Personal Goals Achievement

You have a dream. Maybe you want to climb Mt Everest, move to another country to earn money for your future, start your own business or even go back into the working world after spending a few years taking care of the kids.

Why aren’t you doing it? What’s holding you back?

Listen, a dream is a vision in our mind. Creative dreaming without action is a far-fetched realization to goal attainment.

Typical examples are the great wonders of the world, those landmarks that typify or define the greatness of nations. Landmarks like the Statue of Liberty of the United States of America, the Big Ben of England, the Taj Mahal of India, the Great Wall of China, and numerous more. Imagine if these great ideas, these dreams were not acted upon, will we ever have them to be enjoyed by people from every nation on earth? What kind of achievement will each nation have if great thinkers just sit on their ideas and never acted on it. Absolutely nothing. We would probably be facing each other blankly wondering why and what went wrong?

Probably you’d say: “Oh? well? we still have the natural wonders like Niagara Falls, Mt. Fuji, beautiful coral reefs everywhere on earth.”. Yes? but these are God’s creations. God did not create man in His own image if He thinks we won’t be using our creativity and put it into action. He might as well take it away from us. He expects us to act on it.

So what’s keeping us from acting on our ideas? We can name a few. Fear of failure is our biggest deterrent. Fear of being ridiculed, fear of sinking further to a depressed state than we presently are, fear of totally losing all we’ve got if we don’t succeed, fear of taking risks.

We all have to take risk at one time or another. Risk may come to us in a variety of reasons, big or small. There are risks we can do without, but there are risks that leave us no option but to take and act on it.

As you can see, risks come in many forms. For comparison purposes, let us consider two: risk similar to winning or losing when we gamble and risk in pursuit of a goal.

The risk involved in gambling is for non-thinkers. This is tantamount to luck risk, not good judgment risk. Risk of this kind has no room in goal realization. It is like ignoring safety on the road, just for kicks, come what may, short-lived, to satisfy a craving.

However, risk in pursuit of a goal has a definite lasting purpose, a purpose that will bring untold benefits once you achieve your goals. It is a risk worth taking for thinkers, not for happy-go-lucky non-thinkers. Risk in pursuit of a goal will bring stability and security in life, ultimately leading to happiness.

Whenever fear grips us, think positively. Look at it this way. Will we ever get anywhere if we don’t take the risk to act on our dreams? Will we be satisfied with our inaction, five, ten, or twenty years from now?

If you notice, there is one common denominator that is holding us back from acting on our dreams, that thing called fear. Fear is the biggest stumbling block to acting on a creative dream that it practically holds everything still. So it is imperative that we eliminate fear in our feelings to clear the way to our goal.

To overcome this fear, we have to face fear on the face, eye to eye, mano y mano. Let us take a typical example, say you have a fear of speaking in public. I guess a majority of us do. Worst scenario that could happen is you will get tongue-tied and spoil your entire speech in spite of having committed the entire speech into memory. You become the laughing stock of the audience. Don’t let it prevent you from speaking in public the next time around because if you do, fear has won over you and you will be cowering in this kind of fear for the rest of your life. To win over fear, draw lessons from your failure and capitalize on it the next time around. Don’t stop till you have successfully made a good speech. Once you do, you have actually turned the table around. This time, it is fear that fears you.

Another example with a somewhat different twist, say you are a lifeguard and you failed to save a drowning person who apparently should have been saved. Now this is a big failure because a life was at stake here. In spite of this, don’t give up being a lifeguard just because of one mistake. Think about the other lives you have saved before and will be saving if you continue to do so. Say you were able to save a person in an otherwise hopeless situation, doesn’t this offset or overcome the previous failure that happened?

The idea here is to give your best. Once you give your best, it just doesn’t get any better because it is already the best.

When you act on your dreams, think of your actions in a positive way. What you think is what will happen. What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve. Believe that the likely outcome of a thing that we do depends mostly on how we set our mind on it. Our actions originate from our thoughts and the ultimate result is dictated by our mind as well. If we think it will fail, it will. If we think it will succeed, it will. Mental thinking or attitude is the master of the actions we undertake.

Where your mental attitude is directed for a longer period of time, the more difficult it is to change to the opposite direction. If your mind is set on negative thoughts, the more difficult it will be to change to positive thoughts if you do not act on it immediately. However, if your mind is already set on positive thoughts for a long time, it will remain firm on this attitude as time goes by.

Defeat is imminent if your thoughts are in this direction. You may say: “I told you so” that an action has failed because you think it will, just to satisfy yourself when in fact, you are just looking for an excuse or easy way out. The end result is still a failure and what does that make you, a failure. You are just fooling yourself.

On the other hand, success is imminent when your thoughts say it will. Even if it fails the first time, you will learn from your failure and when you try again, you will ultimately succeed as you gain more experience. Keep on trying and persevering. There should be no let up and when success is at hand, you would have defeated defeat.

Here’s another nugget of thought. If you go all out and risk everything, there is nothing left to risk. When that happens, the only possible outcome is success. Don’t give up your dreams without even fighting for them just because the risks are too great.

The greater the risk, the bigger the reward and success is sweeter. Either way, whether you achieve your dream or not, you will come out of it a better person.

There is no better time to focus our attention to goal realization than now.
Frankly speaking, yesterday was a better time. The day before yesterday was even better than yesterday. But the past is done. There’s no point in groping over time spent. But to delay further would be a sin to oneself.

There was a Plant Manager who will jokingly write ‘yesterday’ on the ‘due date’ column of the ‘Job Order’ forms he issues out for jobs that are urgent. His men will then work round the clock if the situation warrants to complete the job. Each hour that passes by would mean losses for the company, not to mention the commitment to its client. They even have clients that penalize delays in their production delivery and it reflects a bad image of their company.

From the above example, we see that we can’t overemphasize the importance of time when it comes to goal attainment. Each day, week, or month’s delay may mean lost opportunities and this might derail the timeframe you set to attain your goal.

Though there is no specific or particular “due date” for goal attainment, we must not treat goal attainment half-heartedly. Give it full-time attention, effort, and energy and the rewards will come to you more than you expect. There may be instances wherein delays are unavoidable. Be sure to give it a think over and exhaust all possibilities to minimize each delay. If still, delays are unavoidable, then we must patiently give way to it but under no circumstances must procrastination take its place in your pursuit.

Like any other endeavor, it is human nature that delays do happen. Nobody’s perfect. Every time it does, we must pick up a lesson or two from each experience. As the saying goes: charge it to experience.

There is an adage: “Learn from the mistakes of others; you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself”. This is one of the reasons why we have history subjects in school.

You may wonder how history is related to goal realization. What good it will do to the present and future generations? We can’t turn back the hands of time to correct mistakes and studying history is a waste of time and energy, isn’t it?

We have to realize that through history, we can learn from the achievements and failures of other people. We can imitate and analyze the traits and characters of great achievers and at the same time avoid the pitfalls of failures done in olden times. History will give us an insight where we can draw countless lessons that will greatly help us to make better decisions on certain aspects of life particularly those related to goal realization.

We all know that time is gold. Spending time to pursue our goal is time well invested. Even if after spending most of the time to goal attainment and we haven’t cultivated it, we can become history ourselves. We can pass on to our next generation our experiences (be they good or not so good) that will serve as lessons for them. In effect, this will save time for our successors to continue our pursuit.

One way or the other, we can say to ourselves that we have contributed or done our part, no matter how menial it is, as long as it is intended wholeheartedly to goal realization.

We all have our financial goals, like we want to be able to own our own house 5 years down the road. However, how do we get started? What’s the best place.

Well, here are some simple tips to kick start your financial goal. You may already know them, just never really practiced them because they eat into your lifestyle.

After looking at these tips, it is best for you to go out and do some research to find the method(s) that suit you best.

? Begin by taking 5%-10% out of each pay check and put it in a savings account

? Look into different investment strategies such as IRA’s, stocks, RRSP’s, mutual Funds, personal investments etc. There are many more and all can assist you in short and long term goals.

? Start making a budget for yourself that leaves you with some extra money and follow it

? Use your coupons. That is why they are there. It seems like small savings, but added together you could save 20-30 dollars at each trip to the market

? Shop around for bargains

? Do not live outside of your means

? Work with a credit counselor to get help in lowering your monthly expenses and get rid of your debt

These are just some of the things that you can do when beginning to realize your financial goals. Of course, you also have to follow a plan. You won’t be able to realize your goal, financial or otherwise, successfully without a solid plan that you follow diligently.

The only variable here are the methods that you use to go about it. When it is career, work to get noticed; for relationships, work on maintaining your intimacy or getting it back; in financial matters, work to save and invest money etc. It really is that easy.

What are your goals? To find out, you need to make up a list, decide which timeline your goal fits into, detail the steps necessary to achieve your goals, then take action toward reaching those goals. It’s that simple.

You might be wondering where to start when deciding how to go about to start your financial goals. These are 4 steps to help you in making the best choices for you.

Step 1: Identify and write down your financial goals, whether they are saving to send your kids to college or University, buying a new car, saving for a down payment on a house, going on vacation, paying off credit card debt, or planning for you and your spouse’s retirement.

Step 2: Break each financial goal down into several short-term (less than 1 year), medium-term (1 to 3 years) and long-term (5 years or more) goals; which will make this process easier.

Long-term goals (over 5 years) are those things that won’t happen overnight, no matter how hard you work to achieve them. They may take a long time to accomplish (hence the reason they are called long term goals), so give yourself a reasonable amount of time, that is based on your best estimates of what it will take to achieve them.

Intermediate-term goals (1-5 years) are the type of goals that can’t be executed overnight but might not take many years to accomplish.

Short-term goals (within one year) generally take one year or less to achieve, based on the date the task is needed, the total estimated cost, and the required savings.

Step 3: Educate yourself and do your research. Read Money magazine or a book about investing, or surf the Internet’s investment web sites. Do not be afraid of the stock market.

Yes, there is a potential for loss, but if you do your research and get a trustworthy broker, you can ensure your financial future. Just remember not to put all of your eggs in one basket.

Diversify your portfolio. With a little effort you can learn enough to make educated decisions that will increase your net worth many times over. Then identify small, measurable steps you can take to achieve these goals, and put this action plan to work.
Step 4: Evaluate your progress as often as needed. Review your progress monthly, quarterly, or at any other interval you feel comfortable with, but at least semi-annually, to determine if your program is working.

If you’re not making a satisfactory amount of progress on a particular goal, re-evaluate your approach and make changes as necessary.

There are no hard and fast rules for implementing a financial plan. The important thing is to at least do something as opposed to nothing, and to start NOW.

Sometimes when people write down their goals, they discover that some of the goals are too broad in meaning and nearly impossible to reach, while others may seem smaller in scope and easier to achieve.

It is okay to dare to dream about riches, but be realistic about what you can actually do. A good idea is to break your goals down into three separate categories of time.

One more thing to remember: by placing a time frame on your goals you are motivating yourself to get started and helping to allow you the chance to succeed. Just remember that you can adjust the time frame whenever you want to.

Goal setting is a very important factor that determines your path to success. Success is determined and measured by the goals you have accomplished. Here are some tips on how you can set and achieve your goals:

1.Put your goals into writing. Make a list of your goals. Studies have shown that goals are more motivating when you put them into writing rather than just enumerating them in your mind. When writing your goals, be sure to include your plan of actions and a timeframe.

2.Make a daily check of your goals. Assess yourself if you were able to accomplish your action plans within the timeframe you have set.

3.Take action. Based on your assessment, you can either continue or change your present action plans. If one was not effective, then do find other ways on how you can achieve your goals.

4.Be motivated. You may want to share your goals with your family or close friends. They can motivate and support you in achieving your goals.

5.Be determined. Always be confident that you can achieve the goals that you have set.

It is important that you set goals that are realistic and can be achieved on a specific timeframe. If you set unachievable goals, they may only cause you frustrations.

Remember, success doesn’t happen to the uninvolved. Success happens to those who are not only persistent in reaching their goals, but to those who make a decision to reach their goals, get clear on what they want, and already feel themselves victorious in the so called goal setting battle.

Suri

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