It’s Time To Set Your Goals.

It’s Time To Set Your Goals.

As you look forward to a new year, it’s time to review what you have done and plan for your future.

Here’s a format to help you set and achieve your goals.

How To Set and Achieve Your Goals

What is success?

It is the deliberate accomplishment of worthwhile goals over a specified time frame.

Success, therefore, begins with goals and goals define success.

Successful people are driven by goals and they take massive and ever-improving action to achieve their goals.

Goal setting compels them to go further and faster in life.

It helps them to focus and channel all their resources in the right direction.

Goal setting is a key to managing a successful life.

It’s a logical and fulfilling approach to purposeful living.

Step 1: Define Your 5Cs Goals

Goal setting begins with the choice of worthy goals.

Goals that help you serve a high calling and for a worthwhile cause.

The following are the 5Cs of worthy goals:

1. Goals must be concise.

A goal that is concise and well defined is already half achieved.

With clarity, you will have a greater sense of strength, control, and direction.

2. Goals should be clear. Eg. Do not, for example, say you wish to make a lot of money.

State, specifically, how much money you plan to earn.

It should be in a written format.

This is in line with an Oriental proverb which says that “The palest ink is more enduring than the strongest memory.’

Preferably, you should be able to carry it in your wallet so that you can review it regularly.

Your goals must be expressed in terms of measurable results.

In that way, you can monitor your progress and improve accordingly.

3. Goals should be challenging

Douglas Edwards, a pioneer in sales training commented, “If you don’t believe you can achieve the goal, you won’t pay the full price for it.”

Besides being achievable, goals should be inspirational and motivational.

It should challenge you, stretch your mind, and bring out the best in yourself.

Goal setting will become a meaningless exercise if you cannot give it your total commitment.

It will not drive you to take action if you are not passionate about it and you don’t have faith that your goals will come to pass.

4. Goals should be controllable.

Achievement of your goals depends on the intensity of desire to turn it into a reality and your desire depends on how easy it is to recall your goals.

You should make it a point to remember your goal and strategy to achieve it at all times even if you do not refer to the written plan

In addition, you should be able to map out the goals on to a schedule.

There must be a specific time frame for achieving the appropriate activities, key performance indicators (KPIs), and sub-goals.

5. Goal-setting should be continuos.

Goal-setting is not a one-time affair. It goes through an iterative process of correcting and changing itself for the better.

It should be constantly updated to stay relevant, effective, and beneficial to you and others around you.

Step 2: Develop Sub-Goals

The Chinese have a saying, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” And, if I may add, and then one more step… and then one more step… until you achieve your goal.

By developing sub-goals, it will also help you monitor your progress and ensure you are moving in the right direction. Eg. By the first week, I must do… By the first month, I must achieve…

Step 3: Determine A Compelling Purpose

To achieve your goals, you must have compelling reasons to do it.

If you do not know the ‘Why’s for achieving your goals, you will never find out the ‘How’s.

Your purpose will drive your performance and pursuits.

Whatever the compelling reasons you have for achieving the goal, they must be vital, passionate, and sustainable to you.

These qualities will cause you to jump out of bed every morning to work hard and smart to achieve your goals.

Step 4: Prepare Yourself

Barriers.

To succeed, you need to know why you may fail.

You need to know what will prevent you from achieving your goal and take every possible action to overcome them.

Your barriers may be related to people, things, yourself, situation, or even something intangible like a bad experience in the past. Eg. bad habits, procrastination, fear of failure etc.

Price.

Success comes with a price.

You must make sacrifices, discipline yourself, and persevere through the long, narrow, and winding path towards success.

When you persist, the price will become an enjoyable part of a satisfying and fulfilled life.

Remember, in the future, you will look back and either experience the joy of relentless pursuit or the pain of endless regret.

Take action now, eg. Give up eating unhealthy food, stop negative activities, end toxic relationships etc.

Learning.

You cannot attain a higher level of achievement with current capacity and competence.

You need to upgrade your knowledge, skills and other resources to play at a higher plane in life.

Step 5: Craft Strategies

You need to constantly ask yourself, “How can I achieve my goals?”

Explore all options by answering questions that begin with why, what, where, who, when, and how.

You have to evaluate the resources that you have; for example, your time, money, and energy, and decide how best to deploy them to achieve your goals.

Decide what you have to do every single day to achieve your goals.

What kind of a lifestyle you need to have so as to achieve your goals.

In addition, determine how you can leverage on systems, technologies, people, tools, and other resources to achieve more and better results.

You should not only take the right action but also take these action correctly.

The best way to learn and improve is to teach others.

Share your goal-setting journey with like-minded people.

Help them to duplicate and improve on your success and achieve even better results.

The more you inspire others to be better than you, the more inspired you will become to improve yourself.

It will increase your motivation to achieve your goal.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

You need to set appropriate KPIs that will help you chart your progress, help you take corrective action, and help you improve yourself. Eg. How much weight loss, how many books to read, how many people to train, etc.

You must continue to take every action to learn and improve your knowledge, attitude, skills, and habits (KASH).

You need to make time time to role play and practice your skills.

Solicit 360-degree feedback from competent and caring parties to help you improve and achieve your goals.

Step 6: Motivate Yourself

A lot of goals live and die shortly after they have been set.

For goals to be achieved, it must be driven by a growing desire and this desire must be kept alive and burning until the goals are achieved.

Goals must become a vital, integral, and desirable part of your life.

Goals must be constantly visualised using all five senses.

The clearer you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel how joyful and rewarding it is to achieve your goal, the faster it will be achieved.

Use aids; including pictures, photographs, and words placed in strategic locations, to remind you of your goal.

You can also record what it means to achieve your goal and play it back to yourself regularly so as to stay motivated.

Request positive people to help you stay motivated in achieving your goal.

Avoid ‘energy vampires’ who will suck your energy, distract you, and keep you away from achieving your goals.

Work through the goal with your friend or as a team.

Hold each other accountable every step of the way.

Adopt successful people as your mentors. Like they say, “You cannot fly with eagles if you mix with turkeys.”

Interact with these top performers, learn from them, and model after their positive action.

Communicate your goal daily through SMSes, Emails, social media, and telephone calls to people who will be able to give you positive encouragement, feedback, and other forms of value-additions.

Surround yourself with a team of goal-driven performers.

You can synergise with and leverage on them to achieve better results.

Place yourself in an environment where there are minimal temptations and maximum motivators to drive you to your goal.

You should also reward yourself when you reach every sub-goal.

By celebrating your achievement, it will motivate you to set more and better goals.

Success breeds success. It will spur you to do more for your life.

Step 7: Take Action

After you have planned for the activities to reach your goal, you must act.

You must master the courage and commit yourself totally to your goal.

Remove all fears, uncertainties, and doubts that will hold you back.

Continue to strategise and take massive action to turn your goal into a reality.

If you have been reading my Love Notes, you’ll know that I call this process, ‘Go4It!’

You must take the first step and then be prepared to take the next better step.

Do not be sidetracked until you have completed your action plan and achieve your goal.

James Russel Lowell, a famous poet once wrote, ‘All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than one single lovely action.’

Remember, if you keep walking on the same path, you will always reach the same destination.

To reach a better destination, you need to improve the road, find a better road, or develop your own road.

Commit yourself to a process of purposeful and never-ending improvements to take yourself to a higher level of success.

Successful people will always do the things ordinary people will not do and will not do the things that ordinary people will do.

In the words of Paul Myer, ‘Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.’

Continue to review and improve on your plan on a daily basis.

Please make goal setting an integral part of your life.

Go4It!

I hope this message will find a place in your heart.

By the way, I have also recorded other reflections.

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