Three Essential Steps to Achieve your Goal. Do You Use Them All? Part 1 in the Achievement series

There's joy in having what you want in life. But there are three essential steps to achieving what you want. Do you know and follow them all?

Don't let Know Where become Nowhere
One of the most important is to know where you're going. If you don't know where you're going, then any road will do. Ensure the "know where" does not turn into "nowhere."

These three strategies are the secret of success in achieving any goal. Yet, although missing out any of them will sabotage your results, they're surprisingly not always followed.

1. Knowing the outcome you desire is vital in terms of getting there
2. Getting there involves doing what works, and
3. Doing what works involves obeying, rather than ignoring, the laws of the universe!

Know Your Desired Outcome
The first step is to need to know the destination. More detail is usually better, it helps to write it down. The more you can bring it to mind, the more energy you give it. Your energy helps to energize it.

If you haven't yet decided what your goal is, how can you know whether your choices will get you there? Or even know when you have achieved it?

Do What Works
To be effective, the second step is to do what works, which immediately brings up an enormous problem. Before you start, you don't have much if any idea of what does work! Experience is the crucial ingredient, but you only have experience after you finish needing it, rather than before. So perhaps let an experienced guide advise you, although be careful of following advice slavishly. You're the one who will enjoy, or suffer, the consequences.

Don't forget the most important choice you make before anything else. One critical secret of success is to choose to be positive. You don't want a negative context. This is simple, yet can change your life.

Obey the Laws of the Universe
The third step is the most challenging. Your mind has many ideas, some of which work brilliantly. And some don't! Having hijacking your thoughts, your self sabotage mechanism gives you the latter. So if you have even a vague inkling that something won't work, or a suspicion that it's a bad idea, then don't do it. This is your intuition warning you of trouble to come, it's generally your most accurate guide.

To do what works, you need to ensure that you follow the natural laws of the universe. But what are these laws? They're the way things are, the distinctions in all these Life Strategies articles. They are often commonsense principles which are simple, but not necessarily easy to follow.

Put your Energy into What you Do Want
For example, putting energy into what you don't want will only bring you what you don't want. Seems simple, right?

Yet how many people put their energy into losing weight or stopping smoking, not seeing that this just puts energy into what they don't want - being overweight or smoking. The universe ignores the negative qualifier, which is why being positive is so important. So put your energy into being fit and healthy instead, into improving your athletic capabilities, and change your life by choosing from this very different context.

But maybe you don't want to do this? Fine. But realize that such self sabotage - your unwillingness to do what works - means you're unlikely to get the results that doing it will bring. The secret of success is to learn how to change your mind constructively, then you'll know how to do what works.

Choosing What to Do
Don't rush ahead without considering whether the actions resulting from your choices will be effective. This means stopping to think things through in advance, to consider the possibilities.

You know that apples don't fall upwards against the law of gravity. You need to do what works and only what works for your actions to be effective. Why would you think that ignoring any other law of the universe will still achieve your desired result?

This may seem obvious, but when your activities do not bring your desired result, you'll change your life by fixing the cause of your failure. Stop missing out one of these three steps, choose excellence in all that you do.

Careful consideration tells you that ignoring any of these three is just self sabotage. How can you be effective if you don't do what works?

© Copyright worldwide Cris Baker, www.LifeStrategies.net All rights reserved. Republishing welcomed under Creative Commons noncommercial no derivatives license preserving all links intact, so please +1 and share this widely!

Food for Thought
"Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal — a commitment to excellence — that will enable you to attain the success you seek."

- Mario Andretti, American Formula 1, IndyCar, and Nascar racing driver. World Champion