SETTING AND ACHIEVING GOALS - GUARANTEED!

Your life only gets better when you get better. Our lives are shaped by a continuum of occurrences (whether planned or not). To living the ideal lifestyle you want, the cars, a healthy relationship, loving kids and all others you can think of, you must consciously work towards these and it requires setting goals.

A goal is defined as a set target or aim you want to achieve. The key to setting winning goals in the 21st century revolves around certain simple but effective factors. Every goal you set must have these factors inter-twined within them to stand a chance in this 21st century. Your goals must be SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound.

If the following simple steps to goal setting and action planning doesn’t work for you, nothing will.

CLARITY
Decide exactly what you want to achieve. Be specific in your goals. Clarity is pertinent in setting winning goals. The German Goethe once said ‘he that wishes to write in a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts.’ Define clearly what you want, if your goal is to buy a house or car, you should be specific as to the brand of car, engine capacity etc. Is it an SUV or sport car? Is the house a duplex, semi-detached or simply a bungalow, is it in a quiet environ, choice part of town? If you want an increase in income, define clearly how much more you want to earn. Defining clearly your goal helps your mind to grasp the goal and channel the energy within towards achieving the goal.

WRITE
The next step would be to write down your goals. Writing down your goals sub-consciously drive your passion towards the actualisation of that goal and gets you excited with more impetus to see them achieved. Just like the great book said ‘write it down, make it plain on tablets, so he that see it may run with it.’

DEADLINE
Set a deadline for achieving your goals. As earlier mentioned, goals should be time-bound. Your sub-conscious mind loves deadlines. The sub-conscious mind requires a ‘push’ to activate all its powers and make it functioning optimally. Deadlines also get you excited as there is a sense of urgency to your goals. If the goal is a large goal, set sub-deadlines. If it is a five year goal, set sub-goals for each quarter of the year, then each month of the year. Henry Ford once said concerning goals ‘any goal, no matter how large, can be achieved if you break it down into enough small steps.’

LIST
You then begin to write down a list of everything you can think of possibly doing to achieve these goals. Add to this list continually as you come up with new steps of action you can take to achieve your goals until you have completed this list. The more individual steps you write down, the more excited you get at actually achieving these goals.


SEQUENCE AND PRIORITIZE
This stage of goal setting requires timing and meticulous organisation. You sequence and prioritize the contents of your list. Sequencing requires that you arrange the steps according to which comes first and which comes second, that is you determine which step has to be done first and which comes second and so on. Prioritizing requires that you arrange the steps according to which is most important on your list followed by the second most important step.
Once you have this list of steps organised by sequence and priority, you have a PLAN. A man with a plan to achieve his goals is half way down the finish line.

TAKE ACTION
The major divider between highly successful individuals and failures is action. Highly successful, top earning individuals take action towards achieving what goals they have set for themselves, while failures procrastinate, delaying action. Action is the primary reason some people fail and some succeed. Failures always come up with ‘genuine’ excuse to procrastinate and delay action until their desire, passion and zest is gone with the wind.

DISCIPLINE
The golden rule of this simple but succinct plan on goal setting is to do something daily that moves you towards your goal. Every day, you must discipline yourself to take on a task or activity that moves you towards achieving your goal. Do this seven days a week, 30 days a month and 365 days a year. As you do, they become to you as natural as breathing.