DELIVER THE GOODS - Doable: The Girls' Guide to Accomplishing Just About Anything (2015)

Doable: The Girls' Guide to Accomplishing Just About Anything (2015)

STEP 8: DELIVER THE GOODS


In the past seven chapters, we’ve worked our way through the Doable process and explored how to apply each step to your goal. By now, hopefully you’ve gotten clear on what you want to achieve, made a plan for doing it, proactively set yourself up for success, lined up external support, figured out how you’ll know when you’ve accomplished your goal, buckled down to the serious business of doing, and likely faced (and hopefully overcome) a few challenges along the way. But for everything we want to do, there comes a point when we’ve reached the end of the journey. That’s what the last Doable step, Deliver the Goods, is all about.

Each time you commit to a task or a goal, there are several possible outcomes. You can:

■ Achieve it: This is the golden ticket—it means you’ve accomplished your goal as you stated it. Boom.

■ Change course: Sometimes you decide, in the middle of the whole process, that you don’t want to accomplish the goal after all or that your purpose has changed or evolved. So the original goal isn’t relevant any longer.

■ Fail to achieve it: Sometimes you just aren’t successful in reaching your goals or achieving your To Dos. It happens. You survive and go on.

All three of these options are outcomes you’ll likely experience in some way, shape, or form many times throughout your life. The reasons why could depend on the goal, what’s happening in your world at the time, and many other factors. So let’s take a closer look at what each one looks like and how you can best experience it. Because no matter the outcome, there is something to be gained from the experience when you take the time to reflect.

Achieving the Goal

Well, this is really what we’re all going for, right? To identify something we want in our lives (whether it’s a change, an opportunity, a tangible object, or a big result), come up with a plan for making it happen, and at the end of the process, succeed in doing exactly what we set out to do.

Achieving your goal, no matter how big or small, mundane or earth shattering, is a big deal. That’s right. You made a decision to do something and then you did it. And that’s all on you. Sure, you may have had help along the way, but at the end of the day, you are the one who stated your goal and then had the wherewithal to see it through to completion. And that, my friend, is something to celebrate, whether that looks like dancing around in your underwear to Katy Perry, having a girls’ night out with your friends, or simply enjoying a toast from your family at dinner. Plainly put, celebrating feels good and is a wonderful way to bring a Doable journey to a close.

But there’s a deeper reason you shouldn’t skip your celebration. By truly acknowledging your accomplishment, you can max out on all the positive energy your achievement has created. Because when you accomplish a goal, you get so much more than just the tangible benefits of the accomplishment. You also get momentum, confidence, and the creation of new neural pathways—meaning your brain works better and success will be even easier next time.

YOUR BRAIN ON ACCOMPLISHMENT

In his New York Times bestselling book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, author Charles Duhigg talks about how reaching goals, even small ones, can propel us toward bigger, more significant accomplishments: “A huge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves.” This means that each time we achieve something, no matter the size or importance, we gain motivation and inspiration that will help us pursue future goals with even more confidence. So it only makes sense that we’ll be even more likely to reach those future goals as a result.

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If you look up the most successful entrepreneurs of our time, you’ll see that they didn’t just come out with one big idea and strike gold. Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Richard Branson of Virgin, arguably two of the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, both started out small and built their businesses over time through a series of small successes. Even Mark Zuckerberg, who appeared to come out of nowhere when he created Facebook, had a long history of pursuing and accomplishing many goals, including developing computer games and taking graduate courses while still in middle school, being the captain of his high school’s fencing team, and being courted by AOL and Microsoft before he even graduated from high school, not to mention the fact that he was accepted to Harvard (no small feat). With every little thing Zuckerberg worked toward and accomplished, he gained momentum to keep him moving forward and taking risks. He was having experiences that led to new experiences. Zuckerberg, like Branson and Bezos, was on his own personal cycle of Doability.

A positive side effect of all this momentum building is confidence, which can be defined as a feeling of certainty or truth about something. When we feel confident in our abilities to do something … anything … we embrace our certainty about what the outcome will be from the get-go. In other words, confidence enables us to work toward goals with the assumption that we will ultimately achieve them. Confidence locks in a positive mind-set, which shapes what our goal pursuit will look like, making it much more likely that we’ll reach our goals.

I like to think of confidence as a muscle. For example, imagine your triceps muscles. You don’t pay much attention to them until you try to do a push-up and realize your arm strength is pretty much nonexistent. But then you struggle through a few knee push-ups one day and a few more the next, and as the days go by, you gradually add more muscle. Before you know it, you can drop and do twenty at a moment’s notice. Once you start flexing and building your confidence muscle, this can-do attitude will soon become part of how you show up, both to tasks and to the world.

Because of her successes in creating and building her blog, Ella Viscardi feels über-confident about the future. “Now I have this background that really can show other people who I am and where I’m coming from, like my specific voice. I definitely am really interested in working in the fashion industry when I’m older, and I know it’s not an easy realm to get into, but just the fact that I’ve been having this blog and it’s made me learn so much about fashion already, I do feel like I have some knowledge about technology and writing and just the world of fashion to bring with me into whatever I do next. It definitely makes me feel confident,” she explains.

For Tammy Tibbetts of She’s the First, sometimes the smaller tasks and To Dos play as big a role in building her confidence as accomplishing the big goals. A self-described former perfectionist, Tammy often reflects on something her first boss once told her: “Don’t let perfection get in the way of better.” In her quest to let go of perfection and build her own confidence muscles, Tammy puts a priority on exercise.

“I sometimes feel incompetent with tasks I have to do for She’s the First because I haven’t mastered the new skills, but then I think, Well, you felt that way about yoga four months ago and look at you now. You’re not too bad. So I think it’s important to give yourself other outlets for other goals. Maybe it’s not a fitness goal, maybe it’s a goal for how to play an instrument or something. But it’s important to work on things outside the realm of whatever the main project is because, even if you don’t realize it, you’re going to be making [neural] connections that will reinforce you.”

Brain science gives us clues as to how acknowledging our achievements might help cement our success-oriented outlook and increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for future tasks. We all have neural pathways in our brains, which are essentially little nerves that information travels along. Our neural pathways determine how we experience everything, and like deep ruts in a road, these pathways can become firmly etched in our brains. Unless we consciously etch new ones.

Say you are someone who hasn’t always seen things through to completion. Maybe you’ve crashed and burned a few times and you are convinced you’re the queen of self-sabotage. You likely have some deep ruts in your neural pathways that support this mind-set and negatively influence your likelihood of success. But what if you challenged some of those beliefs about your self-sabotage and decided to pursue your goal in a new way—a way that yielded some awesome results? Choosing to think differently and to try a new approach forms new neural pathways. Do it again, and again, and you’ll eventually find you’ve created new ruts in the road—you’ll have shifted your mind-set to one of success and optimism. And which mind-set do you think is going to result in a more positive outcome for future tasks and To Dos?

ACHIEVING THE GOAL … ALMOST

One more thing I think is important to consider before we move on: achieving your goal doesn’t have to look perfect. Sometimes you reach the conclusion of your quest with slightly different results than you’d hoped for or predicted.

Say it’s your senior year and you’re bound and determined to get your best time ever swimming the 200-meter freestyle. All season long, you stuck diligently to the training schedule your coach devised to make sure you peaked during the state championships. When the time comes for the big race, you’re well-rested, your body is perfectly fueled by ideal foods, and your lane assignment is number five, which just happens to be your lucky number. Yet, despite swimming your heart out in optimal conditions, you fall short of beating your best time of 2:07.99 and instead finish in 2:10.74. You still place in the top ten—better than you’ve ever placed before—but if you’d actually beaten your best time, you could have been on the medal stand for the first time in your high school career. And all because of three lousy seconds.

So, what to do? Technically, you didn’t meet your goal of setting a personal record, but for all intents and purposes, you were successful in your pursuit and execution of it. You did everything you could do to make it happen, but it just wasn’t in the cards for you that day.

So what does that mean? Should you retire your Speedo, hang your head in shame, and mope around like a big failure? Are you any less just because you failed to blow past your old record? Methinks not.

This circumstance I just described, the one where you get super close to a much sought-after end result but don’t quite reach it? Yeah. This happens. A lot. And the worst thing you could do is believe that since you didn’t meet your goal exactly as you’d hoped, then it doesn’t count at all. Well, that just isn’t true. This outcome does not mean you failed. When near misses like this happen, I suggest treating them like a win. That’s right. Pat yourself on the back. Celebrate your tush off. And acknowledge the fantastic efforts you undertook as you worked toward your goal.

REFLECTION

Whether you achieved your goal or you had a near-miss conclusion, take some time to debrief about your Doable style.

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Grab a pen and your journal or your Doable workbook and ask yourself the following questions to see what kinds of insights you can put in your toolbox for the next time you chase a goal or dream:

■ What am I most proud of about the way I pursued my goal?

■ If I could start over and try again, what would I do differently?

■ Is there any way I could have made my goal more doable?

■ What have I learned about my Doable style that I can use in the future?

For We Stop Hate’s Emily-Anne Rigal, reflection means noticing and appreciating not only her own role in an accomplishment but also the role of others in her success. “Along the way, when you’re trying to accomplish something, you’re not ever doing anything alone. So I think it’s so important to recognize that and show people that you’re thankful for all they’re doing because it’s your goal. If you don’t appreciate, you can’t be happy. The whole point of being successful and accomplishing goals is so that you can feel good about yourself and feel happy.” Don’t forget to thank yourself, though. “I think it’s essential that we all take credit for what we’ve done,” Emily-Anne says. “It’s not that I think this all happened because other people did it for me. I think I had a lot to do with it, so being proud of myself and acknowledging what I’ve done is important too.”

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Changing Course

While this book is about making anything doable, there will be times in your life when you’re plugging ahead on something and then you realize, Hey, this isn’t really something I want to do anymore. You might consciously choose to change course and take your To Do off the table before you’ve completed it. This is different from not perfectly meeting the criteria for your goal or not achieving your hoped-for result. No, this is when, for whatever reason, you simply decide you’re just not that into the goal anymore.

For example, maybe your goal was to land a job at the movie theater to make extra cash on the weekends, but after you nailed your interview, you realized you’d much rather work a job that will give you your weekend nights free, so you withdraw from the application process. Or maybe you’ve been preparing for an audition for an exclusive summer theater program, but before the big day comes, you have an aha moment and realize your real dream is to take summer classes at the Art Institute.

This is all perfectly good and fine because the reality is, we are always changing. It’s part of what makes us dynamic, interesting, creative beings. We are constantly absorbing new information, insights, and perspectives and incorporating them into our own opinions and experiences. That information, along with all the other influences in our lives—our friends, families, and the media, to name a few—shapes who we are and how we think about our lives and choices. We are constantly evolving.

Some of us worry about what others will think if we change our minds about a goal. Will they assume we failed? Will they think we couldn’t hack it? Will they think we are flaky and can’t stick to anything? Maybe. But frankly, who cares? And no, I’m not being cheeky. I mean it. Who cares? It’s time to let go of what other people think because, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t change who we are. Their perceptions of us are not necessarily true. And besides, we can’t control their opinions about us anyway. In fact, you could keep pushing ahead and achieve a goal you’ve completely lost interest in, and other people still might think you’re flaky. So what’s the point of even giving others’ perceptions a second thought?

On the other hand, maybe the person whose opinion you’re most worried about is you. After all, no one is more critical of ourselves that we are. And if you have it in your head that you are someone who struggles to follow through or that you are a classic self-sabotager, you might decide that shifting a goal proves just how bad you are at actually finishing anything. If I just described you, remember that you get to decide who you are and how you think about yourself. And therefore, you can choose to not believe that version and come up with your own version of the truth. Something along the lines of: I’m glad I felt confident enough to step away from a goal I wasn’t passionate about anymore. I look forward to putting my energy behind something I’m truly excited about and making it happen!

For author Marni Bates, changing courses means being okay with the fact that the first novel she ever wrote is still sitting under her bed. “It’s a great manuscript,” she says. “I loved it at the time. But it needs a whole lot of work to ever be published. I see that now. I needed time and I needed distance from that manuscript. And I still look at it with deep, deep affection and love, but if I hadn’t set it aside, I wouldn’t be where I am. That book was a great launching point for me, but it was my next book that actually moved my career forward. There’s no shame in a non-completed manuscript. There’s no shame in a half-finished project. It’s all about finding that project that really does fit.”

Remember this: Changing course isn’t failing or bailing. It’s evolving and growing. It’s all good.

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Because a change of course often stems from a change in us or our circumstances (or both), it’s worth it to take a few minutes to explore the situation by answering the following questions:

■ Why did I decide to change course before completing my goal?

■ How have I evolved since I first began pursuing this goal?

■ What did I discover about myself in the process?

■ How can I take what I’ve learned about myself and factor it in the next time I pursue a goal?

■ If I pursue this goal again in the future, what will I do differently?

Failing to Achieve the Goal

The third potential outcome when we’re working toward a goal is the one we’d probably rather not even mention lest it come true: flat out not achieving the goal at all. Going back to our examples from previous chapters, this might look like not earning enough money to buy that used car after all, or chickening out about asking the hot crush to prom, or not getting the grades to qualify for honor roll.

When we don’t reach a goal, we have a choice. We can look at that failure as evidence that we’re somehow lacking (not the option I’m advocating!), or we can take a step back, assess what went wrong, and make a conscious decision about how we want to move forward, whether it’s starting from square one and giving it another go or deciding it is what it is and moving on. The most important thing to remember is this: There is no shame in not succeeding. None. Zilch. Nada. Because what we do or don’t do has no bearing on who we are or how much value we have. What matters is how we show up—how we deal with the failure—and where we go from there. Goal pursuing isn’t a zero sum game. Every single part of going after To Dos and goals has value. We just have to soak in that value.

So what does it mean if you don’t reach your goal? Well, it simply means you didn’t do it this time. That’s it. It means there’s an opportunity for you to learn more about who you are by reflecting on your whole journey.

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Once you’ve had a chance to recover from the disappointment (this may be a short or a long period of time, depending on the importance of the goal), take a half hour or so to journal your answers to the following questions:

■ Despite the fact that I didn’t achieve my goal, what part of my Doable process worked well for me?

■ If I could start over and try again, what would I do differently?

■ Is there anything I could have done differently that would have made me more likely to achieve my goal?

■ What did I learn about myself through this process?

■ What is perfect about the way this situation worked out? (This might feel like a stretch to answer, but go ahead—stretch and give it a try. If you can’t think of anything, email me the situation at debbie@debbiereber.com and I’ll help you come up with something. Promise!)

■ Do I want to pursue this goal again?

Just taking the time to reflect on these questions will help you shift your perspective and leave you feeling more positive about the outcome, even if it doesn’t look like what you were hoping for.

It might not happen right away, but trust and believe in yourself—you will be able to move on from a stronger, more inspired place.

Celebrate You

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But enough about what to do when you don’t end up where you’d hoped you would. Let’s move on to talking about the good stuff, like you making it happen and reaching your goals, because I have a hunch that’s going to be your story more often than not.

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I first heard the term shipping—used to describe delivering the goods or completing a goal and moving on—from author, entrepreneur, speaker, and marketing guru Seth Godin. He writes extensively about this concept, and how all our talk and work and planning isn’t worth anything if we’re not willing to see something through to the finish line. He describes this on his blog: “In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he’s tired. Everyone is. That’s not the point. The point is to run. Same thing is true for shipping, I think.”

So, now that you’ve shipped, yay, you! It’s time to acknowledge and celebrate your achievement!

Now, you may not think that following through on what you set out to do warrants putting on your party pants, but I’m here to tell you, you’re wrong (and I say that with the most possible respect). Recognizing your accomplishment is a positive, empowering, joyous thing to do—and it’s the final step in the Doable process. Not taking the time to celebrate is kind of like getting a chocolate fudge sundae and asking the server to hold the fudge. Celebrating seals the deal and gives you the opportunity to pat yourself on the back, marinate in your victory, and maybe even receive congratulations from the people around you who are proud of your success.

There are many different ways to acknowledge and celebrate your accomplishments, whether you managed to finally put together the Ikea bookshelf you’ve had in a box for the past three months or you reached your goal on Kickstarter to launch your nonprofit. Here are just a few suggestions to get you started, but ultimately, how you mark your achievement is totally up to you!

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REWARDS

As I wrote in chapter 7, some people are super motivated by the prospect of receiving a reward after reaching a goal. Even if the promise of a reward isn’t a driving force while you’re actually pursuing a goal, there’s no reason why you can’t reward yourself after the fact. I mean, who doesn’t love a little reward every now and then?

Of course, sometimes the reward is the result of the achievement itself. Take, for example, the teen who was saving money to buy a used car. Her reward after reaching her goal is the car. And that’s a pretty great reward. But in cases where the achievement doesn’t necessarily equal fun or awesomeness—finishing a research paper or getting all your recommendations in for your college applications, for example—celebrating with a super indulgent reward at the end makes your accomplishment all the better, especially when achieving it was a slog fest and involved a ton of work, energy, and perseverance.

YA author Marni Bates buys herself a commemorative piece of jewelry for each book she finishes. For example, in her novel Decked with Holly, her main character gets a pearl necklace, so Marni bought one for herself as a memento of the whole journey. She also bought a bracelet to mark the publication of her book Awkward. “It’s been really great for me to have something that I can wear and that makes me feel proud of myself when I wear it,” she says.

I’m intrinsically motivated, yet I always celebrate my big achievements with rewards, anything from a dinner out with my girlfriends to a massage to an afternoon shopping spree. I enjoy these rewards completely guilt-free because I know I worked my bum off to earn them. They’re well deserved, and like the L’Oreal tagline says, I’m worth it.

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ACCOMPLISHMENT BOARD

Posting completed To Dos on an accomplishment board is one of my favorite ways to recognize the successful completion of things on my list. What this looks like is up to you, but the gist is this: an accomplishment board is a physical place—a wall, the back of your bedroom door, a bulletin board, a whiteboard, the side of your dresser—where you tack up your accomplishments.

Every time you cross another goal off your list, scribble it onto a sticky note and slap it onto your accomplishments board. Voilà—you have a visual reminder of just how much you’ve actually done. And each one of those sticky notes represents not only a successful outcome for yourself but also your future potential to tackle anything you dream of. Maintain your accomplishments board and I have no doubt that you’ll eventually run out of space. Soon, you’ll have to resort to posting new accomplishments over old ones. Don’t believe me? Try it.

ACCOMPLISHMENT JOURNAL

Similar to the accomplishment board, keeping an accomplishment journal is another way to document your successes while also giving you the room to capture your reflections and thoughts about the whole process. Choose a journal with a design you love, find the perfect pen, and go to town writing about your successful pursuits of To Dos. At the end, you’ll have a valuable documentation of your best practices and insight into your ideal Doable style, not to mention an inspirational and motivational book you can refer to the next time you’re feeling less than confident about the goal you’re chasing.

For college student Anna Gallagher, writing out her accomplishments is all about coming full circle with her goals. When she’s first thinking about goals (step 1), she writes about who she is, who she wants to be, and what makes her happy, and then she only pursues goals that are in alignment with what she just wrote down. So at the conclusion of a project or when she has completed a To Do, she goes back to that list and checks in.

“I like to see if I’ve done something that’s made me happy, that has enhanced who I am, and that has progressed my life in some way. And then I always like to set new goals and have something new I’m working toward. So as soon as I finish one goal, I try to come up with what my next project is, and once again think about how I want to change in the future,” she explains.

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PHOTO BOOK

Depending on what it is you accomplished, you might choose to create a photo book to fully memorialize your achievement. I know how fabulous these can be because my friend Alice makes them for me every few years—awesome picture books highlighting my successes and achievements. Talk about a confidence boost! If your To Do involves the completion of a journey or challenge, having images of you along the way and successfully doing your thing will be something you can refer back to for years to come! Even better, simply looking at those images of you—crossing the finish line, paragliding, surfing, doing a ropes course—can instantly create the same feelings in your body that you experienced when you were doing it the first time around. And those feelings, when harnessed in a positive way, are tantamount to your own personal superpower.

SOCIAL MEDIA BLITZ

Part of celebrating and acknowledging your accomplishment might mean telling the world about it and graciously accepting their congratulations. FYI—this isn’t being braggy (unless of course your intention is to be braggy … then it is). Rather, it’s a powerful way to publicly acknowledge what you’ve done while simultaneously making yourself vulnerable and open to receiving goodness and praise. (Remember what Brené Brown said about vulnerability? Yeah, it’s a good thing).

Take it from me—as soon as I wrap up this chapter, I’ll be posting on Facebook that I finished writing my book! For me, part of the reward and recognition comes from having my friends cheer me on and give me virtual hugs for reaching my goal. It kind of seals the deal and adds to my feel-good completion vibe. At the same time, it lets the people who care about me know what important things are happening in my world, which makes them feel good. Again, win-win. So, if it’s your thing, tweet out your good news or update your Facebook status so the world can celebrate your accomplishment. And then you can just sit back and soak up all that good energy.

What You Do Matters

We Care Act cofounder Grace Li knows a thing or two about reflection and good energy. But I’ll let her tell you all about it: “Ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to do something grand, extraordinary. It was only through We Care Act that I realized to do so, you can’t just do it by yourself. You have to start a chain reaction. I really love the idea of a chain reaction, now even more so because of what happened when I went to China a couple of years ago with my siblings.

“When we were China, I taught an English workshop there to the Sichuan earthquake victims. At the end of the workshop, the English teacher was standing on the steps of the school when she asked all the students, ‘How many of you would like to join We Care Act as a team leader and pay it forward?’ Every single student raised their hand. Now they’re all active team leaders. They contribute to every project that we do.

“That’s really made me realize that so many people out there want to make a difference. For me, I realized that the way to do something extraordinary isn’t just by getting into it by myself, but by creating a network chain reaction of people who all want to do the same thing.”

What I love about this story? It is a beautiful reminder that what we do matters, whether we’re changing the lives of children halfway around the world like Grace does or creating something meaningful, positive, happy, or important in our own lives.

Whatever you’re up to, I know you have big things to do in the world. I hope this book has given you some strategies to make every one of them happen. So, I’d better say good-bye and let you get started. Good luck, and keep me posted on your progress. I’m rooting for you!


STEP 8 SUMMARY


Would you ever devour an awesome novel only to toss it aside as soon as you read the climax? Probably not. If you’re like me, you’d want to read all the way to the end so you could find out how the characters fared, see all the pieces of the story neatly wrap up, and experience the satisfaction of turning that very last page. This is what the last step on your Doable journey is all about: closing the chapter on your goal so you can make room for a different dream, or perhaps the same dream reworked if you weren’t successful the first time around. It’s about experiencing a sense of completion and reaping all the benefits of the extraordinary process you’ve just been through.

Step 1: Define Your To DoImages

Step 2: Detail the Little TasksImages

Step 3: Defend against ObstaclesImages

Step 4: Develop Support SystemsImages

Step 5: Determine What Success Looks LikeImages

Step 6: Do the WorkImages

Step 7: Deal with SetbacksImages

Step 8: Deliver the Goods Delivering the goods means seeing a goal—or the pursuit of a goal—through to the end, no matter the outcome. You might not have realized that reflecting on the end of a Doable journey is part of the process itself, but the acts of acknowledgement, celebration, and reflection can offer you beaucoup benefits. Here are some highlights to help you experience your own goal conclusions:

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■ Formally acknowledge the achievement of your goal. This way, you maximize the positivity your accomplishment has put into motion, including momentum, confidence, and the creation of new neural pathways.

■ Treat near misses—goals you pursued beautifully but missed achieving your hoped-for outcome—as wins. Celebrate your hard work, and then reflect on lessons learned by asking yourself questions like: What am I most proud of about the way I pursued my goal? If I could start over and try again, what would I do differently? Is there any way I could have made my goal more doable? What have I learned about my own Doable style that I can use in the future?

■ Give yourself permission to change your mind about a goal. We are always evolving and changing, and sometimes that means our goals change before we reach them. And that’s okay.

■ If you fail to reach your goal, take a step back, assess what went wrong, and decide how to move forward. You can choose how you think and feel about not reaching your goal. Don’t make it mean something negative about you—focus on what you can learn about yourself and your Doable process so you can shift perspective and pursue future goals from a more empowered place.

■ Celebrate you. No matter how big or small your accomplishment, find some way to formally acknowledge and celebrate with tangible or intangible rewards—an accomplishment board or journal, a photo book, a social media blitz, or whatever ideas you can come up with!