The key to attaining anything in life, is to set goals. You also need to constantly dissect and reflect on the previous goals you’ve set, and look forward to setting new ones in the future. Success in life will turn once your focus is placed on setting goals, and more importantly reaching them.
Once you know what you’re striving for, the end result you want, knowing exactly where you are, what you need is to plot out the course on how to get there.
What these goals are, what you want in life can be long term such as five, three, or one year goals, or shorter ones, such as a month, week, or daily.
It’s also important to attend to time management regularly, by reviewing all your bigger goals quarterly, and the shorter ones according.
This won’t happen unless you prioritize your time, do the things identified as important, first.
Learning To Work Backwards
Some experts will tell you to start from the end, and work backwards from there. Begin by visualizing yourself and what you want to accomplish in your life. Then see yourself in the future once you reached that goal and document how you got there.
What you can then do, is reverse engineer a precise road map of how to get what you want.
Proof is you would never go on an airplane for instance, without knowing its destination.
So why would you live your life that way. What you need to develop first, is a step-by-step process to reach that goal.
Know what your purpose is, know what your unique skills are, what abilities and talents you have which will help you get there.
If you’re not sure, then sit yourself down and daydream. Write down in your journal or blog what your talents are.
Discover all of the things you love to do and what you excel at.
Finding Balance
When setting goals, what many focus on is their professional objectives. Although this is important in the goal setting strategy, it shouldn’t be the only area of attention. Every facet of your life and living should also be considered.
The reason for this, is those who are older and begin reflecting back on their life, almost everyone regrets they shouldn’t of worked so hard, but instead had more fun.
When setting goals, consider how it will affect every area of your life, at home and professionally. When setting especially long term goals, consider your work, leisure, relationships and spirituality.
There are a variety of ways to divide your life differently, so the key becomes to find the ones that are most important to you, and then set goals in each of those areas.
Take Stock Of Where You Are
What’s important as knowing where you’re going, is knowing what stage of your life you are at right now. It’s impossible to set goals or get direction in your life, unless you know where you’re starting from.
Take the time to scrutinize and painfully analyze the reality of your current life situation. Where you stand in every area of your life.
Don’t be too overly critical, or too overly optimistic. Just take a honest inventory of your current situation.
Take an assessment of all your strengths, as doing so becomes helpful when setting your future goals.
At times, it’s knowing what your strengths are, is what makes goal attainment possible.
Then ask yourself, “What would I need to give up, to be successful reaching this particular goal?” Once you have your answer, you need to decide if it’s worth it.
Most often, many don’t move forward towards their goals, because of the fears that linger from their conscious awareness.
What you need should be brought to the forefront and challenged, as they need to be confronted and managed.
Affirmation Visualization And Meditation
To become serious about accomplishing goals, they need to be precisely written down in detail.
This is based on a study of University students, where just 3% of those who were graduating, actually wrote down their specific career goals.
Twenty years later, it was those 3%, who were worth more financially than the other collective 97% combined.
An affirmation is simply writing down your goals, as if it were already true in the present moment.
You then repeat these affirmations few times a day. Be extremely precise in detail about what you’re wanting to accomplish.
A visualization, is similar to a mental rehearsal. In your minds eye, what you’re doing is imagining what your life would and can be like, once the goal is accomplished.
The more vivid and sensory-based the visualization is, the more effective and true it will become.
Meditation is that “quiet time” you need to get in touch with your inner self, your higher power.
It’s the downtime of deep reflection, where you honestly ask questions about yourself and seek answers, from a place that has all the answers.
Always Have A Positive Attitude
What’s known for certain is we attract what we focus on the most. If we’re focused on what we don’t currently have, what we’ll then attract is more lack of it into our lives.
If we’re constantly complaining about our bad luck, that we’re cursed, poor, then that’s what we’ll get more of.
When working in harmony with who you are, our true selves, it’s important to maintain an attitude of gratitude.
Even when things don’t go as planned, you can always be grateful for the lessons that were learned.
Always Be Improving Stay Motivated
The difference when it comes to goal setting and goal attainment, is never being satisfied with what you’ve achieved. There’s always something more you want, improvements in your life you can make.
Life is a constant moving entity of always wanting more, to keep up with the trend.
Staying motivated is always a challenge. What reaching our goals, how insignificant they may be does is motivates us.
The Need For Guidance
What’s found helpful for some is having a mentor or a guide, someone who will force you to be accountable, which at times can be the difference, the push you need to reach your goals.
What you can do is promise yourself you’re going to do something, all you want. But if you don’t do it, who really knows or cares, unless you’re accountable to someone.
Once you reveal your goals out loud, announce it to the world what your intentions are, then your integrity, your word won’t allow you to fail.