Goal setting is easy. You decide what you want. You write it down and declare it your goal. It’s as easy as that; you now have a goal.
You have a rather impotent goal, and you aren’t likely to reach it, but you do have a goal. There are three primary reasons you won’t reach that goal.
Not a Big Enough Reason or Not Enough Of Them
If you don’t have a burning reason “why,” you aren’t going to make your goal.
If you don’t have a compelling, all-consuming desire to reach your goal, you aren’t going to sustain your motivation any longer than it took you to write down your goal.
If the price of failure doesn’t make you want to throw up, then your goal isn’t a must. And if it isn’t a must, it isn’t compelling enough.
Why is this your goal? What do you lose if you fail?
You Don’t Have a Plan
Unless you go through the exercise of figuring out exactly what you need to do to reach that goal, what resources you have available to help you, how to overcome the likely obstacles, and a commitment on your calendar to take the necessary actions, you don’t really have a goal. You have something less than a goal . . . you have a daydream.
Without a plan to reach the goal, you aren’t going to make it.
If writing a goal down gives it power, then writing down the action plan gives your goals fuel-injected, nitro-nuclear-booster rockets.
You Aren’t Doing the Work
Have you ever known anyone who set a goal, had a plan, and didn’t reach their goal? Have you ever caught this person staring back at you from the other side of your mirror in the morning?
If you failed to achieve a goal in the past–even after writing a plan–you failed because you didn’t do the work. Your intentions were good, but you didn’t follow those intentions with something more important: action.
Stop right now and look at your goals. Write down every reason you must reach those goals, all of the things you need to do to reach them, and then enter an appointment on your calendar for the first action item under each goal. When you complete that first action, schedule an appointment with yourself for the next action. That’s how you reach your goals.
