One of my favorite sayings, which I learned from Paul Chek, is “Pray and move your feet.” I think a lot of people miss the part about moving your feet.
When we are looking at creating a life we love that is enjoyable to us, it can be easy to fall into the praying or manifestation or desiring part. We sit and think about it or even possibly write down what it is we want to achieve. Maybe we want to lose weight, have more mental clarity, move to a different place, have a specific relationship, and have confidence in ourselves. Yes, writing it down and clarifying what you want is amazing, but you must be willing to move your feet.
When all you do is stay in the praying, manifestation, or desiring part, you can get stuck in paralysis by analysis and wonder why your life is not changing. This is when I tell my clients that they need to make short-term goals and action steps that are stepping stones to achieving their long-term goals or manifestations. Let’s take losing weight as an example and how that would look.
Your overall goal or desire or manifestation is to lose 20lbs; this would be your long-term goal. A way you want to write it to instill a mindset that supports it is: "I have lost 20lbs and feel great in my body."
So, let’s break this into a minimum of four short-term goals.
Short-term goal 1 - lose 5lb
Short-term goal 2 - lose 5lb
Short-term goal 3 - lose 5lb
Short-term goal 4 - lose 5lb
Now that you have marked your short-term goals, you want to focus on them, taking one goal at a time, knowing you are working your way to the big picture. If you try to take it all on at once you can lose motivation, confidence, and even desire.
Next, you want to implement steps to help you achieve your goals. This is where you get to braindump. So, still using this example, some things you could do are….
Eliminate gluten, eliminate dairy, workout 4-5 times a week, eat your biggest meal at breakfast, cut out fast food, eat real whole organic foods, learn your individual dietary needs and eat for that, work with a coach, switch over processed cooking oils to cleaner oils and meal prep.
This is just a list of what you could do, and many more could be added. Now, from this point, pick 1-2 action steps that you will incorporate from your brain dump for the next three weeks. You don’t want to take too many action steps, as this is when you try to change and take on too much and soon find yourself falling back into old patterns.
After three weeks, you reassess and ask yourself, “am I showing up to the 1-2 action steps I choose? Am I at a place where I can add another lifestyle factor without being overwhelmed? Do I still desire my long-term dream? How close am I to my current short-term goal?”
This is putting together pray and move your feet.
