The second step towards a fulfilling life is to develop the strategies that you will need to put into place in order to reach your vision.
Strategies – or goals – are broad action statements that help you reach this vision. They can include things like, for example:
- Having more vitality.
- Communicating more authentically.
- Becoming a better partner and parent.
- Paying off your debt and creating a stronger financial plan.
- Developing a business that is financially rewarding and one that utilizes your talents and gifts.
There is no doubt that setting goals is one of the best things you can do to make positive changes in your life. And you define them clearly with a realistic, yet challenging, quantifiable, achievable, and time bound action plan.
There are 8 critical factors, or strategies, to setting and achieving solid goals in a way that will better ensure your success:
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Create SMART Goals
SMART is an acronym to help you establish solid goals. SMART stands for:
- Specific: Clear and well defined. Be very clear about what will be accomplished.
- Measurable: How will you know if you are on track or off track. Include a quantifiable way of tracking progress from start to finish.
- Achievable: Similar to your vision, your strategies are attainable. They should be challenging, and at the same time realistic.
- Relevant: The goals may exceed your reach, but not your grasp. They should be in harmony with your core values and passions.
- Timely: Each goal has a deadline attached to it. Although the strategies may be ongoing, there are benchmarks that you will want to achieve in order to confirm that you are on track – and give yourself a little reward.
Here is an example broken down. Consider the SMART strategy to “I want to have more vitality”. It might be something like: “Over the next 6 months (give exact month and date), I will develop more vitality by losing 5 kilos and exercising 5 times per week by walking for 30 minutes each time.”
Now, go back and look at your goals and be sure to make them SMART.
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Write Your Goals Down
Your goals need to be written down. The actual act of writing a goal down turns your desire into something tangible.
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Personalise Your Goals
When creating a goal, always write it using the word “I.” Doing this marks the goal as yours, giving you ownership over it, which will drive you to reach it.
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State Goals as if Already Achieved
Make sure you are wording your goals properly. Your mind operates in the now. So, if you want something, describe it in the present tense. This way your mind will believe it to be true, which fuels it to become a reality. So instead of stating a goal as, “I want to lose ten pounds”, reword it to reflect its accomplishment in the now: “I feel alive and healthy ten pounds slimmer”!
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No Worry, Doubt or Fear
Worry, doubt and fear create a negative attitude that manifest into negative experiences in your life. If you have ever met a negative person who seems to attract the worst luck, then you have witnessed the dark side of negative thinking. That’s why it’s important to replace negative thinking with positive thinking. Be firm in immediately banishing any negative emotions and thinking!
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Remember the Power of Action
Taking action moves you forward. If you wait for the “perfect moment”, you’ll be waiting forever. In fact, there is really no such thing as the right time to act other than now!
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Burn the Boat!
Burning the boat means that when you reach a new shoreline, there is no going back. When you commit yourself to achieving a goal, approach it as an “all or nothing” proposition.
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Achieving Goals Involves Failure
It is important to remember that even the most successful people have failures when pursuing their goals. This does not make them failures, but it does mean they were willing to take risks.
Don’t allow yourself to be discouraged by failure. Instead persevere.
Often we must meet with failure in order to learn to get valuable feedback, and to grow enough so we are able to handle the success when it finally comes.
Feel free to contact me here to discuss how I can help you set up your strategies and SMART goals that will help you make positive changes in your life.
