Reminders are a great way to keep you on track to achieve your goals. We all need constant and obvious reminders of what we want, what we want to avoid, and of the inevitability of death.
Why Reminders?
The world is filled with an onslaught of stimuli, and all of it competes for your attention. So you need to add in your own stimuli (reminders that help you achieve) to compete.
It’s not that we’re forgetful creatures. It’s that everything and everyone feels they have some huge claim over our time and energy. There are a lot of things competing for our attention.
So how reminders help is by putting something you care about in front of your eyes enough times that you actually get around to doing it. Granted you can always avoid things or choose not to do it, but you can give yourself the advantage by throwing in the behaviors you want to compete for your time.
There are too many plates in the air to assume you’ll always remember to do market research for instance. More likely, because of the way our brains work, you will just respond to things based on urgency and what is presented to you in the moment. So you can fight your nature and test your mental strength, or you can play into it and use it to advance your desires and goals.
Examples of habits and reminders:
- Want to meditate in the morning? Leave a meditation app or video up on your phone so it’s the first thing you see when you look at your phone.
- Want to exercise more consistently? Leave out a couple pairs of workout clothes at the top of each week.
- Want to read more? Put a calendar alert on your tech around the times of your breaks that says READ.
- Want to drink more water? Keep a clear glass of water next to you all day.
Reminders, in all forms, have noticeably improved every aspect of my life. I wanted to journal more, so I started putting the notebook on my pillow in the morning. Now I journal every night. I wanted to drink more water, so I added a place to track hydration each day in my planner (pic?). Now I drink 6 glasses most days. I wanted to stretch everyday so I added a habit tracker to my planner. I wanted to call my family more, so I set a weekly alarm.
Manifestation
Reminding is what I believe is the magic of manifestation. When you sit down and make explicit exactly what you want, you are focusing your attention towards that outcome. Not only are you visualizing it, you are expending energy and time to put your desires into words, and then you remind yourself of it everyday. I’m not actually sure if many people read their manifestations everyday, but I highly recommend it!
Conclusion
Setting up reminders in your life for the habits you want to develop is probably the most effective trick that is also easy to do. Reminders are the initial stages of systems that help you automate your desired behaviors.
What do you want to be reminded of?
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