say a huge emotional YES.  If not, do not do it.

If you want to get into better shape as an example, you can attach the emotion of how you will feel with more energy and how much better you will look to motivate you.  Then, when you begin to exercise, you will have made both a logical AND emotional choice to do it.  You will look forward to the results in the future even if in the present it means getting up and doing movement and watching what you eat.  This emotional attachment is the “Hell Yes” your brain is looking for when you are in the middle of the process.

When you decide this way, all of your decisions will be affected by what the outcome in the future will be.  All of the sudden you will begin to be more careful of your meals because they have a strong effect on how you look and feel.  The great thing about this is once you decide to attach emotion to improving yourself, it begins to spread into other areas of your life.

For example, packing your lunch every day will save you money, make you feel more in control of your day and your body and remove a decision you would need to make during the day about what and where to eat.  Your self-esteem will be positively affected by all of these factors plus the fact that eventually you will look and feel better.

That is an impressive number of benefits from the simple act of making your lunch!  The point is that making these small changes and attaching the emotion of the results you hope to achieve to them will make them not only easier to start, but easier to continue doing and lock into your regular routine.  You will also begin to notice efficiencies that you can implement.  In the case of your lunch, when you shop for groceries, you may begin to buy larger quantities to prepare for dinner and take the rest for lunch the next day, removing the step of “making” a lunch and implementing the much easier and quicker step of “assembling” your lunch into a container for the next day.  The food itself is already made and ready to go.

We have personally been assembling family lunches by using this exact system for many years.  A larger meal is prepared for dinner with the understanding that the extra will be brought for lunches.  This process takes very little time as you are already at the dinner table and only need to get the containers out, filled and labelled for everyone to take in the morning.

Now preparing your lunch every day may not be the most emotionally rewarding thing you do, but it can start a chain of positive experiences that can lead to you looking and feeling better and can translate into achieving bigger goals that can truly change your life.  The money you save on good can be put to work on your other goals like saving for retirement, your children’s education or a vacation property, for example.

Attaching emotion to positive outcomes will make the process of achieving your goals easier as you feel better about them and can see the outcome in your future.  As much as possible, concentrating on the Hell Yeses and delegating or avoiding the Nos will make a huge change in your life.