Michael Hyatt

“People lose their way when they lose their why.”

What’s at Stake for You?

To get through the messy middle, when progress seems impossible, find your why. Look at your goals and ask yourself, “Why is this goal important to me personally? What’s at stake both positively and negatively?” Once you’ve answered those questions, I recommend you list and rank your top three so you can quickly find your most compelling motivation when the going gets tough. The sample goal templates at the back have a place specifically designed to capture your key motivations. To give you an additional edge, in the next chapter I’ll share several ways you can master your motivation—even when it feels like you don’t have much left.

The lines of preparation and opportunity finally merged, and that can happen for us too if we stay in the game.

“Twain must’ve been paid by the word,” the man guessed, but Lebowitz didn’t think so.

“It may have nothing to do with being paid by the word,” she said. “Twain might have told himself he had to write this many words each day and he would wonder, Am I there yet? Like a little kid in the back of a car—are we there yet?”

“Especially when it comes to self-improvement—like weight loss or overcoming an addiction—we need the energy of a community to stay with the program in a way that fuels us,” says psychologist Henry Cloud.

“The repeated psychology tests have proven that telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen,” he said.
10
Why? Because your brain experiences the same sense of satisfaction as if you had actually accomplished it. It works against you.

According to her research, people who write down their goals and share them with supportive friends do better than those who keep them private.

The great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.

It’s a lot easier to plan than take action

You don’t have to see the end from the beginning. In fact, you can’t if your goal is big enough