How to turn Goal Setting into Actions that Create?Success?

Seven ideas to help you achieve your goals

Bymintsmichael070August 11, 2020

“The great danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark” — Michelangelo.

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” –Zig Ziglar

For many people, goal setting is still a puzzle. It’s something they’ve tried in the past, and it either didn’t work for them, or they struggled to be successful. The usual reasons for failure in setting goals are, its too hard, the goals were too general, too small, or not purposeful towards anything they were working on in their life.

They have no action plan or routine to keep them accountable.

Even in my early adulthood, my attempts at setting goals were unsuccessful because I had no plan and no vision. My goals were unclear, vague, and too routine.

Realizing where the potholes are in setting goals, and having a plan for success, can keep you from wasting a lot of time.

The research clearly shows that if you want to be successful in life, you need to learn the power of setting goals. The ability to set and follow through on your goals is one of, if not the skill that propels you towards your future success.

Setting goals allows you to be in control of your life, health, finances, relationships, and career. It also gives you the ability daily to make incremental changes and improvements to what isn’t working, and what to change or improve.

More importantly, it makes decision making much more straightforward, as your decisions are either moving you towards achieving your goals and Vision or moving you away from them.

Accomplishing your goals and creating a vision for your Future entails a little more than just saying “I want, I wish, or I hope,” and expecting it to happen. It starts with identifying where you’re going, what you want to accomplish, and who do you want to become.

Here are seven ideas to help you achieve your goals

Decide What You Want

“Don’t let others tell you what you can’t do. Don’t let the limitations of others limit your Vision. If you can remove your self-doubt and believe in yourself, you can achieve what you never thought possible.” ― Roy T. Bennett

Maybe you feel like you are traveling through life with no clear destination in mind. It’s like your a ship with no sail or rudder, being tossed around by the winds of life. You feel like life is taking you for a ride, and you can’t control it.

There is a way to control your success in life. You can know exactly where you’re going and how you’re going to get there, but it requires that you have a plan or what I call a Vision for your Future.

Goals are critical, but first, to make your goals work for you, you must determine where you’re going and what you want to accomplish. 

Let’s start by you asking yourself a few questions:

Who do I want to be in life? What’s important to me? Where am I going?

What kind of experiences do I want to have? What will get me out of bed every morning? What do I care about the most?

What have I always wanted to do but didn’t have the courage? Where would I rather be spending my time? What inspires me most?

What do I want to accomplish in my life? What do I want my income to look like, my savings, my vacations, and my adventures?

How do I want to be remembered?

What do I want my marriage, my family, and my relationships to look like?

I strongly encourage you to take the time to write down the answers to these questions and put them together to create a Vision for your Future. Refer to it often and read through it daily to keep you focused and motivated.

Your Vision for your Future will be a living part of you. It will morph over time and change as you change. 

It will grow as you grow and learn as you learn who you’re becoming, where you want to go, and what you want to accomplish.

Every year you’ll look back at who you were the year before, and you won’t even recognize yourself because of how much you’ve grown. All because you took the time to create a Vision for your Future.

Take Action Daily

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” ―Dale Carnegie

Too often left out of the process of setting goals is taking daily action. You get so excited and focused on the outcomes that you forget to make a monthly, weekly, and daily plan.

Creating a plan, and writing out individual daily and short-term goals, and crossing them off one at a time as you complete them, helps you to realize that you are making progress towards your ultimate goal. Your Vision for your Future.

Monthly goals help you decide what you need to do this week. Weekly goals help you determine what you need to accomplish each day. The idea is to ask yourself what can I do today to take another step towards my goals and my Vision for my Future.

Daily progress turns into weekly progress, which becomes monthly progress, and before you know it, you look back, and you can’t believe what you’ve accomplished in such a short period.

This is especially important if your goal is a little bigger than usual, or long-term. Because every day, as you cross off goals and priorities for the day, you’re building confidence and courage that keeps you motivated and moving closer and closer to your Future.

The action of writing down your goals or priorities for the day and completing them is what creates the momentum to achieve your goals and dreams, and become successful in life. You won’t get to where you want to be, without deciding to take action daily.

So, how do YOU take action daily?

Wake up every morning, and before you start your day, take the time to write down the three most important priorities or goals for your day. Even better would be to write them down the night before.

Write down the three things that if you were to accomplish them, they would be significant wins for the day, and would move you closer to your goals.

Resolve in your mind when you leave for working each morning that these three priorities will be completed by the end of the day.

Once you’ve completed the three priorities, Celebrate the win. I’m serious, celebrate it. Have a personal pep rally! YOU ARE ROCK’IN IT NOW!!!

Now you can get excited that you’ve accomplished more in a day than most accomplish in a month or more towards their Goals and Future.

Set Realistic and Unrealistic Goals.

“I think goals should never be easy, they should force you to work, even if they are uncomfortable at the time.” — Michael Phelps

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” — Confucius

You must step out of your comfort zone. It’s time to stop listening to those who would have you believe that you should only set reasonable goals. People who fear failure seldom succeed because failure paves the way to success. We learn far more from failure than we do from success.

Setting Unrealistic Goals is hugely purposeful. One, they force you to deal with failure which is part of the learning process, and two because the purpose is not to set realistic goals and achieve them, the aim is to establish large difficult, change your life goals, and continue to work on them until you reach them. This is how you become the person in your Vision.

Your confidence and courage will grow as you accomplish ‘unrealistic’ goals. You will start to believe that no dream or Vision is too big for you to achieve.

You will become more determined and motivated to achieve the things you thought and dreamed about, but were afraid to believe could happen for you.

Identify and overcome obstacles.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. — Booker T. Washington

When you consider your goals, it’s crucial to identify the potential obstacles that could come between you and achieving your goals. As you identify these obstacles, go ahead and determine what you’ll need to do; as a result, to remove them or move around them.

This strategy may seem contrary to a lot of the advice you’ve been given on goal setting, but it works. Once you’ve identified the potential obstacles and determined how you can overcome them, you’ll be prepared when they come. You’ll feel more confident and will have the courage to charge ahead.

Obstacles are the most significant deterrent to goal setting. We start with our goals; we have lots of confidence and energy, then an obstacle comes along, and we fold like a cheap suit because we didn’t prepare for it mentally.

We hear that voice in our head say, “See, I told you it wouldn’t work.”

If you will own the responsibility of being prepared when things don’t go well, or you hit a roadblock or obstacle, you will be on your way to achieving your life goals. Life is going to happen; obstacles are going to occur, plan, and be prepared.

Winston Churchill said, “The price of greatness is responsibility.”

Aim small, miss small.

In the movie “The Patriot,” Mel Gibson plays Benjamin Martin. In one scene, Martin and his two sons ambush a unit of British soldiers. Before the attack, Martin asks his boys, “Do you remember what I told you about shooting?” Their answer: “Aim small-miss small.”

It means that if you aim at a man and miss, you miss the man, while if you aim at the button on his jacket and miss, you still hit the man. This is why it’s so important to have a “Bulls Eye” 5–10 years into the Future at which you’re aiming.

Not just some general idea, but precisely who you want to become and what you want to accomplish.

The more you can narrow down exactly what your Future looks like, the easier it will be to create the goals to get you there. Yes, it will change and morph over time.

As you grow stronger and smarter, you will realize that the “Bulls Eye” is different than it was 2–3 years ago.

It will change because you will change. At that point all, you need to do is re-define the “Bulls Eye” and go back to work on your goals.

Remind Yourself WHY Often

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If your WHY is big enough, you’ll be more motivated

If your WHY is big enough, you won’t give up

If your WHY is big enough, obstacles will seem small and insignificant

If you have a big enough “why,” your “how” will take care of itself. Take a few minutes to write down all the reasons why reaching this goal, this Vision, is so important to you.

What will your life be like? How will you feel about yourself? 

In what ways will your life improve? How will the lives of the people you care about be changed?

Once you get clear on WHAT you want to achieve, it’s crucial to know WHY you want it.

Most people are so focused on how to achieve their goals, that they miss all the important why’s. The WHY’s are what keep you motivated to put forth all the work and effort.

If you have big enough WHY’s for your goals, and Vision for your Future, it substantially increases your chances for success.

Jim Rohn says, “When the WHY gets stronger, the HOW gets easier.”

Celebrate every Victory

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” — Oprah Winfrey

Every obstacle that you overcome moves you one step closer to realizing your goals and Vision for your Future. 

One of the greatest things you can do for your confidence is to celebrate every win.

You should have a mini-celebration at the end of every day because you knocked out your three priorities.

Daily celebrations and mini-rewards create a mindset of winning.

Overcoming challenges create a sense of pride and joy in your accomplishments. 

Remember to enjoy the process. When you face obstacles, decide now what you’re going to do, and get ready to celebrate.

Conclusion

Setting and achieving goals is the magic sauce of being successful in life. It is the thing that separates winners from the losers. It is the thing that drives hard work, early mornings, and relentless pursuit of achieving. If you think that doesn’t sound easy, you’re right.

But as Zig Ziglar said, “It’s not going to be easy, but it’s going to be worth it.”