How to reach your goals

We all have goals. What are yours? To lose 20 pounds? Buy a new house? Make more money? Having a goal is the easy part. Reaching it? Well, that's something else entirely. If you're frustrated because you feel like you keep coming up short when it comes to realizing your dreams, maybe it's time to try a different approach.

When setting a goal, ask yourself first of all if your goals are realistic and if you are really ready to make the changes in your life necessary to reach those goals

Make a plan for the path you need to follow to accomplish the goal. Create action steps to follow. Identify a critical path. The critical path defines the key accomplishments along the way, the most important steps that must happen for the goal to become a reality. Stephen Covey said, "All things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation of all things. You have to make sure that the blueprint, the first creation, is really what you want, that you've thought everything through. Then you put it into bricks and mortar. Each day you go to the construction shed and pull out the blueprint to get marching orders for the day. You begin with the end in mind."

Strategize and Plan

Here are the basic strategies you will need to employ to keep your motivation burning and your progress on track:

Paste up your goals where you can see them every day. – Without reminders, you will likely forget about your goals and become easily distracted by other stimuli.  So print them out 10, 20 or 30 times and paste them up in the most prominent, visible areas around your house, office, etc.

Create a visualization board. – For most of us, our mind sees the world in images and we remember images more clearly compared to text and numbers.  A visualization board is basically a large bulletin board filled with clear images of what you want to achieve.  This added visual stimulation can help invoke powerful emotions that will constantly drive your motivation.

If you want to lose weight and get back down a few pants sizes, put an old photo of yourself up on the board.  If you want your blog to start making a thousand dollars a month, find a few success stories online of people that have achieved that goal and stick it up on the board.  You get the idea.  Position the board right next to your work area so you can see it while you work toward your goals.

Form a small mastermind group. – A mastermind group is your support group.  And believe me, this group is a vital entity to your success.  The group can consist of any amount of people (at least 2), but the important thing is that everyone in the group must share similar goals.  It doesn’t help much when you are trying to lose 30 lbs and other members in the group have goals of setting up their own company.

A mastermind group helps to hold all its members accountable.  This will help you maintain consistency in taking action even when laziness gets the best of you.  Be sure to meet with your mastermind group at least once a week.

Create a daily action plan with actionable tasks. – Bullet points A, B and C help you to sustain the desire and motivation to achieve your goals.  This will ensure that you will not give up halfway though and fall backwards on your rear end.  But you also need a real, actionable plan that you can follow every day until you actually do achieve your goals.

Every morning, brainstorm for tasks that will help to bring you closer to your goals and write them down.  Try to create three small actionable tasks each morning and complete them before you go to sleep.  Make them a priority and fit them into your schedule.  Whether you complete them or not makes a big difference in whether or not you will succeed.

If you find it hard to generate the small daily tasks or an actionable plan that will bring you closer to your goals, seek out a mentor, search online, or purchase a book on goal setting.

Breaking down your goals will help you avoid the feeling of being overwhelmed.  When you are creating your action plan, keep the short-term tasks in mind instead of obsessing over the long-term end result.  Obsessing over long-term results just creates stress.  It is far easier to think on a short-term task-related basis. And as long as you complete your tasks, the results will take care of themselves.  For instance, if you want to write a book, don’t obsess about completing the book (long-term results oriented), just focus on writing a page or two a day (short-term task-related) and soon you will have your book completed.

Set a deadline. – You will also need to set a deadline for your goal.  A long-term goal without a deadline will not instill any sense of urgency in you.  And defining a deadline also gives you something to look forward to.

Visualize yourself achieving the goal. Lee Lacocca said, "The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind." What will your achievement feel like? How will your life unfold differently as a result? If the goal is a thing, some gurus of goal setting recommend that you keep a picture of the item where you see and are reminded of it every day. If you can’t picture yourself achieving the goal, chances are – you won’t.

Review your overall progress regularly. Make sure you are making progress. If you are not making progress, hire a coach, tap into the support of loved ones, analyze why the goal is not being met. Don’t allow the goal to just fade away. Figure out what you need to do to accomplish it. Check the prior five steps starting with an assessment of how deeply you actually want to achieve the goal.

There are three big reasons why people fail to achieve their goals:

1.    They never set achievable goals to begin with.

2.    They have no plan.

3.    They never take any sort of logical action.