How to Achieve Goals (Really)

Goal setting is important. Really important.

With the New Year, everyone is sharing their New Year Resolutions.
Six pack abs, more money, travel, etc.

Resolutions and goals are life changing and changes don’t come easy.

It is common knowledge that gyms see a spike in memberships during the beginning of the year and declining attendance in the later months.

The truth is goals and resolutions require a lot more discipline than people expect.

It is no wonder that people give up so easily and so soon.

To attain our goals realistically and seamlessly, we need to have them supplement our existing lifestyles. We can organize this into a system. To set this system up, you need to do 3 things:

1. Set The Goals You Really Want to Achieve

“The journey of a thousand miles begin with one step.” – Lao Tzu

The commoner lets other people set goals for him. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. He sees everyone else going to the gym so he thinks that would be it.

He sees people posting up luxury watches so he thinks he should get one too.

Don’t be him. Please.

The goals are yours. So you are fully accountable as to how it pans out.

Remember the time something you given to you and you sort of treasured it, compared to the time you actually had to get it yourself and treasured it fully.

You tend to take things more seriously when it is entirely yours.

2. Break Your Goal Down Into Small Actionable Steps

Let’s say your goal is to make more money in your day job.
What are the steps you need to do to get there?

You need to take on more responsibility at your job and be more wise to when it comes decision making.

But the first won’t happen till you do the latter.

Question – how do you become more wise?

Besides putting myself in situations to make decisions, you need the right frame of mind to make it.

You can go about it by reading books.

If you break it down to small bite sized pieces, that would be a few pages at a time.

If you wanted to workout, you can start with just 5 pushups.

“5 PUSHUPS? I rather not do it!”

Trust me, it’s better to start small and be consistent than to go big and unpredictable.

3. Make It Complement Your Lifestyle.

So let’s say you have decided that reading books are the way to go for you.

But the problem is, if you never liked reading books, you would have an uphill battle.

Like you, I didn’t enjoy reading books so much but I wanted the benefit –  the knowledge.

I discovered early on that no matter how many books I bought, it would take a lot of time and effort to get through 30 pages in one sitting. And it’s a strain on my eyes.

The solution?
Audiobooks.

It wasn’t until I discovered audiobooks that I was able to listen to up to 2 to 3 books a week without carving out extra time on my schedule.

I got to this conclusion with this question:

What form does your action step take?

For example, reading books is a form of _______.
My answer? Consuming information.

With that, take a Sherlock Holmes approach and reflect on how you regularly consume information.

For me, it was:
Music – through my earphones
Radio – speaker in my car
YouTube videos – earphones and my smartphone
Facebook – on my smartphone

I was already used to consuming information through my ears i.e. listening – therefore, audiobooks were a great fit to me. I just had to swap out the music for audiobooks.

So everytime I go and take a drive, I will be listening to about a fifth of a book in a round trip.

I didn’t need to change my schedule or lifestyle to get smart.

It is highly important that you take baby steps. Don’t go all in thinking you will get all you ever wanted in a few months.

Good things take time.