To have a goal is easy. To reach a goal can quickly become disparaging if reaching it takes too long or simply stays out of reach. There is a secret to goal reaching and that is the fact that it is a way of life, you are the practitioner of goals and that it is a skill.
Like any other skill, a novice needs to study and devote time to understanding the mechanics and pitfalls of the skill. Goal setting is no different and failing to understand this is why so many people fail to ever accomplish their dreams.
So, study. Search the internet on articles related to goals, goal setting, personal motivation, organizing skills, burn out prevention, and even success stories of entrepreneurs and like minded souls.
Acceptance is another powerful tool when it comes to goal achiever success. Many people buy into the hype that you only need to identify a goal, somehow easily breeze through it and at the end of a couple of easy tasks you find a golden egg and your goal hatches into a dream accomplished. Ok, maybe it’s not that bad, but it almost is. The end-result of others’ success is always widely publicized but rarely the sweat and dedication that went into achieving the success. This causes people to feel like failures when they are stuck in the depths of hard work and obstacles while they think ‘but that successful guy never had any problems like this.’
Get out of that mindset and practice acceptance. Accept that you are learning how to achieve a difficult goal. Accept that it takes time. Accept that you may not have the resources of other goal setters who seem to achieve things faster than you. Accept that you will have to learn patience, dedication and not to take failure personally. Accept that sometimes a goal have to be postponed or abandoned. If you cannot practice acceptance in the art of goal setting, you will either become burnt out, never achieve half of what you could because you are impatient and throw in the towel more often or never set more goals. The world needs people who are balanced and driven. You can become one of them if you are smart enough not to try and control everything that happens in the world.
Create a desk or other place for your goal planning and files. It’s not always possible to have it in beautiful and ideal surroundings, like at a window looking out over a cove with playing whales, but still. Make a space that is just for your goals. Treat it with cleanliness and order, and certainly respect because this is where your dreams will take you forward and bring your wants and needs into being. If you let it become disorganized with half-eaten sandwiches, missing files, and bills that don’t belong there, you are not going to become motivated to work on goals. Remember, organizing skills is important for success with any goal. Read what you can find, there certainly is no limit to the articles available written to improve your organization skills.
Believe it or not, but health plays an important part in reaching goals. Not just physically but mentally as well. If you worry about it, blame yourself for inefficiency for not reaching a goal fast enough, you are affecting your mind’s ability to stay positive. Guess what, when you remain consistently stressed, worried or frustrated, your body’s immune system takes a knock and you get ill. You can forget about your goal of climbing up a mountain this winter if you are already in your second re-occurrence of a cold or flu. The good news is that fun is a super immune booster. So schedule in time to watch movies you like, laugh a lot and relax with a book or an outing, learn meditation, yoga, tai chi and search for articles on stress-busters and anger management.
Strangely, one’s list of goals behaves like a living thing; it changes, grows, shrinks, loses importance in one area while growing into a new area. It invokes hatred, anguish, excitement and satisfaction. Goals may mutate, come and go but list them in order of how they are important to you NOW. List your goals and write out small, achievable steps for each. Revise, review, acceptance and drive should shadow your attention when you work on such steps. Design a schedule that is flexible.
By now, hopefully you are beginning to understand that goal setting is not just having a goal in mind but that it is a multi-skilled ability (organizing, discipline, health care, studying). So go forth and learn each skill involved and do so in a way that you truly learn them through experience and you will become a goal setter to be reckoned with! Good luck.