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How to Achieve Long-Term Goals
Check out this cool app and learn guitar – howc.st Achieving a long-term goal is much easier if you don’t lose track of your target along the way. Here are some tips to keep in mind.
Recently, I spoke with a client who wanted me to do a workshop at an upcoming conference. I offer a number of different talks, so I asked her what the focus of the meeting was in order to be able to suggest a relevant topic. She said that although the committee members had already picked several programs, they had not yet identified a focus for the conference. My first thought in response to this was, If you don’t know what you want, then how are you going to get it? However, I am savvy enough not to insult people, so we spoke a little longer and we came up with a program that she wanted me to present.
It never ceases to amaze me that people do not identify outcomes they wish to achieve. While the above example is related to a conference, it is by no means limited to that area. Many people engage in activities in their careers and businesses, but they haven’t defined what they want to attain. They are completing tasks, but they aren’t focused on accomplishing clear-cut results.
When I was a human resources executive, I often worked with people to determine the appropriate jobs that were needed in their groups. Many department heads would complete job descriptions for key jobs, which described all of the tasks that the employees would be required to do. It took a great deal of effort for me to get these individuals to realize that employees in key positions are not paid to perform tasks, they are paid to produce results. Through much coaching on my part, we were able to identify the outcomes that the individuals were expected to achieve in the various positions.
Why is it so critical to determine outcomes for a job, a meeting, a department, or any other situation? Because if you don’t know what your outcome is, the odds are that you will spend a lot of unnecessary time and money trying to reach a fuzzy target. And there is a very strong chance that the target will not even be reached. Outcomes let you know where you are going. They give you important information about how to use your resources, time, money, and employees. When you know your outcome, you can continually make important decisions is this going to help me reach my goal or will this take me further away from my objective?
Clearly defined outcomes can also be very motivating. I worked with a coaching client who had an idea about a new business that she wanted to start. When she first got the idea, she was very excited about it, however, she never took action to get the business moving. She continually came up with excuses about why she wasn’t doing anything to make the business a reality. I finally got her to sit down and write a detailed description of what the outcome was that she wanted to achieve with the business. That was the missing key. As soon as she wrote down the detailed outcome, she began to do the things that were necessary to get the business started. For her, defining the outcome spurred the action that is required in any business. Five years later, she has a very successful business that she absolutely loves.
Some people have a great deal of difficulty in trying to determine outcomes. It is because they are looking into a future that isn’t certain and they can’t identify what it is they want. An easy way to get around this is to imagine that the outcome has already been achieved and then to describe what it looks like. Going back to the situation with the meeting planner, the question that I asked her was, Let’s assume it is six months after the conference and you know that it was a huge success. What would have happened to let you know that it was successful? People are much more able to describe the past then they are to identify an unknown future. By asking the question this way, I was able to find out that according to the planner, the criterion for a successful meeting was that the attendees would have the tools they needed to be able to more easily and effectively handle the many changes that were going on in their industry. When I discovered this outcome, I was able to suggest a program that would help the organization achieve this desired result.
Before you take action (small or large), you need to identify what your outcome is what do you want to achieve? When you do that, you will cut down your time, streamline your efforts, accelerate your progress, and reach your desired goal. When you know where you are going, there is a good chance that you will end up getting there.
Everyone has goals in life; whether it ranges from owning a bigger television set to becoming a president of an important everyday multi-million dollars business, these goals need to thoroughly thought, defined and written down. Thinking about them is just not enough, they need to be put in motion; everyday, you need to set your steps down so that you walk closer and closer to your final goal. The path of achievement may only be part of the battle, but you will soon discover that you do not need to be a genius to be efficiently planning your goals.
Self-Esteem
It may sound like a corny and simple way to start the article, but this does not make the lesson of Self-Esteem less valuable. If you do not believe that you can achieve extremely impressive goals, then the chances are that you will indeed fail, since you didn’t even believe in yourself. A good portion of the fight to the top requires you to actually rage war on the mental side of your very own brain; you do need to believe that you can achieve your goal. If you want to have a fighting chance, you do have to start believing that you are wise enough and well prepared, if you do not believe that you can do it, then you will never be able to have the drive nor the strength to carry yourself until the end of your journey. Furthermore, if you are not even interested in your own projects and that your goals require you to impress or recruit other people then how are they supposed to be interested in them?
Becoming your own Master
This title does not imply quitting your job and becoming self-employed. Unless your goal does target becoming self-employed, this article is in no way telling you to quit it. What the title “Becoming your own Master” means, is simply another extension to the previous paragraph. If you have the self esteem required to continue on, you still need to get a grip on your life. If your goal is quite big, then you should be aware that your everyday routine is not-good; you need to become the master of your life and routine and not have the routine be the master of you. You need to take the initiative, and start walking toward your goal instead of thinking that your goal will magically come closer to you, if you stay there doing nothing.
Your Brain Will Not Hold Everything
Even if you are the world’s most intelligent man, you cannot assume and believe that your entire plan will be perfect if it stays within your own brain. You should be writing down as much as you can; whether material came from some random brainstorming sessions or generic everyday talk with your coworkers, chances are that it is too much to remember, and you should definitely write it down. This is where a compute comes extremely handy. If you look at the right place and buy the right pieces of software, you can have a mighty arsenal at your disposal. If you are not very inclined technologically, you should know that the marvels of computers have gone further than simple word processors. Do look on the internet, search engines or other known sources, for templates and business-oriented software. Some software will allow you to design business plan as well as give you hint, tips, and general rules on how to create and manage them. You will soon realize that your productivity will have exponentially increased if you use software that was built for the sole purpose of helping those with big goals.
How many times have you heard that being successful is all down to setting goals? It may come as no surprise to you to learn there is a lot more to success than just setting your goals.
Most of us, at some time, have been told that an essential part, if not the major part, of being successful is setting goals. If that were true many more of us would be successful millionaires, actors, parents…etc. In this article I show you why many people fail to achieve their goals and how to be successful whatever you want or need.
1) What is a goal?
A goal is a target achievable in measurable attainable steps. It is more than just a desire or a need and has an existence of its own. A desire or a wish is less tangible and often just fleeting. Who doesn’t desire or wish to win the lottery with all its millions in prize money. Very few would not but, despite the widespread desire, it is not a goal. A goal is a desire, wish or need achievable by actions you can take. It is more than a mere wish or desire.
2) How to set a goal?
Setting a goal is a process which starts with an achievable wish, need or desire. First you must decide on the following
What do you want?
Where do you want to be?
Your status, career or qualifications?
A goal can relate to any desire, wish or need achievable by actions you can take.
You then break down the goal into small individual steps or actions. Achievable goals are goals where you can influence their realization and measure your progress towards them. Achieving long term life changing goals is a process of achieving, step by step, short and medium term actions.
3) What actions are required?
Goals require action on your part. You first need to decide what action is required to achieve the goal. Your first action is always to always write your goals down. Putting pen to paper, and this is one time when a real pen and paper are required, gives your goals an existence of their own.
Writing a plan is an essential step in achieving your goals – without it you will, over time, amend the long term goal to fit your reality. You will eventually reduce the goal to a wish, and wishes only come true by chance.
4) Analyse the results
You then need to analyse, and work out in detail, how you are going to accomplish each individual goal. This means writing a detailed plan of what tangible actions are required to achieve each individual goal.
These actions then become smaller shorter term goals leading to major longer term goals.
5) What steps do I need to take today?
Every day ask yourself “What steps do I need to take today?”. By now it should be all planned in advance so check your plan and make sure you take each step every day. If you discover additional steps are needed add them to the plan.
6) Review your achievements every week and month
Every week review your progress for the week. Check what you’ve done and what you may have missed. Adjust your plan for the next week or month.
Your plan should always take into account what you will do today, tomorrow, this week, next week before the end of the month, in the next 3 months, 6 months…? Always write down your results.
7) What if things go wrong?
If goals were easy to achieve everyone would be successful millionaires. Goals are difficult because they move you outside your comfort zone to do things differently. To be successful you have to face your own fear of failure and take risks. There will be setbacks, expect them, they are part of the process.
If you are not prepared to take action towards your goals then you are wasting your time. True success comes from the daily actions we all take. Using goals ensures that all the actions you take are moving you in the direction you wish to go. Daily or weekly reviews keep you on track and applying these simple tips will ensure you achieve your goals
Ever wondered how some people have everything that the dream of and for many it just remains a dream? Here are some tips on how to help turn your dreams into reality. Fortunately, it’s not a question of genetics or luck; it’s down to the thinking strategies that we use.
Understanding what is important to us. Craft goals in line with our values.
If a goal is in line with our values we get energy and motivation that lead us toward the goal. Most of us have experienced this type of energy and motivation at some time in our lives; maybe Birthdays and Christmas as Children and as Adults buying a house, getting married or looking forward to a holiday in the sun.
The curious thing is how little we target the use of this behaviour towards things that we want in life. It’s because we spend little time working on making our goals fit that we have such a high failure rate at achieving them.
I’m sure you’ve set New Years resolutions. How many of those did you achieve? What was different, I wonder, between those that you did achieve and those that you didn’t? I suspect that for those that you did not achieve, beneath the reason for not doing so, the cost in terms of time, money or loss of something else was too high.
If we have a greater understanding of our values, craft our goals in line with them, and address some the other key areas listed here, we are rewarded with the energy and motivation to make them happen ? with ease.
Optimise the use of our time.
To optimise our time on and towards what we want we must first gain a greater insight into what is important to us, and having done so we must then distinguish between the activities that we do that are important and urgent.
In my experience this is not a regularly practiced technique; too many people are reacting, reacting to activities that are asked of them or are left to the point of being urgent. Examples of this are leaving the utilities bills to the last minute or working under a demanding boss or chaotic organisation.
Once understood this essential time management technique is easy to master and is commonly taught in time management programmes. Understanding it within a great context of achievement makes it that much more relevant to learning and putting into practice.
Start with what you have now, with the end in mind
Having both established goals that are in line with your and optimised your time, you need to make a start. It’s important that the start is made with the goal in mind and with a degree of realism on the resources that are available now. Delusion is the result of setting off without a realistic view of what the present situation is. And Delusion soon turns to disappointment which in turn turns to frustration and ultimately little or no significant progress.
At the end of the day we only have 3 resources: Physical and mental energy, time and money. It’s key that we learn how to make optimal use of these resources.
Meeting challenges
No amount of planning is going to cater for every eventuality. Many people consider these unplanned events to be problems that prevent progress and give up at that point. People that achieve are not put off by these events and are more energised by the richness of the opportunities that are enveloped in these events.
With the right mindset the journey to achievement can be viewed as one opportunity after another to reinforce the ability to succeed.
How we use our imaginations
All human beings are blessed with incredibly powerful imaginations. However many imagine outcomes of the future that are not going to be to their advantage. Imagining negative outcomes leads to worry, stress and fear and drains our energy and motivation.
Imagining a positive outcome of the future releases more of the energy and motivation that we need to succeed at our goals.
Fortunately the structure that we use in our minds is the same for both negative and positive imaginations. And with the right know how one can use the skill that generates fear into one that generates excitement and anticipation.
Forming our goals well
When forming our goals it is essential that we consider a number of factors; a compelling view of how things will be when we have the goal is as important as a clear understanding of what we will lose when we have it. Many times the likely loss prevents us from achieving what we want because we have not adapted our thinking around the loss.
A prime example of this is giving us smoking ? many people fail to give up because having a cigarette provides them with a valuable 5 minute break. When the break is factored into the future along with the goal the chances of success are considerably increased.
Believing that it is possible that that it is for us
It is important that we hold certain helpful beliefs about the goal. Many people hold negative beliefs about whether the goal is achievable, whether they will ever achieve it and even whether it is really for them.
It is important to overcome these beliefs or sabotage will result.
Fortunately we are not born with our beliefs and the ones that we develop through childhood and in to the present moment can be changed.
