Creating a Leverage

What does "Creating Leverage" mean and how does that help you get what you want? Many people find that they can leverage a goal by promising themselves a reward for achieving small steps along the way, or even a major reward for accomplishing the goal. Positive leverages work well for goals that involve sacrifice along the way. Goals such as a weight loss, or saving money. Small rewards along the way provide additional encouragement that may not be forthcoming from your support group.

The problem that I have found with positive rewards, however, is that they often just do not carry enough power to get you through the tough times. During the really strong moments of temptation to slip back and ignore the goal a positive reward is easily blown off. “I don’t really want to…anyway,” is a common mind game played with a positive reward. For this reason I recommend that you incorporate negative leverages for the first few times.

How does that work? If you associate enough pain to something (think negatively about it with feeling), you will easily over come the temptation to skip a work out, eat an extra slice of pizza, or cut class. In order for this to work you must be brutally honest with yourself and you will need an accountability partner.

Step one is to identify the major goal and the milestone associated with achieving that goal. Write these down on a calendar with hard dates (deadlines) for achieving each step.

Step two is to identify the leverage. This part requires honesty on your part. The more honest you are the more powerful the leverage will be. Write down three core values that you feel very strongly about. This can be a very simple step – for example are you a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian? Are you very religious, an atheist, an environmentalist? Do you feel strongly about animal rights? You get the idea.

Step three is the fun part. Next to each of these three values write the antithesis value. Conservative – Liberal. Animal rights – animal testing. Environmentalist – Slash and burn etc. Now identify a group or cause the represents the antithesis of for example if you are a liberal you could write the Republican National Committee or Rush Limbaugh. If you are conservative you can write Nancy Pelosi, the DNC, or maybe the ACLU.

Step four involves your accountability partner. This cannot be a spouse, or girlfriend/boyfriend. I use PayPal for this part because it is the easiest way that I know how to do it. Basically your partner will invoice you a repeating payment to charge your card on each of the dates set up in step one. The amount of the charges should total an amount that will cause you pain to loose., but not enough to make you lose your house, apartment etc. It should, however, be enough that will not be able to take that family vacation. Does this give you leverage to get what you want? You bet it does! :)

If you achieve your milestone your accountability partner will refund the charge to your card. If you don’t make the milestone the charge will stick and your accountability partner will donate it, in your name, to the organization that most represents the antithesis of your core values.

Do not under estimate the power of this leverage. It is no longer a small reward for achieving the goal, nor is it simply a bit of money. Rather it is a significant amount of money and it is going to support something that you strongly oppose. Once you show your brain enough *pain*, you will have created leverage that will empower you to overcome any temptation or obstacle which has stood in the way of achieving what you want.

Think of the thing you want, but you are not getting. One of the reasons you might not be getting it is because you don't really think you can. That thought pattern is stopping you from getting it, and that's what you want to work on. If you are unwilling to accept this challenge you are admitting before you start that you have no intention of achieving this goal.

You need a leverage to help you get through the tough times, the tempting times, the moments when you are weak or think you want to give up. This leverage is the powerful tool I know of to help you achieve goals, over come obstacles, and maybe even leap tall buildings with a single bound.

If you are interested in creating a leverage and want an accountability coach, contact me and I’ll be glad to help you. I do charge a very small fee for this to cover the PayPal charges and my times spent in setting it up, but I can tell you that almost everyone who accepts this leverage achieves their goal on time.

Have a great Labor Day Weekend!

Thanks for reading.