Steps to Take for Reaching Your Goals

Curt Remington and friends at the top of Mount Baker, Washington[/caption]In the great scheme of life, we are full of hopes and dreams for our future. Whether you’re starting up a new business or trying to write a book, there is always an end goal in mind. The issue is that it can be difficult to figure out the process in which you can reach it. Every situation is different, and some goals are more difficult to achieve, but there are some practices you can use to get closer to being successful. Below are some practical steps you can take to set and work towards a goal.

Define Your Goal

When defining the goal that you want to reach, you should try to be as specific as possible. If your goal is to be making more money in your business by the end of the year, you could come up with various smaller goals that will lead up to that overall accomplishment. For example, you could pursue growing your clientele, taking on more employees, or offering a new product in order to increase revenue. Being specific about your goal makes it easier to come up with a plan for each step of the process.

Devise a Plan

Reaching a goal requires more than just hoping and wishing. It’s important to take the time to create a plan of action, with specific steps that you can work through. If your goal is to sell 100 copies of a book you just had published, there are lots of steps that you could take to do so. You could offer to speak about your book at local book stores, or you could get active in social media in order to promote your book. In order to devise a plan of action, you can search the internet for inspiration, take notes on your ideas, and ultimately write a formal statement to yourself, stating exactly how you plan to proceed with reaching your goal.

Set a Time Limit

If you come up with a time limit for achieving your goal, chances are you’ll feel much more motivated to get to work. You should make sure that you choose a realistic date far enough in the future that you won’t feel rushed or overworked in the process, but not so far that you put off the work for a long time.

Track Your Progress

In order to see how far you’ve come in your process, and to keep yourself motivated, a useful practice is to track your progress. You could take notes in a journal or on a computer document, or you could have a list of steps that you can cross of as you complete each step. Regardless of how you track your progress, the practice of doing it will be a constant reminder of what you’re trying to accomplish, and that you are getting closer to reaching your goal.

Put Your Goal on Display

Sometimes, life can get so busy that you might forget about or put off a goal that you have until more time frees up. However, in many people’s cases, time doesn’t free up, and daily responsibilities don’t go away. If you want to achieve something, you should put it out on display as a constant reminder of what you want, and as a reminder to make time for what’s important to you. You could post a printed statement on your fridge, a bulletin board in your home, or on the wall of your office. Looking at that statement every day could be just the motivation you need to get to work on your plan.

 
“Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.”