Setting goals is pretty easy. It’s actually achieving your goals that is the hard part. Every year, millions of Americans set New Year’s resolutions to earn more money, lose weight, get organized, reduce debt or quit smoking, yet most people have abandoned their goals by the end of January. Some of the reasons people give include not being 100 percent committed to doing it, poor planning, lack of self confidence that you can actually do it, and lack of support.
So what do you need to actually achieve your goals?
- 100 percent commitment to do whatever it takes.
- Baby steps – Large goals can be daunting. You need to break down your goals into smaller activities that you can work toward each day rather than trying to do everything all in one day.
- Set aside time – It’s better to set aside 10-15 minutes each day to take one tiny step, than to try to cram everything into a full day’s work. You might have heard of the butterfly effect concept, which refers to the idea that a minor change in what you do can cause a large change in outcome. Small tasks and changes add up, and the cumulative effect is a more successful business.
When you set goals, you must take 100 percent responsibility for achieving those goals. You are the president of your company – the buck stops with you. It’s up to you to manage yourself and your negative emotions that hold you back like fear, envy, worry over not being good enough, anger, self-pity, overwhelm. It’s up to you to stop justifying why you couldn’t do something. To stop making excuses why a task didn’t get done. And to stop blaming others when things don’t go quite as planned.
Setting goals means taking responsibility for making progress toward your goals and eventually achieving them, not sitting around hoping something will happen to you to make the process easier. Success is a mindset. Successful people don’t say “I can’t do that.” They say “how can I do this?”
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