“People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.”
– Brian Tracy
Have you ever dreamed of living the perfect life?
Driving your dream car, traveling around the world, flying first class, visiting the most beautiful beaches while enjoying your latte, owning multi-million-dollar businesses but without you having to work on them and you only choose to work when you wanted to, having a lovely family and raising kids with the woman you love?
Are you living these dreams right now? Or are these dreams seem so far away from you that you will never materialize them?
One thing I know, and for sure, that everyone wanted to live a successful life, be in their career and business or in their personal life, everyone wants to be successful.
However, the majority of them are not living their dream life. Why?
There are plenty of reasons why people aren’t living the dream life they desire and there are also many reasons why people are achieving incredible success and producing outstanding results in their lives.
Today, we’re going to delve into the secrets of success – what should you do to achieve your goals and live the successful life you want.
No matter how big the success you want, you can achieve it through goal setting and taking just one step at a time.
How do you eat an elephant? The answer: One bite at a time.
You can be successful and live your wildest dreams by breaking your big goal into smaller and more achievable goals.
And with this, it simply means that anyone can achieve extraordinary results they desire through taking just one little step at a time.
“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” —Pablo Picasso
So are you ready to discover the 7 incredible goal setting strategies that if you apply them, I’m sure that they will catapult you toward the success you want?
1. Make Your Goals Crystal Clear
Alright, I’ve heard you. You knew about this and you have heard about setting specific and crystal clear goals since centuries ago.
Well, the fascinating truth is that most people still don’t have a clear goal even when they know that in order for them to achieve their goals, they need to be specific.
Why does your goal need to be specific?
Let me give you an example. From the 2 options below, which do you think is more likely to happen?
– “I will go to the gym for workout session this week”, or
– “I will go to the gym this Wednesday at 6 pm and workout for an hour until 7 pm”.
Obviously, the answer is the second option.
When you say things in specificity, you are directly telling your mind of what you want to do or accomplish, and as a result, your mind will remember and remind you of what you need to do or achieve.
From the example above, your mind cannot tell when the event is going to happen, and thus, there’s a high probability that you will forget about it and do nothing.
On the other hand, when you are specific by stating the exact date and time and what you need to do, your mind will remember it better and remind you about it.
When Wednesday comes, the thought that you need to get to the gym for an hour workout session at 6 pm will trigger. As a result, the chances for you to act on it will be higher.
The same principle applies in goal setting. And this is why your goals must be crystal clear if you want to achieve them.
This is especially true if your goals are actionable goals; which are goals that you can act on.
Action Items:
Now that you know that clarity is power, make sure your goals are as clearly defined as possible.
It doesn’t matter what goals you are trying to achieve, make them as specific as possible. For instance, you can ask questions like these:
“What has to happen when I’m successful?”
“What has to happen when I achieved my goal?”
This type of questions will trigger your mind to think about the condition of success.
You should come up with answers that will help you to make your goals specific and crystal clear.
I strongly suggest you read my previous article: How Do You Define Success And The Real Meaning Behind
2. Hold Your Goals In Your Mind Through Repetition
Do you know why most people fail to achieve their goals? The answer is pretty simple, they set their goals once, and then they forget about them.
Goal setting is like any other skills; you have to practice it daily if you want to get good at it.
Yes, you read it right, you have to practice daily goal setting.
Repetition is the mother of all skills. How many times do you think Michael Jordan learns to dunk? How many hours do you think Warren Buffett spends into studying the market, the company, and the economy before he invests in the company?
You have to treat goal setting like a skill. In fact, it is a skill and you have to get good at it – through daily practice and repetition.
The key is to program your goals into your subconscious mind. You will make the thinking of your goals, the visualization of your achievement and taking action become your habits.
When this new habit forms, rest assure that it is just a matter of time that you will achieve your goals.
If you tell yourself once that you are a good tennis player and you will win your state competition this year, guess what will happen? Well, probably not much.
You will feel driven when you first conceive the thought in your head; you may start training, maybe for a few days or maybe not at all. But that’s all you will do. When you don’t have the thought in your head, you will do nothing about it.
Now, imagine if you consistently telling yourself that you are a good tennis player and you will win your state competition this year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and you keep holding this thought in your head every single minute.
Guess what will happen? Yea, you may go crazy; you may go crazy because you want to win the competition. As a result, there is a higher chance that you will put in more effort to train, to improve your skills and you can’t even get the thought out of your mind.
Do you know why successful people always talk about their dreams and what they love doing now? They practice repetition until reaching their goals become their second nature.
You have to do the same. Do something to every day to program your goals into your subconscious mind until you become so good at it that you are able to produce extraordinary results.
Action Items:
You don’t really have to write down your goals every day. All you need to do is to hold the thought of reaching your goals in your head.
For instance, you can use techniques such as visualization and affirmations to accomplish this.
Just put aside a few minutes to think about your goals, imagine that you have accomplished them and feel the excitement.
In the beginning, you will have to put in conscious effort to develop the habit. As days go by, it will become easier and effortless.
What do you think will happen if you do this each day for a year? How about three years? Do you think this will greatly impact your life and change your future?
You know the answer.
Success starts with your thoughts. Whatever you put in your head, you will get the result in the physical world.
Goal setting is just a more advanced technique that helps you better program the right thought into your mind.
So practice daily goal setting. Visualize the achievement of your dreams. Practice affirmations that will drive you and inspire you to take action.
3. Incorporate The Accountability Factor
What will you do when there is no one watching? Are you going to slack off or are you going to work hard on your goals?
Most people lack the accountability towards their goals. They are not as committed as they thought they were.
And because it takes the time to produce the success result you desire, accountability and commitment play important roles.
First, you must understand that achieving great success requires commitment. Are you willing to wake up early to work on your goals? Are you willing to sacrifice your leisure time to study the economy and the market? Are you willing to give up your weekend fun time to do research on which company is performing better so that you can invest in their stocks?
Second, you need to make yourself accountable for your goals. When the accountability is there, you will do what it takes, no matter you feel like it or not.
On the other hand, when the accountability is not there, most people will do what is convenient. They choose to skip jogging because it feels warmer and more comfortable to continue to sleep on their bed.
Extraordinary people are ordinary people, it is just that they are willing to do the “EXTRA” and that is what makes them extraordinary.
Successful people choose to work on their goals and their dreams regardless of whether they like it or not.
Bill Gates is the richest man in the world for a reason. This is what he said:
“I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.” – Bill Gates
Read the biography of successful people and you will understand why they are able to produce amazing results in life. It is because they feel accountable and they put in tremendous effort to create something out of nothing.
You can do the same. You can be successful too. Just decide that you are going to do what most people are not willing to do. And do something extra.
Action Items:
There are a couple of great ideas how you can hold yourself accountable toward your goals. Here are some of the suggestions…
Get A Partner – Sometimes it is boring to hit the gym alone. Get a partner and do it together so that you will be there at the agreed time and workout together. Of course, this applies to every other area of your life too. This is also why business partners exist.
Make A Public Commitment – Share your goals with someone who will support you. When you do this, you know it very well that you are going to work on your goals and try your very best to achieve them. You are putting yourself on the line when you do this.
Get A Mentor – One of the best ways to achieve great success is to get yourself a mentor. Ever wonder why professional athletes have coaches? A mentor can guide you, point you in the right direction and inspire you to produce a better result.
Reward Yourself – Once you have taken some actions, reward yourself, give a pat on your back. You can stop for a while, take a rest, make your favorite beverage, eat a snack, and watch a movie, etc. as rewards. Make yourself feel good and satisfy with your action so that you will want to take more action again.
Motivate Yourself – Sometimes it is really difficult to stay on track. What you need to do then is to motivate yourself. Try listening to some fast paced and uplifting music and songs, watch a short motivational video clip, revisit your goals and your purpose why you want to accomplish them, visualize with a vision board, etc.
You have to understand that being accountable has a lot to do with your characters. If you are someone who takes things seriously, highly likely you will have more accountable toward your goals.
If you are not, don’t worry, you can build up the character through practice and making it a habit.
Whatever you have promised yourself, do it. Don’t give excuses or whatever reasons not to procrastinate. Make it a habit, and eventually, it will become your character.
I have to congratulate you for coming this far. The majority of people who read this article will not read until this point. But if you are reading this right now, it simply means that you are different.
You are serious and committed to achieving your goals. I know it, which is why you are learning the strategies here. Continue to read on, and I will show you more.
4. Make The Progress Counts
After you have set your goals, what truly helps you achieve your goal is NOT the goal itself, but the progress.
Therefore, you must learn to make the progress count. In other words, you have to focus on the goals, but work on the progress and make it your habit.
When you work on the progress, you must turn your goals into performance goals. Usually, you will be able to come up with performance goals by breaking your goal smaller.
For example, if your goal is to lose X pounds, your performance goal can be something like, jogging for an hour on Monday and Wednesday, from 6 am to 7 am.
Performance goals should be something you can work on. Something you can actually do and measure their completion.
So set your performance goals now. Think about them, brainstorm and write down all the actions you can do to produce the result you want.
A lot of people set their goal like “I want to be happy” or “I want to be rich”, these goals are unclear and you cannot act on them.
In order to act on them, your goals must be broken down into smaller pieces whereby you can actually perform them.
If you cannot act on your goals, you will feel lost and not sure what to do. Hence, you will end up not doing anything at all.
Creating performance goal is important because it will construct your new habit.
When you are in the progress of taking action each day, it means you are working in routine and it will eventually become your habit.
Just like if you go for jogging every Monday and Wednesday for an hour from 6 am, if you do it each week without fail, you will have built the habit of doing it.
And this is important because habits will determine the results we get. This is why progress is crucial. Most people set goals, but they never give much thought about their progress, this is why they fail.
Action Items:
Break down your goals into performance or progress goals. And then stick to your progress until you make it your habit.
And when you have developed the habit, things will become easier, smooth and automatic. You will never ask, reject or procrastinate on it anymore.
Research has shown that it takes less effort to accomplish a habitual task than a task that you seldom do.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle
5. Practice The Power Of “The Big Five”
Some of you may have heard of this technique, it is all about taking action. It is about taking 5 action steps that will lead you to your goals. And that is why it is called the “Big Five”.
You are going to take 5 actions that will get you the result you want each day.
Well, I first learned this technique from Robin Sharma, the author behind The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.
What most people lack is action, not so much about technique or strategy.
Most people fail to achieve their goals because they are all about the talk and did not make the walk.
They say that they want to get rich, they want to build a successful e-commerce website, they want to build a blog and earn passive income from it, they want to invest 10% of their income into the stock market, they want to save money and buy a property, etc.
However, most people are just a talker, they are not a doer. They did not take any action that will lead them to the success they want.
Jack Ma once said that most people dream big at night after they get back home from work. They dream about a thousand ways to start a business, to get rich, to buy their dream cars, and so on.
But when the next day comes, they continue their normal daily routine. Wake up late, get to the office and work at the job that they don’t like.
Nothing changes.
So don’t let this be you. Stop dreaming if you are not going to do anything about it. If you want to dream, do it with solid action steps.
Don’t just talk the talk, you should walk the talk. If you’re just going to say about it or dream about it and do nothing, stop wasting your time on it. You’d rather spend time thinking and doing something else.
This is exactly what is happening to most people out there right now. They dream and think too much. And they are not taking any action.
Thus, practice the Big Five technique and live with it.
If your goal is to build a successful blog, make sure you take 5 action steps that will get you there each day.
You can write an article, update your blog’s Facebook page, send an email for guest article request, share your content on social media, brainstorm your next piece of content, etc.
Whatever you do, no matter how big or how small the action, just do it. Do 5 things a day.
Action Items:
Make it a habit of taking action each day. By now, you should understand that success is not instant. And because of this, you do not want to cramp yourself with a ton of actions until you burnout.
Success is a marathon and not a sprint. You are going in for the long haul. So make sure you do what you can handle and still able maintain your composure for the long-term.
If you try to take 20 action steps a day, how long do you think you can maintain? How long can you take before you collapse and say that it is not going to work out?
Try to run a full marathon and spend 90% of your energy in the first 3km. What do you think will happen?
You will be exhausted and make the entire marathon takes even longer to finish.
So take just 5 action steps a day. Follow through the Big Five and do it, consistently.
The hare runs fast, but he lost the competition. The tortoise walks slowly, but surely, and he wins the race.
6. Leverage On The Success Cycle
When it comes to taking consistent action and producing amazing results, most people don’t have the persistence to go on for the long run.
What really happens is that most people would take some actions, and when they don’t get the result they desire, they will give up.
The thing is that success will not come that quickly and thus, in the process of taking action, but without seeing any result, this is where most people choose to give up and quit, or they will just jump to another opportunity or chase another goal.
Thus, to avoid this, what you want to do is to leverage on the success cycle. People gain confidence and motivation when they see the results coming in. Hence, they put in more effort and take more action. And with more action, they get more results.
Conversely, when you take action but you don’t see the result, you will feel dejected and lose motivation. What happens next is that you started to doubt yourself and started to put in less effort. With less effort poured in, you get less or no result.
The cycle goes on and on. Watch this video below and see how Tony Robbins explains the success cycle in about 3 minutes.
You now know how success works. So how are you going to leverage on this cycle?
Take the RIGHT ACTION and DO IT FAST.
If you want to produce results, even if it is just a small result, you have to take the right action and do it right away.
When you take the wrong action, you produce no result. If you wait for it, you may lose the drive and momentum. Thus, you want to do it right and do it quick.
When you get some result, you feel good, you believe that you can do it, and you will put in more action. When you put in more action, you get more result, you strengthen your beliefs even more.
Of course, the opposite can happen too. This is why you want to make sure that you GET RESULT as quickly as possible.
This is the reason why the richer get richer and the poor get poorer. Successful people will continue to produce better and more results and depress people will feel more depressed.
You have to find a way to create breakthrough through this cycle.
Action Items:
In order to produce results, you must make sure that you are doing the right thing. You must make sure you take the right action to produce the result you want.
Therefore, find the right strategy to get what you want. Get yourself a mentor, learn directly from someone who has done it before, read books, and attend seminars and workshops.
When you follow the right strategy, there is a higher chance that you will create the right result. When you get the right result, it strengthens your belief that you can do it and hence, you will put in more effort.
By the way, remember to celebrate your wins too. No matter how small your win, you must feel it and celebrate. This is extremely important especially when things are going tough.
The first time you make a sale, you celebrate like crazy and you are so happy. Keep the attitude and celebrate your 1037th sale because that is an achievement too.
Most people don’t celebrate it anymore after some time because it has become a norm. Don’t let this happen to you. Keep the momentum going and continue to celebrate all your wins, no matter how small it is.
Be making a phone call, publishing a blog post, writing an article, saying “Thank you” or “I’m sorry” to someone, pushing the junk food away, hitting the gym for an hour, etc.
Celebrate and feel the joy because you have done something to move forward toward your goals. Feel it.
7. You Need A Scoreboard
If you are serious about reaching your goal, you must create a scoreboard to measure your result so that you will know where you are right now and what you should do to achieve your targets.
If you are in sales, you will know that most sales companies or departments will send out sales chart of their salespeople each month or each week. Some even do it on a daily basis.
When you watch a basketball match, there is a big scoreboard at the middle of the court. The same goes for every other sport. The scoreboard is there for some reasons:
1) It measures your performance.
A scoreboard clearly shows where you are right now, how much time left, and the ultimate goal.
This will give you a clear sense of your progress and performance. If you are behind your progress, you will know when you take a look at the scoreboard.
You can then work harder to reach your target.
2) It makes the game competitive
This is one of the most important reasons to have a scoreboard. Imagine when you are walking in the park. You can see a group of kids playing basketball on the court.
And you can tell straight away if they are playing for fun or they are competing and keeping score.
The reason being that when the score keeping is in progress, everyone wants to win. And when this happens, people will try their best and win the game.
On the contrary, when there is no score keeping, people will just play for fun and in a more relaxed mode. They don’t mind if their competitor gets the ball, there is no keeping score and no competition anyway.
Do you get it now? This is why you need to keep score on your progress. So create a scoreboard for your goals.
3) It makes you more serious and committed to the game.
When you are keeping score for your goals, you will be more serious and more committed because there’s a competition going on.
This is especially true when the scoreboard is visible to the public. If you are not performing, your results will show in the scoreboard and your partners, colleagues, or coworkers will know.
Action Items:
What you need to do here is simple, just create a scoreboard. It does not need to be a complicated one. Just a simple scoreboard to show your measurement and progress will do.
If you read the book, The 4 Disciplines Of Execution, which I strongly recommend anyone who is serious about achieving their goals to read, your scoreboard must show these 4 items:
– It must be simple and straight to the point.
– It must be highly visible to you and or anyone.
– It must show your ultimate goal.
– You must be able to tell if you are winning or losing by taking a quick glance at it.
Are you 100% committed and serious about accomplishing your goals? If you do, follow the suggestion here and create your scoreboard right now.
The Goal Setting Formula
I strongly believe that anyone can achieve their goals if they are committed and follow through a set of proven principles and plans.
However, the journey may not be an easy one. That is why you need a proven blueprint, a roadmap or a recipe to get you where you want to go, faster and with the least effort possible.
This is why you need a formula and I called it the Goal Setting Formula.
I created this course about a decade ago. I first launched it in 2008 and it was well received by people.
The content from the course is evergreen and it still works today. Of course, that is if you work the principles.
There is no point to learn something new but are not applying or working on what you have learned.
This formula is designed to help you accomplish the following:
- How to set goals and achieve them like a winner.
- Learn how to stay focused and put in 100% concentration in what you do.
- Help to find out who you really are and what you really want to achieve in your life.
- Discover how to craft and design your own destiny.
- Develop strategies how to drive yourself and keep yourself motivated all the time!
- Learn how to deal with feedback and change your strategies to align with your goals.
- Learn how to make your goals actionable that you can actually act on!
- How you can set empowering goals that drive you all the time.
- How to put yourself on the line and become a super achiever!
- And much more.
Now that you have learned these incredible goal setting strategies that can get you from where you are to where you want to be, all you need to do next is to apply what you have just learned.
And if you need further assistance and discover the unlimited potential you have within you, grab my course, the Goal Setting Formula.
You will learn much more from there. You will discover how powerful goal setting can be and how you can transform your life to achieve the great success that you have always wanted.
Good article
Cheers.. 🙂