If you could make all your wishes come true, what would they be? What if someone gives you a superpower that you can make all your dreams a reality? Thinking about your life’s goals is a way to jumpstart this superpower.
If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
– Yogi Berra
Let us make this our best year yet by formulating a plan to achieve your goals. But the condition is that you must define and write your goals clearly and take active action to make them a reality.
You control your future, your destiny. What you think about comes about. By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you want to be. Put your future in good hands – your own.
– Mark Victor Hansen
Here are the nine steps that you can follow to achieve your goals:
Table of Contents
1) Write Down Your Goals and Set a Deadline For When To Achieve Them
The first step towards turning your life priorities into reality is to write down your goals clearly and set a deadline for when to achieve them. Don’t disregard this step as this is key. You can divide your goals into the following six buckets if needed:
- Financial Goals
- Career Goals
- Family Goals
- Social or Relationship Goals
- Health Goals
- Personal Development/Intellectual Goals
You may want to prioritize the bucket that you’re currently struggling with or that you think needs more attention. You can also select multiple buckets to prioritize. Then divide the goal into bite-sized pieces to accomplish it. You can also work backward from the due date to see how much effort is needed on a weekly or monthly basis.
Let us take a look at some possible scenarios to help illustrate our point.
- Financial Goal: You can select a financial goal of making an additional $12,000 every year. That can be broken into $1000 every month or $250 weekly. By looking at the goal through a bite-sized lens, this target seems achievable.
- Career Goal: You can select a career goal of getting a promotion at work or getting a higher salary. This can be done by scheduling a meeting with your manager and discussing what targets to achieve to make this a reality. Your manager may then provide the targets you need to meet which could be sales targets, business development, social media promotions, etc. You may break these in the same manner as above to the monthly and weekly output needed from you to accomplish the annual targets established by your manager.
- Health Goal: You may want to lose 10-30 pounds within 6 months. This can be broken down into monthly and weekly targets. Then you can work on cutting daily calories and working out to meet these targets. Use an app such as MyFitnessTracker.com to track your progress and you’ll start seeing a difference soon.
- Personal Development Goals: You may want to read 1 or 2 books every month to feed your intellectual curiosity and fuel your personal growth. This can easily be accomplished by figuring out how much daily or weekly time commitment the book needs. The good news is that if you find reading hard, you can easily listen to audiobooks while working out, commuting, or doing your chores. Audiobooks can be found on free apps such as libbyapp.com, hoopla.com, or paid services such as Spotify’s premium service, or audible.com.
The perfect time to start is right now. There is no age limit on when you can start on this journey but you’ve to start from somewhere. The sooner you start, the quicker you will start making a difference.
You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.
– Zig Ziglar
2) Believe That You Can Accomplish These Goals
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve the fear of failure.
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
– Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
You need to believe that you can accomplish these goals. If you don’t believe that you can or don’t believe strongly that you can, then these goals may not be accomplished.
Many people doubt their ability to achieve their goals. They often create mental roadblocks that prevent them from reaching their goals, such as thinking that it’s not the right time, or that they lack the necessary qualifications. However, these doubts are not necessarily true. They are usually a sign that one is not fully committed to achieving their goals.
Be confident that your goals and priorities will come true.
Decide what you want, and then act as if it were impossible to fail.
– Brian Tracy
3) Surround Yourself With Positive Influences
Deliberately seek the company of people who influence you to think and act on building the life you desire.
– Napoleon Hill
To accomplish your goals, you need to stay motivated on your end goals. This means you need to surround yourself with positive influences, such as family members, colleagues, friends, or the like. You may need to tune out any negative influences in your life.
Think of positive influences as your cheerleaders who motivate you in your journey towards achieving your goals.
A great way to find positive influence is by reading success stories on blogs, in newspapers, and on online news aggregators like Google News. You can follow topics that interest you on Google News and find inspiring stories about people who have succeeded in that area. Reading about how someone was able to achieve their goals can inspire you on your journey.
YouTube is a great resource to watch positive influences on any topic. You can hear success stories of how other people are accomplishing their goals and what steps they took in their journey. You may find a tip or two to motivate yourself.
4) Find Yourself A Mentor
It’s important to have a mentor while working towards your goals and high-level priorities. A mentor is someone you admire and can learn from, who is more successful than you.
Your mentor can be someone from work, your professional network, an acquaintance, or even a family member. Make time to speak with them and gain valuable tips and strategies that can aid you in your journey.
In return, you can offer your knowledge to your mentor as well. This will not only show your gratitude for their guidance but also create a mutually beneficial relationship.
5) Don’t Settle. Stay Hungry
Know who you are. Know what you want. Know what you deserve. And don’t settle for less.
– Tony Gaskins
Average people accept whatever life gives to them and then complain about how unfair life is. Successful people take control of their lives and accomplish their goals. Successful people work hard, are disciplined, and stay focused on doing work that has a big impact.
To become successful, you need to start thinking like successful people. Become ultra-focused on your goals and keep working on them daily. Add one task related to your high-level goals and priorities on your calendar and complete it. Little by little, you will be able to make major strides towards your end target.
After work, you must spend time working on your high-level goals and priorities or learning ways to achieve them. The more you understand tips and strategies for achieving your targets, the easier they will be to accomplish. You should have a sense of urgency in completing these targets.
You should have a single-minded focus on working on achieving your targets and goals. This is what Napoleon Hill calls a burning desire in his classic book Think and Grow Rich. He said:
There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
You may have heard success stories of people who made it big. They are the same people who are determined to make their goals come true and put in hard work and determination to make them a reality. Because if it was easy, everyone would do it.
Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.
– Ann Landers
Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.
– Jim Roth
You can make yourself better by learning new skills to augment your existing expertise and skill set.
6) Do Regular Progress Checks
On a weekly and monthly basis, you should review the progress you have made towards your high-level priorities. Stuff happens and sometimes our best-laid plans get derailed. It’s vital that you quickly identify if you’re not meeting your targets, and get back on track.
Make weekly progress notes in a journal or electronically in an app such as Evernote, Todoist, MS Teams, or even Notes on iPhone or Mac. Record your progress either in a low-tech or high-tech method so you can gauge your journey.
You may need to readjust your deadline and adjust your high-level priorities. Sometimes we may set up too aggressive targets and they need to be adjusted. This is completely fine and part of the process.
At the same time, don’t procrastinate and lose sight of your goals. That will only lead to failure and you losing faith in the process. Stay on the target and keep working and readjusting as needed.
7) Learn New Skills to Help Achieve Your Goals
Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.
– Jim Rohn
To meet your financial goals, you may need to learn new skills to earn more money. If your goal is to earn more money, you may need to start a side hustle. These may include starting a blog, doing freelance work, writing an ebook, offering an on-demand course, consulting services, marketing your services, etc.
For a successful side hustle, you may need to combine your existing skills with new skills such as starting a website to sell digital services as mentioned above. There are plenty of free and low-cost resources which you can learn new skills from, including YouTube, and e-learning platforms such as EdX, Coursera, FutureLearn, Codecademy, Udemy, etc.
By learning new skills, you will be able to leverage your existing experience and skills and offer it as a paid service to clients. Learning new skills also has other advantages. They improve your problem-solving skills, improve your confidence, make you more analytical in your thought process, and open more opportunities for growth in your career. If you want to learn more about what in-demand skills to learn to increase your earning potential then read this post.
Here are some practical examples.
| If you are a data analyst in your profession and want to earn more money as a side gig, you may decide to learn how to create a website offering consulting services, produce and edit videos, and create engaging YouTube or TikTok videos demonstrating your data analytical skills. You can offer hourly rates for your consulting services on your website or offer your services as a freelance consultant. Typical hourly rates for analytical consultants vary from $120-$1000 per hour depending on seniority. The possibilities are endless. |
When offering consulting services, you should pick something specific rather than general. Remember not to underprice your services. Offer your consulting services at a minimum of $100/hour to make it worth your while of time investment.
To offer consulting services successfully, have at least two referrals from someone you’ve helped. If you’re just starting and do not have any referrals yet, you can offer your services for free. However, if you go the social media route by creating YouTube or TikTok videos demonstrating your services, you will establish trust from the get-go in your skills and expertise and won’t have to offer your services for free.
| An inspiring example of a successful side gig is Miss Excel, Kat Norton. She built a business that brings over $2 Million a year by teaching Excel spreadsheet skills online on TikTok. She used her free time to create engaging videos showing Excel tips and strategies. Her account quickly got popular with over 100,000 followers. She leveraged her popularity to offer online courses on how to use Excel. Her venture was so successful that she quit her job to become a full-time content creator. She has now grown her audience to over 1 Million followers. She often makes over $100,000 per day with her courses. You can read more about her story on CNBC Make It here. |
8) Celebrate Small Wins
While you’re working on achieving your clear, written goals, you should celebrate the small wins. They will keep you motivated and excited about your progress. That is why it is vital to break your high-level goals into smaller milestones and achievements.
Depending on your goals, the journey to achieving them may be long and you can start to doubt whether you are making any difference. But if you break your goals into smaller bite-sized benchmarks, it will keep you motivated as you will be able to measure your success.
9) Have a Positive Outlook and Self-Belief
It’s important to maintain a positive outlook and self-belief while working towards your goals. There will be challenging times that will test your determination, but if you stay focused on your objective, you will be able to overcome any obstacles that come your way.
In times like these, it can be beneficial to seek out positive role models in your life to help keep you motivated. While they may not have all the answers, discussing your challenges with others can often help you gain perspective and realize that these obstacles are not insurmountable. Remember, with consistent effort, you can achieve anything you set your mind to.
Thomas Edison was a well-known businessman and inventor who is credited with 1093 patented inventions. Some of his most important inventions are the light bulb, recorded sound, motion pictures, and alkaline storage battery. A couple of his famous quotes are:
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.
You can learn from your mistakes and improve your approach. It’s all about the learning process. Make the journey a game that you have to win and the obstacles as hurdles you have to overcome. If you think of the journey towards your goals as fun and exciting, you will be able to achieve your goals just like Thomas Edison.
Conclusion
As you have seen, success is attainable for those who believe in themselves and are willing to commit to the hard work and discipline required to turn their vision into reality. The process of realizing your dreams requires a well-defined plan that involves setting clear goals with specific timelines and breaking them down into smaller, achievable milestones. This approach gives you the clarity and direction you need to make progress toward your desired outcome.
In summary, making your dreams come true is a journey that requires dedication, perseverance, and a well-defined plan. With a clear vision, achievable milestones, and the right mindset, you can overcome obstacles and make your dreams a reality.