GUARANTEED PATHWAY TO SUCCESS

If you don’t know where you are going, how are you going to get there?  Imagine having this desire to achieve something great.  You just know you are meant to do so.  You can just see the wonderful life that lies ahead of you.  Maybe you wish to own a beautiful home, or drive that new sports car you have always envisioned.  So you visualize it, you dream about it and you wait for it to happen to you.  Yet you have been visualizing and dreaming for awhile now, and it has yet to happen.  Why is that?  How can we turn our dreams into reality?  How can we truly achieve our GOALS?

Goal setting is a crucial part of realizing our dreams, yet something so many of us fail to do.  In the next few minutes of reading, I am going to explain to you the SMART System for setting goals, and then I am going to give you the secret to turning a great plan into reality.  If you follow this system and the secret to success, your dreams will come true.

SPECIFIC                     Goals must be very clear and specific.  There is no room for vagueness or  ambiguities.   Describe it in detail so you know exactly where you are going.

MEASURABLE              You must be able to know without a doubt how you are doing in attaining your goal.  Being rich is not measurable.  Earning $10,000 per month is.

ATTAINABLE                Don’t set goals you cannot reach.  Setting yourself up to fail will lead to all the negative emotions that come with it.  Make sure your goals are realistic.

RELEVANT                    Goals that are specific, measureable and attainable but not relevant to where you want to go in your life are useless.  Make sure all of your goals are in line with the success you wish to achieve.

TIME-BOUND                All of your goals must have time limits and should fall into the category of short term or long term goals with matching time boundaries.

OK so now that you understand the criteria to setting goals, it’s time to put into place a plan to achieve them.  First start by asking yourself the question, “Where do I want to be in a year?”  Make sure this is in relation to your goal.  For example is the goal is about losing weight, make sure your answer to that question is related to your weight loss.  This will give you a long term goal.  Next, ask yourself, what you need to do this month that will contribute to your reaching that long term goal.  This will be your month long goal.  For example, if your 1 year goal is to lose 60 lbs, then you know you must lose 5 lbs each month to get there.  Finally, ask yourself what you need to do this week to achieve your monthly goal.  To lose 5 lbs each month, you will need to lose 1-2 lbs per week.  At this time, make sure your goal fits the SMART criteria.  If 1-2 lbs per week is not ATTAINABLE, then you will need to re-examine the monthly goals and inevitably your one year long term goal. 

So you now have a long term SMART goal, along with the short term goals to get you there.  Are we done?  Nope.  It is now time to break your weekly goals into ACTION STEPS that will get you there.  These ACTION STEPS are things you will do every day that will help you achieve your weekly goals.  So sticking with weight loss, an action step for today might be “Eat at home, no restaurants.” or “Do 30 minutes of physical activity.” or “No alcohol.”  These daily action steps will be the steps needed to attain your goals, and easily manageable day by day.  No matter what your goal, make sure that your daily action steps get you to where you are going.  Also, assign a points system to your daily action steps.  Each action step is worth 1 point.  Achieving the step, give yourself a point.  Failing to achieve it, deduct a point.  Work towards getting 25 points per week.  This is approx 4 points per day.  4 daily action steps each day towards your goal, will, with no doubt, see you achieving your goals each week and month and subsequently, you will achieve your long term goal.

Lastly, I said at the beginning of this blog post, that I will also give you a secret which will guarantee your success.  This system of SMART goal setting, along with daily action steps as described above works, there is no doubt in that.  However it only works if you hold yourself accountable to the system, and if you are like some people, accountability is often where the train gets derailed.  Therefore, the secret is to find someone in your life that WILL hold you accountable.  For me, this is a coach.  Like some people have personal trainers, I have a coach that is not only holding me accountable but also assisting me in the setting of my goals.  I currently have 4 long term goals that I am working towards.  I also have monthly and weekly goals which if followed will guarantee my success in my long term goals.  And of course my daily actions steps keep me on track each day, with my coach holding me accountable.  Now to fail, I would have to lie to myself and my coach, neither of which I intend on doing.  Will there be difficult days?  Sure of course there will.  And for those days I will have my coach to help me get through.  Your coach need not be a professional like mine, but you will need someone to hold you accountable.  Sometimes your best bet is someone close to you with like minded goals.  Sometimes it is someone not too close to you, who will push you when you need it.  Whoever that is, if you truly want to succeed, this system, combined with accountability from a coach or a friend, is your pathway to success.