7 Steps On How To Reach Your Goals Today

How to reach your goals is a subject that should be a mandatory class in school.

That is one of the skill sets that can make a tremendous impact in a person`s life.

Most people are like kids. They don`t fully comprehend what delayed gratification means.

Let`s use saving money as an example.

It is challenging for them to understand that if you don`t save money from each pay-check, you will not have money saved up for a rainy day.

Perhaps many people even know that, they don`t care because they think it`s boring to save money, or they are not able to have the self-discipline to do what it takes.

Successful people make decisions today that will influence their future in the long-term. They will sow the seeds today, but they won`t be able to harvest the crop until several years.

[Tweet “Successful people make decisions today that will influence their future in the long-term. #success”]

Brian Tracy says that success is not like a restaurant where you pay after you have enjoyed your meal. Success is like a cafeteria; you can choose whatever you want, but you must pay for it before you eat it.

The recipe behind how to reach your goals can be put into 7 simple steps

1. What do you want to achieve?
Start with the end in mind. Exactly what do you want to achieve? It has to be measurable. The more specific, the better it is, and you should also put an end date to the goal. Write the goal down. It is important to set the goal a bit higher than what is realistic, so you will need to go out of the comfort zone. This will increase the end result.

For instance, if your initial realistic goal was to lose X amount of pounds in 30 days, you should push the end goal to be X + Y. Perhaps you will not reach +Y, but you will at least have a certain percentage of Y, let`s say ½ Y. This means that you had to go out of your comfort zone and you lost more weight than you had originally aimed for.
For the sake of elaboration, let`s say that X is 6 pounds and Y is 5 pounds. Instead of losing 6 pounds, you have now lost 2.5 pounds more than your initial goal.

Only by expanding comfortable boundaries, will true greatness be achieved.

2. The knowledge to choose the right action steps
Analyze what you have to do / sacrifice in order to achieve your goal. If you don’t have the sufficient knowledge, don`t worry, it can be learned.

If the latter is the case, you can get the knowledge through reading books (that covers the topic), and find people who has already achieved what you want, and find out what they have done. There is no point in reinventing the wheel. All successful people have learned from others.

3. The right skill set to accomplish the task at hand
If you don`t have the correct skill set to perform he necessary tasks, see bullet point 2. The correct skill set can be acquired through diligently application of knowledge.

The formula is: Knowledge –> apply knowledge –> experience –> improved skill set.

Repeat the steps until you have reached required skill set to perform the task at hand.

4. Make a plan
See the bullet point 1 and 2, and use reverse engineering on the goal you want to achieve. Ask yourself: “Exactly what type of actions do I have to perform in order to achieve my goal?”

Write down the specific tasks in a plan (what to do, how it is measured, when you should start the task and when you the task should be completed).

As Brian Tracy puts it so well: “the person who doesn`t plan, plans to fail”.

[Tweet “”The person who doesn`t plan, plans to fail.” -Brian Tracy #success #goalsetting”]

5. Have a burning desire
Motivation comes from within you. Other people can`t motivate you, they can only inspire you. The stronger emotions you have about achieving your goal, the higher is the chance that you actually will perform the necessary actions what is required.

6. Decide
The word decide comes from the Latin word dēcīdō which means cut off. It is a strong word; it means to cut off all other options. So based on the steps above, you will now have to take the choice: are you really willing to sacrifice and do the required tasks no matter what happens?

7. Self-discipline
Self-discipline is to do what is needed to be done whether you feel like it or not.

Kop Kopmeyer wrote 1000 success principles in 4 bestselling book, but he also wrote that if you don`t have self-discipline, none of the other success principles will work.

If you are willing to perform the required tasks no matter what happens in your life, there is a great chance that you will succeed in reaching your goal.

Which of the steps above do you think is the most important?

If you have any great steps to add, feel free to leave a line below.