If you’re serious about achieving your goal, you need to commit yourself to making it happen no matter what.
If you’re serious about achieving your goal, you have to commit yourself to it. When I started taking a look at why people don’t achieve their goals, one of the first things I noticed, both in my own life and in looking at other people’s goals, is that we all seem to be really good at letting ourselves off the hook. We have all these wonderful dreams and goals that we want for ourselves, we get all fired up and excited about them for a little bit… and then, for some reason, instead of acting on them we just let them fizzle out with a defeated “yes, but…”, and that tends to be the end of it.
“I’d like to go back to school, but…”, “I’d like to write a book, but…”, “I’d like to lose weight, but…”, “I’d like to exercise more, but…” and then we never even get started, or we completely give up at the first sign of an obstacle. Sound familiar? I know I’ve done it; more times than I care to admit. We all have. But you know what? When we let our “yes but”s take precedence, we give up all our dreams and settle for something else. We turn our lives into something that we’re settling for! And that never makes anyone happy. So I’m going to ask your, right now, to just get rid of those nasty “buts” and make a commitment to yourself that you WILL achieve your goals!
With that in mind, here are five tips to get your “buts” in gear and keep you accountable and dedicated to achieving your goal…
5 Strategies for Achieving Your Goal
Give your goal a deadline.
Step 1: Give your goal a clearly defined deadline or target date.
When you give yourself deadline it makes the goal more “real” in your mind. It brings that goal out of the ethereal realm of “possibility” and creates within you a pressure to get it done (“Whoa, I have an actual deadline now… I really have to do this!). It’s a simple, but highly effective motivational tool, because once you have a concrete end date in sight, you will automatically start thinking of things you need to do to get started and get going. You will automatically start moving forward and increase your likelihood of achieving your goal.
Tell someone about your goal.
Step 2: Make a public declaration about your goal.
When you keep your goal to yourself and no one else knows about it, it’s far too easy to just let it idle and never actually get yourself out of the gate and get started. Or, what can also happen is that you do get yourself started, but as soon as you hit a roadblock, you just kind of give up. But if you tell someone what your goal is and what you’re going to do, you are far less likely to succumb to either of these scenarios. No one likes to look bad in front of other people, so when you make your goal public you’re far less likely to let yourself back out of it because you don’t want to look like a failure or like you gave up.
Get a success buddy!
Step 3: Get a success buddy.
A success buddy is someone who also has a goal, though not necessarily the same one as yours, whom you work with to shore up each other’s goals. You cheer each other on and act as each other’s support system. You agree to meet up once a week (or email or Skype or whatever) for a success meeting where you discuss your weekly plans (the actions you plan to take over the coming week that will move you closer to your “big” goal or dream) and update each other on your progress over the past week. If you know you have a regular appointment with someone who is expecting to be updated on what you’ve accomplished, you will find yourself highly motivated to take regular ongoing action towards achieving your goal, and you’re far less likely to let yourself slack off.
Use daily reminders.
Step 4: Give yourself daily reminders.
Post your goal in a conspicuous place that you’ll see every day. Several conspicuous places, actually! Get some of those super sticky little note pads, write your goal on several sheets and then stick those notes up wherever you will see them most often: your bathroom mirror so you can see them when you start and end your day, your fridge, the edge of your computer monitor, in your wallet… wherever works best for you. The point of this exercise is to remind yourself what you’re working towards tens, if not hundreds, of times a day. This is a really great method of programming yourself to think thoughts of success that really helps you achieve that all-important vibrational alignment that makes achieving your goal much easier.
Track your progress.
Step 5: Review your progress regularly.
Make it a point to write down every action you’ve taken towards achieving your goal at the end of each day (a little spiral bound notebook works well for this, or just use a pad of paper). At the end of the week, review everything you’ve written down. It’s easy to get bogged down by all the stuff we still haven’t done and how much we still have to do, and lose sight of everything that we have already accomplished. And trust me, once you really start moving towards your goal, there will be times when you look at your log and be absolutely astounded at what you’ve accomplished in such a short amount of time. Reminding yourself of all the successes you have already achieved is a great way to line yourself up for even more success!
It’s normal to have doubts creep in now and then, but don’t let those doubts call the shots on your life and your dreams; don’t let yourself off the hook when it comes to achieving your goal! Commit like crazy to making it happen; get your “buts” in gear by using these five strategies, and you will drastically increase your likelihood of achieving your goal and living your dream.
