Achieving goals is the easy part! The difficult part of achieving goals is developing a personalized definition of success, setting success-supportive, realistic goals and developing effective, action-oriented activities and tasks that will lead you to goal achievement.
This is why many folks meekly give up defining a long-range view of their future and short-term desires and objectives. They look for shortcuts, or even if they do begin the planning process, they quit because it seems a too hard or burdensome undertaking. It could also be that they simply don’t know how to effectively set goals.
“I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else; hard work and realizing what opportunity is and what it isn’t.” -- Lucille BallIt’s been said that only about 5% of the population actually commit their goals and achievement plans to writing. There are five basic reasons:
(1) No one ever convinced them of the importance of writing them down. They’ve been told “yes” – convinced “no”.
(2) No one ever showed them how-to set effective, success-supportive goals or how to effectively plan.
(3) They are afraid they will not achieve their goals, so why set realistic goals, or plan for their achievement in the first place?
(4) They may have a poor self-image and do not believe they deserve to set and achieve positive, far-reaching goals.
(5) They spend an inordinate amount of time merely fantasizing about goal achievement until another fantasy takes the first one’s place.
Folks who put forth the effort to resolutely define their goals, first write them down. They chart the activities required for goal achievement and are thusly able to manifest greater self-expression and spontaneity than those who play it safe. Those who play it safe merely announce that they have a goal (i.e., “I’ll lose weight”, “I’ll buy a new car”, “I’ll earn $10,000 more”, etc.) only to satisfy someone else. They have done nothing to outline how they will achieve their goal. They have acquiesced to the tradition of simply having a goal and have relinquished their personal decision-making responsibility to “as fate will have it”.
The benefits of inaugurating realistic and effectual goals and then planning the action-steps to achievement are unmistakable:
Clarity – You will know exactly where you are going and how you will get there – step by step, with a clearly defined activity schedule and budget. You will be able to visualize yourself achieving your goal before you actually take the first action-step. This adds even greater significance to your personal commitment to achieve.
Faith in self – You will experience a greater sense of personal strength and confidence about yourself, your abilities and your future as you begin achieving the goals that support your long-range vision of your future.
Proficiency – You will become more creative and effective toward identifying and implementing the essential individual tasks required to achieve your goals.
Contentment - You will experience less concern and trepidation, plus you will have a greater sense of consistency and gratification.
Energy – You will encounter a greater insight toward accomplishing the tasks you’ve planned that contribute to overall goal achievement which can only generate ever increasing enthusiasm.
Your written goals and achievement plans are the evidence that you have taken your ideas out of the sphere of nebulous wishes, dreams and hopes and have translated them into specific action steps.
Action steps complete with a detailed activity schedule and a specific budget of your time, effort and expense. This tangible evidence that achievement of the goal is indeed possible begins the flow of personal motivation that carries you through your life-long ‘success-living’ program. You will be able to commit, “This goal CAN be achieved, and I WILL achieve it”.
Go earn yourself an “A” in Goal Setting ‘101’!
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Barry Rice, developer and author of the MOVING FORWARD OUT OF THE FOG Program, can guide you in Achieving, Having and Enjoying more in one year than you may have in previous five! Get your FREE copy of “The Science Of Getting Rich” when you subscribe to challenging, bi-weekly newsletter at
OutOfTheFog.com.
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Every goal you aspire to achieve can be broken down into five simple steps. There is a formula for success that works over and over and over. The bigger a goal seems, the more complicated we can make it and the more likely we are to become distracted.
