The Importance of Structure
Call it ritual, structure, or daily goals. As a person on a quest for growth and change it is essential for you to create a habit that keeps you moving forward. Without a vision or daily objective, it becomes easy for a person to get stagnant, stuck, and lost in the confusion of doubt and misdirection. I've learned through my own personal experience that creativity thrives with a light structure of self discipline. Creativity and any forward momentum for that matter, depends on our willingness to put in the work. This doesn't mean your goals require effort and determination, this simply means you lay the groundwork for a day of inspired productivity rather than a day of avoidance and resistance. The Empire State building in New York City took 410 days to build. In reality, that's not a very long time to build such a huge and iconic structure. Point being, if you show up every single day and put in as much work as you can muster, you will eventually see your dream begin to manifest. It may first appear as a faint outline or business plan, then a client or two, then an office space, then a full staff managing your expanding empire. It takes time. Be persistent and you will succeed. This applies to any category of goal; relationships, finances, fitness, or changing a mindset.
The trouble for most people is this: If one's goals or ambitions are massive and grandiose, chances are they will trigger one's inner beliefs of doubt, unworthiness, or overwhelm. This is why most people tend to get stuck when it comes to entering a new and awesome chapter of their lives. Most people fail to understand that mindset is everything when building a dream or making a constructive change in their life. The fact is, dreams, like goals, require a certain amount of persistence and action in order to come to fruition. Whenever we come up against a subconscious negative belief such as self-doubt, our habit as human beings is to avoid that which is causing the doubt to become activated. In this case, taking action toward your financial or fitness goal becomes labeled as "too hard" or "too difficult" to achieve so then you settle for a Plan B approach to living your life. And then down the rabbit hole of numbness, stagnation, and apathy you fall. This is why structure is so important.
When you create a structure for your day and a morning routine that opens the mind to the high probability of success, you make moving toward your dreams a non-negotiational part of your day. Instead of spending your afternoons aimlessly scrolling down your social media, you'll find yourself moving down the checkboxes of the days tasks at hand. In this way of taking action, each checkbox becomes a mini-achievement until suddenly you're standing right in the middle of the fruition of your dreams. Achieving goals is as much about the baby steps as it is the bigger picture. We mustn't allow ourselves to become overwhelmed with our large and lofty goals. It's okay to have this type of ambition, but our main focus should be directed toward the best step we can take here in the present moment toward creating joy. We must learn to break down our big goals into smaller and more enjoyable daily steps.
For example, if your dream is to launch a multi-million dollar online consulting business, you don't start by searching for clients and sending out a dozen social media posts at random. You start by drafting down a rock-solid mission statement, creating a vivid image in your imagination of what you want your business to look like, and then researching websites and platforms you want to use to create your badass brand. Thinking too big too fast can cause us to stall our natural development process. Our mind fears making mistakes. It fears the unknown. It obsesses on the "how" when it should be creating the "why". The mind has a habit of being an annoying control freak and this is simply not a sustainable way to create.
That being said, in attaining our life's goals, we must be willing to take action. As much as we wish our big paycheck and material success would just land in our lap, manifesting your dream reality does require a little bit of deliberate creation on your end. This could be as simple as creating a vision board to stare at daily on your bedroom mirror. It could be as easy as setting aside 15 minutes every morning to meditate before rushing the kids off to school. It could be as structured as creating a daily checklist that incorporates your larger ambitions. Whatever the term structure means for you, it's important to take a light and fun approach to the idea of growth and change. If you approach the idea of self-discipline with resistance or avoidance, then discomfort is all you'll create. However, if you learn to softly focus your mind on miniature tasks and practice celebrating the small "wins" throughout your day, then the fruition of your bigger goals becomes that much easier to manifest. The key here is to actually celebrate the wins in your life. This will build positive re-enforcement in your mind that YES you do in fact want success and YES you are indeed worthy of it. Success FEELS GOOD! It feels great to be living a life of mission and direction. Celebrate that. At the end of each day of good momentum give yourself a reward for your progress. This could be as simple as allowing yourself to put your feet up and enjoy a film; or for big milestone celebrations, book yourself a vacation or buy yourself a token of accomplishment. This can't be emphasized enough. If you never reward yourself, your mind will eventually resist goals and ambitions because you'll become too obsessed with the "end result" rather than savoring the steps you take in the here and now. I can't emphasize this enough. Don't burn out the candle of your heart through overwork and exhaustion. Treat your inner child with rewards and praise and you'll find yourself receiving many helpful doses of inspiration.
Inspiration feels much better than effort. When acting from a place of inspiration, ideas and action seem to just occur as naturally as the breath you take in each moment. This is what many have called the Flow-State (more on this in a separate post). This is how dreams are built. When you offer little to no resistance of your heart's desires, your life becomes a perfect reflection of your awesome inner reality. However, sometimes it can require a light application of action in order to enter the flow-state. Sometimes we have so much resistance active in our vibration that it can feel like pushing a freight train up a mountain in order to get anything done. This is the natural process of changing your beliefs. It can feel painful, uncomfortable, and down right frustrating, but eventually, if you stay persistent in achieving little goals at a time, your reality and beliefs will begin to change. Building structure, applied in congruence with some knowledge of "The Objective Perspective", as well as becoming familiar with the infamous "Law of Attraction", is the key to becoming a deliberate creator of your reality. Couple that with discovering the sacred place of inspiration and joy within your heart and you'll truly become unstoppable.
What is it that you really want to do with your life? What is it that makes your heart flutter with enthusiasm? Anything is possible so long as you believe it to be so.
One brick at a time. That is how you create the rock-solid foundation of your dreams. That is how you build your own empire of success.
Much Love,
~ Austin
