How to Attack Your Goals Effectively

You have big goals in your life, and you're willing to go the extra mile to achieve them. Unfortunately, you've spent your entire life going at it the wrong way! For example, if your goal is to "make money," you've probably been heading out to, well, make money. Unfortunately, this rarely works as intended.

For most of my life, like you, I only understood the direct approach. I drew straight lines and took direct aim on my goals. After years of struggling, however, I started to see that achievement came, not from meeting those goals head-on, but through indirect accomplishment. So many times, actual achievements were accidental in my life: they were achieved, not by going after things directly, but by trying to accomplish something else entirely.

How is it that your greatest achievements can be accidents?

Finally, it hit me: nature never moves in straight lines. Only basic human logic does. Human logic is able to create chaos from order, while nature creates order from chaos. It changed my perspective on everything--and it transformed my life. Instead of a stagnant, stale approach, I started to look at new ways to accomplish things--and what I discovered was astounding.

Not long ago, one of my businesses was stagnant and I was struggling to find high ticket clients. It was succeeding well enough, but it wasn't doing anything worth talking about, either. This year, one of the well respected information technology magazines featured my company in 10 best IT Finance consulting companies in the nation. New eyes, new perspective, and a polar shift from the direct to the indirect allowed me to see my business and my life in a new light.

This isn't your typical business advice--but then again, these aren't your typical business results. Three simple concepts have helped redefine the way I approach my business.

1. The Self Illusion

There's an enemy that haunts your every step when you dive into business. That enemy will trip you up at every turn, making it impossible for you to reach your goals. You'll question every decision you make, second guess yourself, and find yourself making "safe" choices instead of diving in with a new path. That enemy? It's you.

In order to achieve your goals, you have to let go of your current concept of "self." Society teaches us to cling to who we are, to be ourselves, not to let anyone tell us who we have to be. Unfortunately, this concept is short-sighted. In order to succeed in business, you need to constantly grow and adapt--and those adaptations can lead to total transformation in who you are. Become a person who deserves success--that is, learn who you need to be in order to reach your goals, then transform yourself into that individual.

2. The Mirror

Your business is like a mirror reflecting who you are: your goals, your efforts, and your habits. All too often, when you hit a wall in your business, you'll catch yourself looking for business tools to solve the problem. The challenge, of course, is that the real issue isn't with the business. It's with you. If you have poor habits and behaviors, those negative habits and behaviors will be reflected back in the business. Consider:

• Do you invest in yourself, creating a willingness in others to invest in you?
• Do you take too long to make a decision, creating the same struggle to think through big purchases in your customers because you don't have the necessary confidence in yourself and your skills?
• Do you struggle to believe that your products and skills are worth the price you put on them?

Your business will reflect your personal beliefs and habits. If you're able to clean up those misconceptions in your personal life, the problems with your business will, in turn, evaporate.

3. Patterns of Existence

People like to dream big and imagine themselves in incredible future positions, but too often, they're not willing to put in the effort to get there. Instead of becoming the highest possible version of themselves, they simply exist at the lowest version they're willing to accept.

Does that ring a bell in your life? Have you been settling for mediocrity when you could, instead, have been aiming for the sky?

Change doesn't come from transforming your dreams. Rather, it comes from transforming your standards. Instead of binge-watching television series, scrolling on your phone until the small hours of the night, and leaving your dreams on the back burner, shift your standards to reflect your real desires--because when it comes down to that line, you'll fight with everything in you to maintain it.

If you really want to know how someone is getting by, take a look at their bank account. Most people have two key numbers: a "desired balance" and a "panic balance." It would always be nice to have more money in that bank account, but the force of desire doesn't propel them to do something about it--especially if it means sacrificing in other areas. Then there's the "panic balance." When the bank account hits the level where they'll panic if it falls below it, people will work tirelessly in order to bring it back up to "safe" levels: working extra hours, foregoing treats, and doing whatever else it takes to bring them back to that key standard level. This is true in almost every area of life--but most people will maintain the status quo at their lowest acceptable version of themselves, never making the real effort to change it.

If you want to transform your life, it starts with these three principles: letting go of your concept of self to remake yourself in the image of what you need to be, acknowledging that your business mirrors that concept of self, and raising your standards to meet your dreams instead of lowering your dreams to meet your standards. In many cases, you'll discover that these simple, transforming steps can have life-altering results that will allow you to live a bigger, more successful life than you ever dreamed possible.