4 Characteristics of Goal Achievers

I’ve coached hundreds of small business owners, all unique. And yet, I’ve noticed four characteristics that show up regularly in those that achieve their goals.

So, I’m going to share with you the four characteristics, or 4 C’s, of goal achievers – clarity, confidence, courage and consistency.

Clarity

I define clarity in the goal achievement journey as knowing what you want and why you want it. Clarity helps us understand why we are doing all of the hard work to achieve a goal. Without clarity, we can lose our motivation, forget why we are pursuing a goal or work without intentionality.?

Visioning, understanding and remembering your why and getting specific with your goals are all great ways to gain more clarity.

A vision serves as the foundation for setting meaningful goals. Once you know where you want to go in the future, you start to see how the goals you set today connect you to that bigger picture. I know writing a vision isn’t as easy as it sounds, so I put together my favorite prompts to help you start drafting yours — click here or the link below to download these vision prompts!

Understanding your why is significant in the goal achievement process because it will motivate you when times are tough – you'll be propelled to power through if you can center back to an incredibly moving why.

And finally, I can’t move on from clarity without discussing the importance of getting specific with your goals. If your goal is to “grow your business,” – you need to get more specific. What does grow your business mean? Do you want to grow your business by bringing on more clients? Increasing revenue? Having more sales? Hiring more team members? There are many ways to grow your business, so you need clarity about what that actually means to you. The clearer you are about your goals, the more likely you are to achieve them.

Confidence

I define confidence in the goal achievement journey as when who you think you are aligns with action to achieve your goals.?

Taking action builds confidence and the best way to do this is through overcoming past and future thinking.

Action is so important as it relates to confidence. Don’t falsely believe that you need to wait to take action until you are confident because the opposite is actually true – action leads to confidence. Start taking small steps toward your goals, and you’ll be surprised at how your confidence grows along the way. Past and future thinking can also destroy our confidence – whether it’s ruminating, replaying situations over and over again or letting the “what if” scenarios take over. Both of these thinking patterns lead to overthinking and overemphasizing the negative. Recognizing and stopping these negative mental narratives will allow you to learn from a certain situation and focus on moving forward or staying in the present to build your confidence.?

When we’re not confident, we tend to show up as someone other than ourselves. We watch others achieve success and grow their businesses while we feel more like a victim than a victor. Ultimately, if we’re not confident, we are limiting our potential!

Courage

I define courage in the goal achievement journey as embracing discomfort to grow in the direction of your goals. I think it’s essential to understand that we’re all going to feel different levels of fear as we push through mindset and other growth barriers on our goal achievement journeys.

One of my favorite acronyms to describe fear is:?

False?

Expectations?

Appearing?

Real

Taking action despite fear and identifying what you are afraid of, will help you overcome these false expectations appearing real and embrace courage.?

Fear will exist, so I encourage you to learn how to take action anyways. If you are stuck due to fear, it’s important to identify what you are afraid of. Play with the fear and ask yourself what’s the worst that can happen, and what’s so bad about that, and then flip the script and ask yourself what's the best that can happen? Breaking your goals down into steps and focusing on one step at a time can also make fear feel easier to embrace.

We often create stories in our minds about all the terrible things that could happen if we act courageously in the direction of our goals. In my experience, the horrible things I think will happen never do, and if they do, they are never as intense as I thought they would be.?

If you continue to buy into negative stories, you probably won’t take the action needed to achieve your goals.?

Consistency

And finally, I define consistency in the goal achievement journey as creating momentum by repeating the actions, habits and beliefs that lead to goal achievement.?

Inconsistency leads to a lot of struggle and defeat, resulting in a desire to give up.?It’s when we move away from all of the starts and stops in the direction of our goals that we make a ton of progress!?

To build and inspire consistency – move away from the all-or-nothing mentality and ditch the instant gratification lie.

An all-or-nothing mentality inspires inconsistency. If you miss a day or get off track – guess what? That’s called being human. We are all imperfect. If you tend to give up because you got a little behind or missed a day, remember, you’ve got tomorrow and can get back on track. Even if you don’t execute seven days a week, which was your intention, five days is still better than no days.

Another thing that impacts consistency is what I call the instant gratification lie. Success is rarely instant. If you are working on implementing a new strategy in your business or ramping up your activity, keep progressing. Give yourself enough data, repetitions and time for this process to work itself out – I recommend at least 30 days. If we don’t see instant results, we tend to give up when in reality we might need to allow ourselves a few more attempts before determining if it does or doesn’t work.

As you consider your goals this year, I encourage you to ask yourself these four questions:?

1. Why do I want to achieve this goal??
2. On a scale of 1-10, how confident am I that I can achieve this goal??
3. What courageous action do I need to take to achieve this goal, and am I willing to take it??
4. What do I need to do and track on a consistent basis to achieve this goal??

Growing your clarity, confidence, courage and consistency will take intentional effort but it will be worth it when you can celebrate achieving your goals in 2023. If you’re looking to take the first step towards building these 4 C’s, click the link below to listen to my podcast episode on the topic.