Do You Apply These 8-Steps To Your Goals?

As we approached the end of 2004, many of us used this as an ideal time to reflect on the year past and also to look forward to the year ahead. The beginning of the new year seems an obvious time to set our goals and resolutions and to look back at our performance of the last year.

Many of us can barely remember last year's goals and yet they were probably set with the same conviction that you will feel this year. We often get excited about our goals, we can almost visualise our achievements and feel genuinely more determined than ever before.

However, many of us lose sight of our goals and we drift back on to the same road as we were on before. The enthusiasm wanes, the excitement disappears and gradually our goals become distant in our minds.

Of course, there are also many of us who have set goals and have succeeded in achieving them and are now looking forward to even more success in the year ahead.

Why is it that some succeed with their goals and others fail miserably?

The difference in achieving our goals and losing sight of them can be the difference between fulfilment and discontent, happiness and unhappiness, success and failure.

If you are determined to achieve your goals, here are eight crucially important steps to successful goal-setting nthat you must know...

1. It is imperative that all of our goals are aligned with our overall purpose in life and therefore congruent with our roles and underlying values. Without this congruency, internal discontent and turmoil is inevitable as our actions will seem contrary to our beliefs. When setting our goals therefore we must endeavour to find a best fit nwith our roles, values and purpose.

2. Research has consistently demonstrated that writing goals down has a significantly positive impact on how successful we are in achieving the desired goal. Write your goals and refer to them daily. When our mind is confronted with a written version of a goal and is exposed to it regularly – it has an amazing ability to focus on that and move towards it.

3. There is always a price to pay when we set out to nachieve a goal. There will always be something that we may have to sacrifice or there will be certain changes that we have to make. Be aware of this and be prepared to make those sacrifices with the end goal in mind.

4. Very often our own circumstances change, often beyond our own control and in an unpredictable manner. Goals should be clear and concise but not set in stone as often they need to shift slightly to accommodate these external changes. This should not change the nature of your goal but it may have a bearing on how the goal is precisely achieved. By being flexible we can be prepared for change and use this to our advantage. It is counter-productive nto challenge the change, much better to move with it.

5. There is a good chance that someone has already nsucceeded in the goal that you are striving toward. It makes perfect sense therefore to analyse how they achieved the goal and to adopt their strategies, techniques and processes yourself. It is amazing how may people have so called role-models and do very little in actually modelling their role. It sounds so simple, because it is so simple.

6. When we move towards achieving our goals we are often faced with problems, trials and adversity. The difference between success and failure is in how we respond to such adversity. This is very much related to how we perceive a situation. It is better to perceive an issue as a challenge than as a problem. Again to quote Hill -“Every adversity holds within it the seed of an equivalent success”.

7. Our senses are bombarded with an abundance of information every minute of every day. Our unconscious nmind has the mammoth task of receiving and sorting all nof this while our conscious mind concentrates on only na small portion which it has deemed as applicable to a ngiven situation. The sorting process is based on our npersonal past experiences and therefore one person’s nselection may be completely different from another's.
The sorting process usually occurs unconsciously, nalmost automatically but we have the capacity to nconsciously control this process. We need to be aware nof what information to delete and what to focus on in nrelation to our goals. Notice what is possible in a nsituation rather than what is impossible.

8. Napoleon Hill once said that “If you think like na successful person and act like a successful person nyou will be a successful person”. Have confidence in nyour own ability to achieve your goals and you will nmove toward them with greater levels of efficiency.

By adopting these eight steps in your goal setting, younare well on your way to balanced success. I wish younwell on this crucial stage of your journey. Be pro-activenin your pursuit of happiness.