Ok, so it’s the end of January. Now is the time to reassess your “success” list. What has happened in the past month? What have you accomplished?

If you’re well on your way to achieving your successes, great! Maybe you want to revisit the 2012 Success List in order to tweak it or refine it a bit now that you’ve had a month to think about it. But maybe you have uncovered several limiting beliefs this month. If so, use the next week to work with denials to clear them. While you are doing your week’s worth of denials, start working on the wonderful affirmations you want to say AFTER your denials. But don’t say them yet, just start thinking about them. Repeating this process frequently.  In fact, I would like you to consider taking the first week of every month to clear more land and start planting new stronger and healthier seeds. This will keep your ground clear and fertile. You’ll also be surprised at what you discover.

So what if this has not been a great month for following your Success List? What if you ‘gave up’ early on? What if nothing’s happened and you’re discouraged? Should you just stop and wait for next New Year’s Day? Heck no! It’s just time to reassess.

Hopefully you haven’t gotten so upset that you threw out the list. Before you take that list out and go over it, I want you to go back to your inventory list – the one we made at the beginning of the process. Start a new page and date it today’s date. Make an inventory of where you were on 31 December and then write down where you are today. Also write out what’s happened to you this month. This will be easier in the future if you record things every day (a great use for the Gratitude Journal). So what’s been going on in your life? I bet you’ll be surprised at the great things that have happened in this short time. Sometimes all it takes is to look at this inventory to realize that things aren’t as bad as you thought they were. Maybe everything didn’t go perfectly but I bet your attitude about them is much different and more positive. That’s a step in the right directions. Remember that you are not what you think but you are what you thought. So this month’s positive thoughts are producing great things in your life – you just may not be able to see them yet.

But what should you do now?

After you’ve made this inventory, you need to make sure that the items on this list are really yours. We talked about that before but maybe you didn’t really know or you thought the success list items were yours but they aren’t. Check your inner feelings again. Is it you who wants to achieve such and such or is it your wife, your parents, your doctor, etc? If it’s not yours, cross it off. None of this “well, it should be mine even if it isn’t”. That won’t work until it really IS yours. I finally quit smoking when I woke up one day and said “enough, I’m ready to stop this” and then it was easy. But all the other times I tried to stop were unsuccessful because I did not OWN them then. Once I made MY decision, then it was easy – even after 26+ years of smoking.

That would be the first place to start. Examine your list and see if these are things YOU really want. Be honest with yourself. It will mean the difference between success and feeling as if you can’t accomplish anything. Ask yourself if you really want this thing. Where did the idea come from? Has it been a long standing desire? Or something that just developed recently. If it’s long standing, it might have its roots in other people’s encouragement.

Next take a look at your limiting beliefs list. Does it have all of them? The other day I was looking at one of my “Successes” and I began to chastise myself for not doing it yet – fortunately this was followed immediately by the “I don’t have the time or energy to do this. It’s too hard”. What do you think that was? That was three limiting beliefs hitting me smack in the face. I had not dissected this down far enough. If you look at why you haven’t started on or gotten very far on a specific item (more than why you haven’t achieved your goal completely yet), you might find out something really basic that you’ve overlooked – just like I did. Check out all your limiting beliefs. By now you may have uncovered enough that you can find more. You see, that’s the real key to what’s holding your back. The Universe is right there wanting to provide you with whatever it is you want. The only problem is that we’ve got all these obstacles in the way keeping the Universe from being able to hand things right over to us.

If you think you’ve identified all your limiting beliefs, the next (and to me, the most common reason for lack of success) is that you didn’t do your week of denials. You either didn’t even start because you thought they were stupid or that you didn’t need them or whatever reason  but you just didn’t do them or if you did, it was only for a day. Maybe it was a half-hearted attempt. Well, I’m here to tell you that that won’t work. You have to do the denials. Remember that we’re trying to clear the land here so you can plant the new crop of “successes” (goals).

Check your success list for specificity and believability. It may be that you came up with a goal that is way too big right now. Scale it back down (use percentages of increase instead of actual numbers). Revise the goal in a different time frame. Specificity is key too. Remember how I told you I didn’t manifest the car I wanted because I would flip from this to that to something else. I couldn’t get specific. What that eventually told me was that I really didn’t want (or need) the car. If it’s something you really want, you’ll be able to be specific.

Then check your affirmations. Have you created them? Are they specific? Are they in the present tense? Are they positive? Are there any conflicting words or phrases in them (like “in harmony”)? Are they exciting or boring? Revise your affirmations now to make them really hit home emotionally.

Have you said these affirmations? It doesn’t do much good to create them if you don’t say them.

It’s not too late. It’s never too late to start your success list and start working on it. Or to revise it and get back in the saddle – or even get in a different saddle once you find your own successes.

Try this process to reassess your goals.

Let me know what’s happening with you please. Comment below!

Terrie