7 Steps to Reach Your Goals in 2018

There is something about “new” that keeps our thoughts occupied with new resolutions, new dreams, new hopes, new plans and new wishes. New Year gives a perfect starting point for opening the next chapter of our life and making it better and brighter than the previous one.

Unfortunately not all of our dreams and desires become reality. Keeping the initial enthusiasm and motivation over the long period of time is often tough. If you have made resolutions last year you probably know how difficult it is to stay committed to them.

The reason why so many people give up on their New Year’s resolutions almost as quickly as they make them is simple.

While resolutions for the New Year give us a wonderful sense of positive intent, they are extremely hard to stick with unless we turn them into clear, well-defined goals.

Here are some goal setting tips that will help you to stay on track with your resolutions and make the upcoming year unforgettable:

1. Get It Right The First Time

Before trying to formulate any actual long-term goal for the next year have a ‘mind dump’. It’s a great and simple way of getting a lot of ideas out of your head, clear your mind and get a good view of your plans, decisions, and wishes.

Devote at least 20 minutes of your uninterrupted time to brainstorm. Sit down and relax. Take a piece of paper and write down whatever goals come to your mind. Don’t analyze anything. Just write it down. Big or small. Simple desires or life changes. Everything you wish you had gotten to, but didn’t. Anything you wanted for a long time, but never had enough time, courage, or persistence to follow through.

2. Pick Your Goal!

Take a look at the goals that you have written down… Are any of your resolutions unrealistic? What is the most important goal for you at the moment?

I’m sure that there are many goals that you would like to accomplish, but only few of them will have the biggest impact on your life this year.

Which goal is it? Is it something that can be achieved in one year? Or will it require more time? If it is a long term goal that will take several years to achieve, you might want to break it down into smaller goals that you can accomplish in less that a year. Otherwise, there is a high chance of losing motivation and initial momentum.

3. Concentrate Your Efforts On JUST ONE Goal

Don’t set a lot of different goals at the same time. Although it may seem like a good idea to divide your focus, time and energy between multiple goals, in reality it is counter-productive.

When you set a goal – you make a decision to stay committed to it. If you are pursuing a lot of goals at the same time, you aren’t committed to any of them. You’re just going with the flow, hoping that you’ll find time to squeeze everything into your already busy schedule. But what you do in reality is lose control of your time and let outside circumstances dictate your life.

One goal gives you clarity and focus. Ten goals create chaos and confusion.

If you want to succeed in achieving your goal next year, chose just one goal at a time and stick to it until it is 100% complete. Then pick the next one.

I know that we want to have everything right this moment. Most of us are impatient by nature. But think about this: It is much better to achieve one major goal than set 10 goals and fail to accomplish any of them!

4. Create Your Mantra

Once you’ve chosen your goal, turn it into a personal statement. And then turn it into something more than a statement – make it your own mantra or a verbal formula that is continuously repeated in your mind.

Make sure that you make your goal as detailed and clear as possible. There is a great way to check if your goal is stated correctly. Look at your goal “from the distance”. Forget that you have written these words just a few hours ago. Imagine that you see this statement for the first time, because your friend wants to know your opinion on it. Do you have any questions? Or maybe you would like to clarify a few things? If so, make adjustments to your goal, until it is 100% clear to everyone who reads it for the first time.

After that put copies of your goal on an index card, make it your desktop wallpaper, post it in the car or right next to your bathroom mirror or next to your computer at work.

Ensure that your goal is always at a forefront of your mind. Repeat it out loud every single day. Make your goal a center of your focus.

This will help you to keep your motivation and excitement high throughout the day.

5. Decide On An Action Plan

Many people fail to achieve their goals not because they lack desire or enthusiasm, but because they fail to plan their success out.

Goals are not simple items on your to-do list. They can’t be done overnight. Any worthwhile goal requires sustained effort and energy over the long period of time. Without a well-thought action plan it is almost impossible to carry big goals out.

If you want to noticeably improve your chances of success – plan specific actions that will lead you to the desired result. Your goal should be your compass that will point you into the right direction.

Your action plan is a detailed map that with the baby steps will take you to your destination point. Action plan also helps you to monitor your progress, while giving you a sense of accomplishment and making the whole process seem a lot easier.

6. Make Your Success Inevitable

Even if the goal that we have chosen sounds really appealing, it doesn’t mean that we will stick to it. When it comes to doing actual work, our motivation disappears with a speed of light.

Here is a quick example. Having a beautiful, toned and slim body is a very inspirational goal. We all want to be healthy and look great. However, getting up early in the morning to run 1 mile, denying ourselves things we love to eat, changing our lifestyle sounds much less appealing. At this point we have to consciously force ourselves into doing all these things to get the end result that we want.

Of course, if you have an iron will and unbending self-discipline, you will achieve your goal anyways. But if you are like me, you probably won’t torture yourself for a long period of time. Fortunately, there is a way how you can accomplish anything you desire, without having to force yourself into doing something.

All you have to do is set up the right conditions and let things happen for themselves.

For example, if you want to get more exercise, you can find a friend who wants to get back in shape and offer him/her to exercise together. Or set up an appointment with a personal trainer at the gym. He will stay by your side the whole time and you will more likely do your best. Or you can make a deal with your spouse that every workout that you’ll skip, you’ll give him/her $40.

Leave yourself no escape from achieving your goal. What conditions can you set up to make your success inevitable? With a little imagination and support of your friends and family you can accomplish any goal!

7. Build On Your Success

No matter what goal you have decided to pursue, there is only one way to achieve it – take a first step and build on your success gradually.

There is no way around it. You can’t become a multi-millionaire without making your first million. You can’t get in shape and have a gorgeous looking body, without doing the first workout. You can’t write a book, without writing the first chapter.

Whatever you want to accomplish you must do something every single day towards making your wish reality.

Even if you do just a little bit. Something that doesn’t require a lot of your time of effort, but you do it DAILY, you will achieve even your most daring goals.

Don’t let a single day go by without “incrementally” adding to an accomplishment of your goal. Consistency is the most important factor of success. Not motivation, not knowledge, not your skills – but consistency.

When we are first faced with everything we must do in order to achieve our goal it is easy to feel overwhelmed. When a goal seems too difficult to accomplish we often procrastinate, preferring to postpone hard work for later. The problem with it is that “later” may never come.

The only moment when you can change or do something is NOW. Don’t delude yourself with self-justifications that it is ok to skip today, if you do twice the work the next day. Deep down you know that it is just another story that you are telling yourself.

Do something that will take you closer to your goal every single day. Even a tiny step towards your goal creates momentum and boosts motivation. And it is a step that you will never have to take again.

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At the beginning of each year many people create concrete goals for the year ahead, while some people make resolutions to give up bad habits or the things that hold their lives back.

While giving up things can be very beneficial, in many cases it is often better to create a new habit that counteracts the old bad habit, rather than forcing ourselves to change a bad habit.

Creating a new habit is a lot easier and results in the same outcome.

Personally, at the beginning of each New Year I think it’s a lot more effective to create clear concise goals and create a set of action steps that we will take to achieve them.

Goal setting is really straightforward, but a lot of people do it in such a way where they end up not achieving them and instead become disillusioned and disempowered.

There really is no big secret about how to achieve our goals, and how we can do this in such a way where we are guaranteed great results every time.

The first step is always examining what it is that we truly desire; the things that we truly yearn for and to write these down on a piece of paper.

Once we have a basic list of goals, we then need to rewrite them into short, concise statements. It’s important that each of our goals is crystal clear, so having long wordy goals isn’t a great idea.

A very important part of goal setting that many people leave out; is to have a very clear reason WHY we are setting the goal and include it as part of our goal statement.

For example, we may be concerned about our health and we may recognise that we need to take more exercise.

Having a goal simply to take more exercise is not very specific, nor does it include a good enough reason to take that exercise.

So, if we add a very clear strong reason for achieving our goal, then it gives our goals far more momentum and power.

When we build into goals a very clear reason why, we give them energy and power and on a subconscious level we are far more motivated to achieving them.

If we don’t include a reason why, then chances are as time goes by we will be less inclined to bring our goals to fruition.

Another very important part of goal setting is to include a date by which we will have achieved our goal.

Again, this affects us powerfully on a subconscious level, but it also adds additional motivation for us to take concrete action steps towards achieving a goal by the date we have set.

So when we create crystal clear, concise goals, and include a strong motivating reason why we will achieve them, and a deadline by which we will achieve them, we infuse our goals with energy and power.

So, if we do all this correctly, is it still possible to not achieve our goals?

Well, the short answer is of course yes. Everything depends on the consistency of our efforts towards achieving our goals and our continued motivation to do so.

Many people give up half way, and this can really end up piling on disempowerment and disillusionment. Making half-hearted attempts to achieve goals can do more harm than good and it can hold us back from achieving future goals.

So by looking at our goals every morning and every evening, and infusing them with emotion and excitement – these things will have a VERY strong affect, and will ultimately enable us to achieve our goals.

It’s also important to visualise as clearly as we can what is will feel like and be like when our goal has been achieved. This day dreaming about what it will be like once we’ve achieved our goals can have a very beneficial effect and can speed up the process greatly.

As I mentioned earlier it’s very important to break down each of our goals into very definite action steps. For example, if our goal is to become a skilled writer by a certain date then our action steps might include such things as doing a course in creative writing, setting aside one hour every morning to write, but also include doing a course to improve our typing speed.

Unless we sit down and figure out what action steps we need to take achieve our goals, our efforts could be in vain.

Now, I do realise that when we set some types of goal we may not yet know what all those specific action steps should be.

However, we still need to write down as many action steps as we can think of. Then as we take regular consistent action every day towards achieving the goal, as time goes by and our understanding grows, the next steps in the plan will naturally emerge.

Now, there is something else that holds back so many people from achieving the goals. And that’s our subconscious beliefs about ourselves, about life, and what is actually possible for us.

Many people make goals but subconsciously they don’t believe that they will be able to achieve them, or that they are not even worthy of achieving them.

Our subconscious beliefs are really what dictates what we can achieve in life and who we will become.

Even if we are setting our goals 100% correctly and taking actions towards their achievement; it still possible for our subconscious beliefs to completely sabotage the entire process.

This is something that stops most people from achieving their hearts desire. We all have subconscious beliefs that sabotage the things that we try to achieve in life.

We build up these beliefs through the conditioning we receive while growing up, painful experiences that we go through, and by believing all sorts of incorrect things that society tells us.

So how do we reprogram our subconscious mind so that we can achieve our goals?

Well, if we have a goal to run a marathon in two months time, and if we are currently very overweight, then achieving such a goal could be quite challenging.

Firstly, we need to get fit and lose weight, and possibly change how we eat. We may also have strong subconscious beliefs that tell us that such a goal is impossible.

So if you are making a goal that will change your life dramatically in some way, then it is often much better to gradually stretch the limits of your subconscious beliefs.

In the case of running a marathon, it might be better to set the goal to run a marathon in six months time rather than two months.

You see, what we believe deep down is what will really determine whether or not we can achieve something.

We need to gradually increase the limits of our beliefs. We just can’t very easily do it all at once, especially if our goal is really big.

Another example might be determining to make $1 million within one year. If we have never earned more than $100,000 in a single year then making such a determination could be stretching the limits of our subconscious belief a bit too much.

It might be better to make a goal of achieving $200,000 in the next year and then later after we have achieved that goal and as a result of the empowerment that comes from achieving such a goal, we can then make an even bigger goal.

So, it really is important to gradually stretch the limits of our inner beliefs. Because when we do this, we are far more likely to have greater successes.

If you just set dramatic huge goals for yourself without having achieved such things ever before then in many cases you will end up very disappointed and disillusioned and even disempowered.

As I said earlier this can actually have an even greater negative affect on future goal setting.

Anyway, I hope this short talk about how to make goals correctly has helped to.

Everything comes down to how clear your goal is, a big reason why you wish to achieve it, and a very definite date by which it will be achieved.

After that, you need to read your goals (preferably aloud) morning and evening with emotion and excitement, as though you had already achieved them.

And visualising exactly what it will be like when you achieve them. You need to imagine all of this, as though it were happening right now.

Then you need to take strong consistent daily actions towards your goals achievement.

Your actions don’t need to be huge or stretch you too much. Just small daily consistent actions over time add up to dramatic improvements in your life.

P.S. If you liked this post then you’ll like my books as well. You can get them on Amazon.