Sometimes it’s relatively easy to set goals, but the hard part is how to really achieve them. Everyone can set a few goals. It’s no big deal to set some goals, such as, to excercise more, to eat right food, to lose weight, to earn more money, to spend more time with family, to learn more etc. But how many of us can honestly say that we have accomplished all the goals we have set for ourselves? Probably only a very few.
Here are several simple tips that can help you really achieve the goals you want to accomplish.
1. Have a strong reason or purpose
Oftentimes we set goals without thinking too much about them. Are those things really what we want? From deep down, you have to ask yourself if a goal or result is really, really something that YOU want, not influenced by someone else, or society, or cultural backgrounds, etc. That is, in order to have the strong emotional support for achieving your goal, you must find a strong reason(s) to convince youself why you want to accomplish that goal, why it is important to you.
It may help by asking yourself such questions as:
“Why do I want it?”
“Why is it important to me?”
“What if I don’t achieve it, why does it matter?”
“What difference does it make if I indeed achieved it?”
By having true answers to these questions that you totally believe in, you will have a solid emotional foundation upon which to lanuch your steps toward actually achieving your goal.
2. Find a meaningful measurement for your goal
One of the common reasons we don’t get to accomplish our goal is because we sometimes get frustrated and disappointed when things don’t go the way we expected. We tend to lose heart and eventually stop trying. A simple and effective solution to this problem is to find a meaningful and realistic measurement for your goal, so that you will know that you are always making progress, no matter what actual results you get.
For example, your goal may be to start a home business to support yourself. Now one thing you can use for measuring your progress is how many tasks or things that you do that moves you forwards on your goal, regardless of whether or not the result of that task or thing turns out to be successful.
Back to the example, you may have researched 3 business ideas, made 5 phone calls to people to seek advice. Even though none of the ideas turns out to be workable, none of calls turns out to be of any help, you ARE still making progress. Because you have done 8 things (5 biz ideas and 5 calls) that moved you forward, and that’s progress, regardless of their actual results.
To accomplish anything worthwhile means experiencing many small successes and failures along the way. So long as you keep going, keep trying, keep making progress, keep working on your goal, you will eventually achieve your goal. It’s that simple.
3. Focus on spending enough time required on your goals
A common pitfall that we tend to fall into is that we don’t spend enough time required by the goal. We tend to underestimate the amount of time it takes to accomplish something we really want. Otherwise we probably wouldn’t have set the goal in the first place if we thought it’d be so hard to accomplish.
We are not quite sure how long it usually takes someone like us to accomplish something similar to what we want to achieve. Until we know, we tend to get impatient when things don’t seem to happen fast enough. We tend to lose heart when we don’t see the results sooner enough. Eventually this kind of impatient state of mind will sabotage our goal.
So if you want to accomplish something but don’t know how long it usually takes other people to do it, go and do some research, get some answers so that you will have a realistic idea. For example, if you want to make one million dollars, go ask people who have done it, how long it took them. Also remember to ask how much time they worked daily on average and the total amount of time they worked until the goal is accomplished.
4. Form a habit of reviewing your goals and plans daily
One thing that can ensure the realization of your goal is to be consistent. You must put consistent effort into doing the action steps that yield the results required by your goal. One simple way to do this, is to form a habit of reviewing your goals and plans everyday. The important thing is to make this into a habit, so that you will never have to remember, to even think about it. Therefore you will never be easily sidetracked.
It usually requires a little effort to form any habit at the first, but once the habit is formed, then you are all set. Try a 30-day habit forming plan. Each day for the next 30 days, force yourself to find time to review your goals and action steps, think about them, and reflect how you’re doing with them, and what you need to do next. Stick to this plan for 30 days, I can assure you that after 30 days, you will do this everyday without having to remind yourself.
We all want to accomplish something that’s important, that matters to ourselves. But we won’t be able to do that without a game plan. By following above mentioned steps, we will always have a plan, something to support us, something to keep us going when things get tough, and eventually we will accomplish any goals we set.
