goals

Journey to Success Part III

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Develop Specific Goals to Attain Your Dreams

Passionate Focused Thinking

Ok! onto Part III …… Taking Action – Specific Steps Leading to Your Goals

“You cannot change anything in your life with intention alone, which can become a watered-down, occasional hope that you’ll get to tomorrow. Intention without action is useless.” ~ Caroline Myss

If you remember from Part 2; I covered how to set SMART goals, and plan for the next step Taking Action. Setting goals, and drawing up a plan is ultimately meaningless if you fail to take action to attain them.

Depending on how big your goals are, will determine how much you grow to feel motivated to achieve them. We can only achieve our goals and take action if we have the motivation – that burning desire to do so. We need to apply that “go get em” attitude.

Think of your goals as your target destination – so the Action Plan is how you get there! This is the FIRE part of “READY-AIM-FIRE”

So often people produce fantastic SMARTER goals that just sit on the shelf and of course, nothing happens to make these goals become a success. Goals won’t magically happen just because you’ve written them down.

You still need to MAKE them happen, by taking action – FIRE!

Taking Action

The Key to Taking Action

The key to taking action on your goals is to integrate the goal’s action plan into your day-to-day routine and tasks, and that’s where it’s important to have Planners and Schedules.

It’s all about getting yourself organised!

‘Planners’ are specifically for listing the action items or steps to achieve your goals, and ‘schedules’ are used to see how your actions should pan out over the course of time and to identify any conflicts in resourcing.

‘Schedules’ will give you a visual representation of effort and how to achieve your goal. For example, if you prepare a yearly schedule, and it shows lots of activity in the first 3 months but not much after that, you either have a short term goal only with lots of mini-tasks or you’ve crammed too much into the early stages of your Action Plan – be realistic about how much you can take on at any one time.

‘Planners’ are used to incorporate your goal setting actions and day-to-day activities into the one memory-jogging list, and are the cornerstone to achieving your goals.

Depending on the goal, Planners could be a daily plan, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly or any-other suitable time frame. For example, a healthy eating and exercise plan may have daily actions if you want to be very specific about your activities, where as a budgeting plan may only have weekly actions, and career development goals may be even longer.

It doesn’t matter which timeframe you adopt – choose the one that best suits the level of control you want to have over the Action Plan. Daily action plans will have the highest level of control.

Find a system that works for you. The key here is to be organised, you may find it hard to be disciplined enough to stay organised, but it pays off as you start to achieve your goal. You’ll also be more productive and efficient in your day-to-day activities if you’re better organised.

Stay Clear of the Pitfalls

Now that you have set your goals, drawn up a plan, prepared your planners and schedules and you are highly motivated and you are full of desire, following through is all that’s left between you and success!

However the path to success can be filled with obstacles, make a point to avoid these pitfalls:

  • Procrastination: The enemy of all goals – make a conscious effort to avoid wasting time. Goals require a deliberate, disciplined mind-set every day.
  • Over-commitment: Schedule yourself within your means. Don’t try to do too much because you won’t have the energy to succeed.
  • Lack of balance: Simply put, you’ll never learn to play the guitar if you spend all your time playing football. Make time each week to pursue your goals.
  • Distraction: Stay focused on the things that are important to you. Learn to say no to the requests of others that don’t serve your goals or values.
  • Losing touch: It’s too easy to lose sight of what you want to achieve. Keep your goals front and centre in your life and visible to you during your planning sessions.

 

Remember: The journey of 1000 miles starts off with a single step! Each small action you take will determine the type of life you are GOING to be living!

The future is what you are pursuing, it is the constant ‘unfolding’ of actions that you’re going to take today, and also the actions you’re going to be taking tomorrow… into the future!

You should be very interested in your future, because you are going to spend the rest of your life there!

Do something today, which will improve the quality of your life tomorrow!

“No action, no change. Limited action, limited change.

Lots of action – Change occurs.”

Taking Action – Specific Steps Leading to Your Goals – Masterclass Blog Carnival

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With my best wishes on your Journey to Success!

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Filed under: Internet Marketing • Journey to Success

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