Achieving Your Goals
There is only one way to go when it comes to achieving your goals, and that is believing optimistically you can, and adopting willpower and perseverance. This is my opinion, but of course it also requires to have a very clear image of what your goals are, why you want to achieve these goals and what are you expecting from your personal and professional life to make them happen. Most people do not get to complete pursuing their goals because they forget what their purpose was in the first place and they loose motivation. They were not ready in their mind and they didn’t have any expectations. Today I would like to share with you a few steps to get you ready to start setting up your goals and make them happen.
First you need to understand your goals. The best way to describe them is asking yourself a few simple questions: what do you want? How does it make you feel? Why it is so important for you to achieve it? Once you achieve it what do you see and feel? Start writing all this in a piece of paper and try to do it in a quiet moment where you could also close your eyes and visualize it. The more visual you make it the more attainable it becomes, and don’t worry, even if now you may see it unattainable, believe it or not, nothing is impossible and you can never know what tomorrow may bring.
Start creating a plan to make it happen. Break down everything you have previously written and start thinking how are you going to make it happen. Ask yourself also what obstacles you might find in the way and anticipate how you will work around them. Learning to be resilient is important too, there will be probably more than one time you will be challenged to get out of your own comfortable way to get into a new and uncomfortable situation. Is like when you are planning to go to the gym every morning and you anticipate is going to be dark and cold and you might prefer to have a snooze. Something that might work to remind you snoozing won’t drive you towards your goals is setting up in the alarm one of your favorite songs so it can remind you to make that initial effort to get up. That’s why is important to enrich your plan with realistic and actionable steps. Make sure you write your plan down as well so you can really have a start point to begin committing to your plan.
Now that you have a plan, take action! This is going to be your big day, the day when everything you always dream of is going to start taking shape. Make a note of this day, something I would suggest for you to do is to take a video of yourself and save it. In the video share what you are about to embark into, show your excitement and your commitment. This is great, because anytime you feel low you can go back to it to find inspiration. It is also great to watch it when you have achieved your goal.
I understand at some point in your journey you might feel overwhelmed and that is why is going to be important to acknowledge it and take a moment to clear things out. Take a step back to think and prioritize and then move forward again taking one step at a time. Ask yourself, what is happening now? Why do I feel this way? what would be making me feel better without taking me away from this journey? Break it down, our human brain has several defense systems that tell it to avoid the things that make us uncomfortable. By breaking it down, and investing short time-frames of uninterrupted work in each task it becomes a lot easier to maintain your focus and do the work without feeling overwhelmed.
Remember you are not alone. Once you have completed your plan, think who is going to be your support system and share your goals with this important people. I believe everyone in life should have 3 type of people in their support system and is important to be very clear of who is who.
The Encourager - Helps you feel good about yourself the way you need to feel.
The Speed Bumper - Will be giving you different views, and make you cautious with the decisions you make.
The Rock - Will be there for the good times and the bad. They care about you. Someone you can trust with everything you do regardless what it is.
Track your progress, it is important to appreciate every milestone you complete. Understand if you are falling behind and if you need extra support at any time to continue with success.
Celebrate every single step that takes you forward in your journey! and remember don’t beat yourself up if sometime in the way you fail. Remember to get up again and learn from it to make you stronger. Failure is a natural part of the process, so something you also need to anticipate. But above all celebrate your wins, appreciate yourself and remember, you are doing it for yourself.
And love yourself, because that is who you will be spending the rest of your life with. And to learn how honest you are saying you love yourself ask yourself this question first: If I ask you to name all the things you love, how long it would take for you to name yourself?
And if you haven’t been told this today: you are loved, you are ridiculously beautiful, you are smart, you are talented and you are enough. So love yourself first and then everything else will fall into place. Good luck achieving your goals!