When I was in elementary school, our school would have at least one fundraiser each year. They always had amazing looking boxes of candies, cookies, and chocolates. When I was about 10 years old, I decided to use my hard earned allowance to buy a box of rose-shaped chocolates. When the box came, I was so satisfied. I had wanted one of those boxes for years and I finally had one. I put the box in my closet and took it out almost daily to have a look. I would imagine how wonderful those chocolates were going to taste when I finally opened the box. I loved the fact they were all mine and I would not have to share with anyone. Over the course of a few weeks I forgot to take the box out every day and I only took it out once every few days. After awhile longer, I only took it out every few weeks. I would run my fingers over the contours of the rose shapes on the top, and imagine how special it was to have the tasty box of chocolates all to myself.
About three years later when I was cleaning out my closet, I uncovered the box of rose-shaped chocolates on the top shelf. I had completely forgotten about them and was surprised and delighted to find the box. Within a few excited moments I had removed all the plastic and carefully lifted the lid. My heart sank as removing the cushioned insert revealed a box of tiny chocolate roses covered in some sort of a white film. Convincing myself that they were probably still ok to eat, I took a long awaited bite and spit it out. Crumbly and dry, the chocolate roses had sat in the top of the closet for so long my lovely treats were no longer edible.
More on my chocolates in a bit. You made it to Day 30! Go get those lists.
You now have six lists of five items each which you wrote down during the various Shake-Ups throughout the book. Three of these lists contain your goals. Let’s start with the Never Minds. This list is your first set of goals. It contains five things you want to give up, remove, or release from your life. These are things which bother you, annoy you, or hold you back, and you want to stop thinking about them, stop worrying about them, and never mind about them again. Give yourself permission to let go of the five things on this list.
The next list of goals is your list of five Happies. Review your list. Your happies are the things you love. This is what you should be enjoying as often as possible. When you have a decision to make about what to do or which path to take, you can refer to this list to help you decide which option will move you toward happiness. If you make doing what you wrote on this list a priority, you will be well on your way.
The third list containing your goals is the Wishes list. Review your list of wishes. Your list of wishes spells out the things you most want to make happen in your life. Achieving your wishes can be a long process, but that’s ok. The journey makes the achievement even sweeter. Stay focused on your wishes and work on creating a plan which gets you to your goal. To create the plan you will need tools. Do you know where those tools are? Yep, on the other three lists.
Find the Qualities list and review it. This is your own individual arsenal. These qualities are yours, and no one can take them away from you unless you let them. Whenever you start to doubt yourself refer to this list and remember how special and capable you are. You’ll need to use your strengths to achieve your goals from the three goal lists.
Next, find the Relationships page and review the list of people you wrote down. These are your helpers and advisors. They are the ones who will give you good advice and keep you on the right track. They will help you if and when you need it, and get out of your way when you don’t. They will be your support system and the base of your network. As much as we might like to think it, none of us can do everything on our own. We will all need help at some point. When you need help, consult this list to know where to turn. If they are not able to guide you, ask these resources if they know someone who can.
Lastly, let’s turn to the Positives list. Remember when all those good things happened to you? This list can be like a life raft on a day when you feel nothing is going your way and you are moving in the opposite direction from your goals. When this happens and you start feeling down, review your list of positives and remember all the good in your life. When things are going well and you are having a good day keep adding new events to the Positives list. This will give you an even stronger tool to lift your spirits whenever you need a reminder that good things do happen to you.
If you downloaded the PDF from TheShakeUpBook.com you’ll see three of the lists have the letter G inside of a circle in the bottom right corner. This is to help you remember these are the lists of your goals. The other three have the letter T inside of a circle in the bottom right corner to help you remember those are lists of your tools.
I waited on those chocolates because I cherished the idea of eating them. When I finally acted, it was too late to enjoy actually eating them. Sometimes we get stuck focusing on the idea of all the great things we intend to do instead of getting out there and doing them. We keep making a plan to plan instead of making a plan and taking action. We might worry the real thing will not be as good as we expected or we are concerned we might make a mistake. Do not let those worries stop you. Keep going and make adjustments as needed. Quit sitting around waiting for your dream to come to you. Use your tools and go out there and get it.
Congratulations on completing all 30 days! Before you continue your transformation using your new tools, you have one Shake-Up left: reward yourself. I like to set up small rewards for myself which I earn by completing tasks. It doesn’t seem to matter if the task is large and the reward is small, I’m always happy to get a little bonus in celebration of my accomplishment. You can use this technique as well to help motivate you to finish tasks and complete goals. Today you finished this book so your Shake-Up is to reward yourself. You earned it.