Success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile goal
– Earl Nightingale
Realizing our goals is one of the most important aspects of our human existence.
What would life look like, if you were just sitting around doing nothing for your entire life?
Your life would be boring. You will just wander around without any purpose.
An Aimless and Boring life is definitely not on anyone’s mind.
Life should be taken as adventure to realize our full potential.
Life should be lived to the fullest.
Wonderful memories should be created, which you can fondly remember in the future.
Life is about being the best you can be.
And that is why it is important to set goals for yourself and to achieve them.
Your ability to set goals for yourself and making the strategies to achieve them is one of the most fundamental skills leading to success. Earl Nightingale has very brilliantly described what success is, which is evident by the quote I used above.
You can achieve more than smart person, if you have precise written goals and that smart person doesn’t.
One of the surest way of predicting the future is to create it.
Your goals will decide how your life will change. Your goals will ensure that the change is in the direction you want. Having a concise vision of your goals puts you in the driver’s seat of your life and you know where you are going. This perhaps one of the most important reasons why people with goals succeed in making the most of their lives.
Goals will allow you to have a vision for yourself. Those visions will make you more alert of the opportunities around which can help you in achieving those goals.
Once you have a clear vision for yourself and know what goals you want to achieve, then you need to work towards them.
I have learned a five-step framework that I believe is easy to follow that can be used to react towards our goals. Here are those five steps:
The Five Steps to React towards your Goals
1. Define your Goals
How badly you want to achieve your goals will more than anything else determine, whether you will achieve them or not. This is why you need to know what you exactly want in life.
Brainstorm your goals and list them down according to their priority in your life. Your goals can be related to your:
- Health and Fitness
- Holistic Life
- Career, Financial and Professional Life
- Family and Personal Life
One powerful yet highly simple way of discovering your goals in life and what you want in life is to project yourself into the future at least 3 to 5 years and just imagine that you are living the life that you’ve always wanted to.
The main question you should ask yourself is – Where do I want to end up in life?
When you do this, you will see how your life would look like in each of the areas of your interest. You will see your lifestyle, you will see your future self and your future home.
Once you have decided on your goals, your first step is to define them. Your goals should be specific and measurable. You should set a time frame for each one of your goals. Time is a scarce resource, so you don’t have all the time in the universe to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the important things.
Set a criteria for achieving your goals so you can measure your progress.
To avoid procrastination have a deadline that is realistic and also challenging. Having a deadline sort of motivates us to take actions that are important in accomplishing our goals. Once you have set the deadline, stick to it and if for some reason you are unable to accomplish your goal by the deadline then set another deadline until you achieve your goal.
Another effective way of increasing your chances of achieving your ambitions is to write them down. This will serve as a reminder. In this way also it becomes easier to become goal driven.
Let’s move on to the second step.
2. Make a Plan
Prepare a plan with all the strategies you need to take to achieve your goals. All the tasks that you need to perform in order to achieve your goals should be included in this plan. By planning, you end you knowing the road you have to tread. You know how much energy and time you will spending on a particular goal.
I like to think of planning as Fast Forward Thinking. You think about all the best strategies which you should use and how to use them. Coming up with the best strategies will help you to achieve your goals efficiently. You can research about what strategies you need to use by surfing the internet, reading books, or asking some knowledgeable person. For example, if your goal is to get fit, then you research about the best strategies for getting fit on the internet or go through medical websites. You can research about the types of excises you need to perform, the diet you need to take and how much time you need to spend on the exercises you need to do in order to get fit.
You can use the concept of visualization to determine which steps you need to take to achieve your goals. Also, identify the obstacles, the resources you will need and the people whose assistance you will require in realizing your goals.
If you like, you can document everything down from your goals right down to the strategies leading to their achievement. You can make an action plan or detailed schedule. This will act as your blueprint and will guide you from time to time.
3. Take Action
After making plans towards your goals, you need to work on that plan. Get ready for some actual work.
Unless you do the work, your goals won’t materialize. Discipline, commitment and dedication are key aspects of working towards your ambitions. Do all those tasks that you listed on your action plan or your schedule.
I would recommend getting slightly obsessed about your goals. If you look at those extraordinary achievers, that’s what they did. They thought about their ambitions more often, they trained towards them. They researched about brilliant strategies for getting the work done in an effective manner. When you follow such a regime, you will see that your path towards your goals becomes even more clearer.
At this stage, it is really important to learn how to deal with your fears and habits. How you deal with them, will probably determine your own efficiency. When I was in university, like some people, I was afraid of approaching my course coordinators for specific queries. They often have their office doors closed and before knocking on the door a feeling of backing away would rise within me. At that point, I would forcibly remind myself that I have to talk to my course coordinator and get my issue sorted. So I would just brush aside that fear and awkwardness and knock on their door. And you what, once you just get the courage, everything really falls in place and things work out.
Another powerful strategy is to do something every single day towards your goal. Whether your goal is small or big you will surely achieve them by following this strategy. As you go along the way, you will develop good habits that will build your stamina.
And remember always be alert and on the lookout for better ways to achieve your goals.
4. Never Give Up
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
-Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison made 1000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the lightbulb. However, he did not consider himself to have failed 1000 times, instead he had said that the lightbulb was an invention with 1000 steps.
What a wonderful way to treat failure. Isn’t it.
Persistence is what will give you moving forward in your quest.
We all have tasted what failure is. It is something that we all encounter all the time when trying to achieve our goals. I am not gonna lie to you, but everybody hates failure. It makes us feel like a loser. But what you need to know is that failure can used as stepping stone towards your goals.
Failure teaches us what we are doing wrong and shows us how we can do it better.
While taking action towards your goals, you must take the decision of never giving up. You won’t regret your decision, but you will thank yourself in the future. Failure is learning how to succeed in real-time. Always keep that in mind.
Persistence is what separates extraordinary achievers from ordinary achievers. Your success is determined by your ability to persist in midst of adversity. It’s not that accomplished people do not have problems, it’s just that they know how to deal with their problems.
5. Be Motivated
The more you act, visualize and think about your goals the deeper you will dive into your subconscious mind and the greater your motivation to achieve your goals will be. The greater your motivation the quicker you will achieve your goals.
These words must be kept in mind, for here lies the secret to success. Motivation plays a pivotal role in helping you to react towards your goals. If you don’t feel motivated to achieve your goals, you will not work towards them.
Your motivation will come from realizing how important it is to accomplish that goal.
You can also use the art of visualization.
Visualize in your mind that you are about to achieve your ambition and your goal. Make the mental picture of you achieving your goals so real that it motivates you when the situation gets difficult.
Surround yourself with optimistic people who will give positive vibes. Staying with people who are positive, will also raise your state of being to those positive vibrations. These positive vibrations will give you the energy you need to move forward in journey to success.
I find that beginning my day with a positive though to be also helpful. It reminds me to always do my best. There are lot of motivational quotes out there. You can write down the ones you like on a piece of paper and keep it at your desk or workspace. This way you can see and read them often to get motivated every day.
What you need to remember:
Success is what you want your life to be.
If you love your life, then you need to something worthwhile with it.
You create your dream life and achieve success by being serious about your goals
OR
You can just waste time and do nothing about what you are passionate about.
The choice is yours.
Choose Wisely.