How To Achieve Your Goals
Do you have goals? If not - you are in trouble! There is nothing worst than live meaningless life without using your potential. And goals help you to organize your life and focus on things which are important to you. In this article I want to share with you some steps which help me to grow by achieving my goals.
1. Identify the areas where you want to succeed. I would strongly recommend to start with personal development goal. In the end of the day our main desire is to be happy. And this should be our goal number one. So take responsibility for your happiness and try to come up with some self-development goal. When I was in a bad place in my life I started with building my self-esteem. My goal was to find out how to stop being dependent on externals and make myself so strong that nothing can break me or stop me from doing what I believe in. You can also have financial goals, relationship goals, contribution, career, etc. But keep in mind that your internal state will support or delay the achieving of any other goals. It is very important to understand that.
2. Have explanation for yourself why do you want to achieve the particular goal. Friedrich Nietzsche said "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how". The answer to this question will help you to find an inspiration. And the inspiration will give you emotions - the best driver for achieving your goals. Think about your beliefs system, your values and build your goals based on them. This way you will rely not just on will power, which is not always there for you, but also on love. And love never fails.
3. Think of how your goal can impact others. Most of us want to contribute, to change the world, to make someone else happy. If you see that whatever you are doing can make someone's else life easier it can be additional trigger which will help you to stay motivated. Do it not just for yourself but for your kids, your wife or husband, for your parents, for your dog or for your city or country. And remember even if your goal is related to self-development it actually has a great impact on people around you. When you are not happy with yourself and full of fears you don't have the capacity to think of others. You are living in a state of survival. And if you are satisfied with yourself, you create good energy and become more powerful. This is a state of creation when you start helping people around you!
4. Don't create too many goals. I would say 2-3 goals would be enough. I currently have just two major goals and it helps me to stay focused on them. If you have too many goals and don't have enough time to work on them you will never be able to succeed. So prioritize the things which are more important to you at this moment and which you can achieve within a year. And when you are done with them take new ones.
5. Create a list of actions you need to take, with the details on how often are you going to take these actions. Don't make it too complicated. Start with something really small. In the beginning your brain will resist to accept the changes, it's normal, this is how we have been created. Thousands of years ago when natural selection ruled the world everything new was extremely dangerous, so our brain system still keeps us away from changes. So try to make it easier for your brain, otherwise it can stop you from taking the actions. And actions are extremely important. You must do something related to your goals every day. First you need to develop the habits of working on your goals and it will take some time. Be patient. And then you can make your tasks more complicated.
6. About time-frames. I don't recommend to focus on the goal you don't have any idea when you can achieve. At the same time don't expect the result happen too fast. Choose something you can do within a year and be very specific with the timing for your list of actions that you build for achieving your goals.
7. Don't let your fears stop you. As I mentioned above, our brain is afraid of changes. And this is one of the reasons why a lot of people cannot succeed. I remember once I made an error in some analytics at work and I was very scared that I would be fired. But my manager was a very wise man. I remember him saying like it was yesterday: "Only those who don't work at all never make mistakes". When you are doing something, when you are learning, you will fail again and again. But with these failures you build the bridges to the new knowledge and new opportunities. And don't be afraid of pain which is just a signal that something needs to be changed. Listen to yourself, get these signals and use them for your development. Curiosity is the best tool to fight the fears. So be curios and think of your goal as an experiment.
8. Picture the emotions you will get when you achieve your goal. For your brain there is no difference between reality and a thought. Every time you think about something you create biochemical reaction. So it is not just imagination it is the reality: you release hormones, create proteins, turn on and off some of your genes. If you picture yourself as a person who achieved the goal you actually train your mind and body to be this person. And if you do this often enough, your brain becomes familiar with the situation and knows what needs to be done. But it should not be just brain. You must feel it, you must create the emotion, so your body will support your mind. If you don't involve the emotions and just repeat some affirmations that you cannot feel, it won't make a change. Feel it, feel it, feel it!
9. Don't look for an easy solution. In order to do something great you need to accept the fact that it will take a lot of efforts, that at some point it will be painful, that you will have to go through obstacles. If it was easy everybody would be happy and satisfied. The thing is that a lot of people don't want to work hard and prefer to spend their time on pleasures. Because of that, they cannot achieve their goals, as a result they feel bad about themselves and try to kill the pain with more pleasures. It's a vicious cycle! They spend their whole life on seeking for these pleasures somewhere outside instead of working on themselves and their internal state. If you want to succeed be ready to face difficulties.
10. Believe! Whatever you are doing - always believe in yourself. You have everything you need, the power is already there. Don't get distracted by other people's opinion, don't feel disempowered when something goes wrong. Another reason of not achieving your goals can be giving up too fast. But if you believe in yourself and your power, you will get what you want. You owe it to yourself!
Be Strong And Love Yourself!
From Dasha Besaly with Love