Seven Tips for Achieving Your Goals

As we near the end of a pretty crazy year, this is the time that a lot of us are evaluating our progress on existing  goals and formulating new ones for 2021.  How did you do on your personal goals?  A lot has been written on how to formulate goals and why you need them but I want to talk about some tips for achieving those goals.  Instead of just writing goals in a notebook and tucking them away in a drawer until next year, here are seven things that help me achieve my goals.  

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1. Understand the true motivation behind your goal(s) and why they are important to you.  Dig deep here and keep peeling back layers until you get to a meaningful motivation behind the goal.  "To make more money", or "get in better physical shape" are not meaningful enough to keep you on track when the going gets tough.  What will you do with that extra money and why is that important to you?  How does being in better physical shape equate to your overall quality of life and how will that make you feel?
2. Break your goals into manageable chunks. Big goals can seem overwhelming and deter you from taking action to get started.  Take that big goal and break it down into the tasks that you need to complete to get there.  Tackle each task as it's own separate goal and watch the momentum build.
3. Schedule frequent and consistent check-ins.  Instead of waiting until the end of the year to pull that goals notebook out and realize that you are almost out of time, consistently gauge your progress.  I have an ongoing calendar reminder in my phone that schedules a couple of hours every month to review goals progress and schedule activities for the upcoming month to drive me toward completing those goals.
4. Keep your goals visible as a daily reminder.  This tip goes hand-in-hand with scheduling frequent check-ins.  If you can start out everyday with a reminder of what your goals are, you are exponentially more likely to achieve them.  I have my goals stuck to the side of my printer at my desk so I am forced to stare at them everyday.  Minds tend to focus on what is in front of them so make sure that your goals are always in the forefront.
5. Visualize success.  If you have no confidence that you can achieve your goals or can't visualize what that success will feel like, you aren't very likely to stay motivated.  As part of my morning routine, I spend 3-4 minutes with my eyes closed, visualizing the joy of completing my goals and what that looks like.  If you haven't read The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, I highly recommend it.  Every successful person that I know, has some type of morning routine that gets them mentally and physically prepared to be their best that day.  Find out what works for you.
6. Network with others who have similar goals.  One of the most powerful motivators is your peers.   Don't try to take on your goals all by yourself and be solely responsible for your motivation.  Find others that are trying to accomplish similar things and talk to them regularly.  Push each other to new levels and help each other through the difficult times.  Again, the successful people that I know are all part of a peer or mastermind group that is vested in the success of all members. 
7. Celebrate successes.  Achieving lofty goals takes hard work, dedication, and sacrifices.  If you don't take the time to celebrate successes along the way, your motivation will quickly wane.  The goal achievement process should be fun and exciting, not boring and monotonous.  I go as far as attaching pre-planned rewards to the completion of smaller goals leading up to my master goals.  

​Try these seven tips and watch the progress towards your goals completion accelerate.  Once you learn what works best and what doesn't work well for you, tweak your program to fit you.  The important thing is to find what motivates you, keeps you on track, and makes accomplishing your goals enjoyable.

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