By February, most people have already given up on their new year’s resolutions (or have talked themselves out of it.) This comes from many factors, which we’ll address shortly. And by the end of this, you’ll have a clear plan with 5 steps to achieving big goals in your life.
“Remember, no more effort is required to aim high in life than to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty.” - Napoleon Hill
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2 things that stop you from achieving your goals
The 2 main factors that stop people from achieving big goals in their life are mindset and strategy.
Mindset includes factors such as fear, limiting beliefs, internal chatter, and so on. This is incredibly important. The perfect strategy in the world won’t work without these things in a good place. I have spoken about these many times before and will continue to do so in the future. However, today is all about the fun stuff - strategy.
Both mindset and strategy are essential for you to make massive shifts and achieve your dreams. I just want you to keep that in mind.
What steps should I make in order to achieve my goal?
We’ll dive deeper into each step, but first, here’s the overview.
Step 1 - Create a vision for your life
Step 2 - Step 2: Set yearly goals (The Mountain)
Step 3 - Step 3: Set Quarterly Goals (The Boulders)
Step 4 - Step 4: Steps and Actions (The Rocks)
Step 5 - Step 5: Habits (The Sand)
Step 1: Create a Big Vision for Your Life
I remember back in 2013 when I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with my mentor, Bob Proctor. He told me to forget my current circumstances and reality, to disconnect and allow myself the freedom to use my imagination. He encouraged me to truly think about what I would love to be, do, or have. So, I’ll ask you to do the same.
Perhaps you can spend some time in nature, or some quiet time alone. Allow yourself to dream big and picture yourself living your most ideal lifestyle.
Take your time here. Clarity is key.
Step 2: Set yearly goals (The Mountain)
Steps for achieving my goal in 1 year from now
Once you know what you truly want, we need to make it become a reality through reverse-engineering the process.
Maybe your future vision is for 10, 15, 20 years down the road. It may even be closer than that. What matters is that we have a future direction and we can estimate what is possible by breaking down some exciting yearly goals first.
Pick 1-3 of your highest priority goals for the key areas of your life. (Hint - They should be taking you somewhat towards your future vision)
Pick goals that feel exciting and that feel slightly uncomfortable. You want them to feel like a little stretch. Remember, this is about achieving big goals, not small ones.
Step 3: Set Quarterly Goals (The Boulders)
Steps to achieve short term goals
Now it’s time to bring the goals even closer by setting up to 3 mini-goals (90-day sprints).
Example - Let’s say your goal is to lose 30lbs this year. Perhaps one of your mini-goals over 3 months is to lose 10-12lbs.
Losing 12lbs would be 1 of your 3 shorter-term goals.
This is already starting to look achievable, right?
Next up we’re going to dive into the key steps required to make it possible.
Step 4: Steps and Actions (The Rocks)
Now that you have 1-3 short term goals, it’s time to create a list of the key steps and actions that we need to take to make it possible.
First, let’s start with the steps.
Try and see the key steps as the checkpoints for all of the daily actions and tasks that make the goal possible. And don’t go overboard with the steps. 10 or so should be enough. I’ll demonstrate using the fitness example again with the image below.
You can see that each step has several actions to be completed. Once they are all completed, you move to the next step, until you have reached and achieved the goal.
The actions are the tasks that you schedule into your calendar. The tricky part here is knowing how long things take. You’ll have to give it a shot and take a guess. Over time, you’ll become better at predicting these things.
So just to be clear…
We just gave an example for 1 of your quarterly goals. You would repeat the same process for each of the goals you have. That’s why I don’t recommend going much more than 3. You may have a goal in health and fitness, business, your relationships, social life goals, or making more money. Pick whatever is most important at this moment in time.
Step 5: Habits (The Sand)
Your habits reveal so much about you and the results in your life. They are similar to the actions. However, the actions are more specific tasks required to meet the goal. Your habits are going to be ongoing rituals and routines that allow you to perform and live at your best.
Consider some of the following areas of life with important opportunities for powerful habits:
Health habits:
Sleep, nutrition, exercise, mindfulness, daily thoughts
Wealth habits:
Tracking finances, budgeting, saving, investing, growing
Relationship habits:
Communication, date nights, kindness, intimacy, sharing
You can check out this great book on habits by James clear, called Atomic Habits. (Links below)
Blinkist Book Summaries (Free Trial)
5 Steps to Achieving Big Goals in Your Life
Hopefully, this demonstrates how you can take a clear vision for your life and break it down into a realistic and very achievable thing when you follow a system.
Now that you have the system, all that’s left for you to do is to implement it.
If you’d like some help along your journey in achieving your goals, you can book a call with me here. A coach can truly help you accelerate your progress, hold you accountable, and help you grow into the person you’ve envisioned in your future.