“There is no royal road to anything, one thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures.”
WHY SET GOALS?
I have many employees and a common mistake I see is a lack focus and direction in their life. Setting a goal is an excellent way to start thinking about the unlimited possibilities in life and empower you to move in a desired direction. I believe there is no better way to help guide your intentions than setting a goal. Once you are confident that your goal is something you value and will provide meaning to your life, then you need to have unwavering commitment to accomplish your dream.
What are the Challenges?
Having Patience
The lack of patience is common and a big hurdle to overcome. Expecting to accomplish your desired outcomes immediately often leads to frustration or feeling overwhelmed.
Maintaining Your Resolve
The emotional state you have throughout the day has a significant impact on your behaviors and attitude. The challenge is maintaining the resolve to stick with your goal.
Establishing an Effective Strategy
You can have great intentions, even work hard, but if you do not have a good strategy, you can still have substandard results.
Suggestions for helping you achieve your goal
Having effective strategies and maintaining your commitment and focus is the key to achieving your goal.
Start going though the list and watch your momentum and enthusiasm grow!
SET A GOAL: establish your target and write it down
Make goals clear and specific. Example: I will exercise 4 x/wk for 30 minutes every morning before work. A bad example: I want to start exercising.
EXPRESS SUBGOALS: write down measurable benchmarks
Scale down the mission. This is an excellent strategy to avoid being preoccupied on the final outcome and help you direct your focus on benchmarks. Start one step at a time and your progress will improve your enthusiasm and motivation.
Review Your Target Daily
This strategy keeps your goal in the forefront of your thoughts and helps guide your focus.
Rally the Herd
Behavior runs in groups. Create a good support system and have people around you to encourage your desired behavior and goal.
Audit Your Current Behaviors
Write down in detail your daily activities and thoughts (be honest).
-Do you have a conflict in values?
-Are your current actions aligned with your goal?
-Are your actions and focus spread out on too many things?
-Are you Focusing on the right things?
Visualizing
An easy and effective way to improve your focus and change your destiny is to visualize your desired outcomes. The purpose is to transition your desired outcomes into reality.
INTERNAL TRANSFORMATION- raise expectations and standards
Setting high standards will give you a clear picture of what you expect from yourself. Elevating your expectations often improves your attitude and leads to better planning, inspired actions, and desired outcomes. Raising your standards is an effective way to transform your mindset and improve your internal dialogue and behaviors.
Do Your Due Diligence
Do your due-diligence and find resources that will help you accomplish your goal. An effective strategy is to recruit a mentor or someone that has already achieved what you desire. This will help avoid mistakes and speed up the time it takes to achieve your desired results.
Identify Specific Rituals
Not all actions are equal. You need to identify and commit to specific actions that help you accomplish your goal.
Assign a timeline for Achieving Your Rituals
Plan your days, weeks, even months in advance so you are clear on how, when and where you will accomplish your rituals.
Celebrate Brightspots
Benefits of Benchmarks:
Monitor Progress. This is an effective way to let you know you are taking positive steps forward to accomplishing your goal.
Allow for Recognition of Bright Spots. Keep focusing on what is working and how can you do more of it.
Build Momentum. Nothing is more powerful than an inspired, motivated, and confident human. The daily achievement of rituals and benchmarks builds momentum.
Focus Your attention on Achievable Steps. This takes away from becoming frustrated or overwhelmed on the monumental task that lies ahead.
Link Positive Emotions to Your Efforts. Celebrating bright spots reinforce your change immediately and will begin to link pleasure to progress and change.
Establish Good Habits. Successfully achieving benchmarks begins to establish rituals and you will eventually not have to rely on will power
Engineer Hope. When you orchestrate early success, you are engineering hope for a better future.
Promote Self-Evaluation. The action plan might not be giving you the results you intended. An effective strategy is to assess the completion of the benchmarks and determine if you are achieving the results you desire.
Maintain a Commitment and Focus
What you focus on and commit to will drive your actions. Stay focused on making marginal and consistent progress on your goal.
Create an Environment That Makes Achieving Your Goal Easier
Create an environment that makes it easier to follow through with your action plan and the wrong behavior a little harder. Do not consistently rely on willpower. Example: If you want to eat better, you should eliminate your favorite comfort foods around your house.
Have a Strategy for Potential Obstacles
Prepare for ups and downs along your journey. It is very difficult to anticipate every obstacle and you should develop a mindset to work through challenges and setbacks. For every setback you experience, remind yourself of the benefits for working through challenges. Humans respond better when there is an understanding of why they are going through discomfort. Keep these benefits in the forefront of your thoughts and this will provide leverage to keep you moving forward.
Self Reflection
Commit to taking time to self-reflect and assess your results. Becoming a person that consistently learns from setbacks will help you maintain a growth mindset. Be willing to change strategies when needed and recognize that evaluations are where you are currently, not where you will be.
Pursue Feedback and Hold Yourself Accountable
Pursuing feedback helps you remove blind spots and provides useful suggestions to keep you moving forward.
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
Final thoughts:
With so many of us, the days go by quickly and can easily become filled with too many responsibilities. The majority of the day is a struggle to complete the “to do list” and most of them have nothing to do with accomplishing your true passion in life. Before you know it, months and years go by and accomplishing your dreams get pushed to the side. You can combat this by having a goal and a clear sense of direction. Giving your desired change the attention it deserves will help you maintain your passion. As you begin to make marginal improvements, you make can build momentum and add value to your life.
Here a several suggested readings to help you achieve your goals:
-Submit a request to receive your “Free Guide to Visualizing for Success.”
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