8 Steps To Achieving Your Goals
By Rick Houcek
Last week, a CEO I’m coaching told me he’s very frustrated that he’s having much better success in his business than he is in his non-business, personal life. He says that he’s quite unfulfilled, miserable, and he needs help.
I asked him, “What are you passionate about? What are your goals? What’s your life purpose?”
He gave me a blank stare. That deer-in-the-headlights look. “I don’t have a clue,” he said. “I’m consumed running my company.”
You know, I hear that time and time again from leaders, managers, senior executives, coaches, teachers, people just like you – with a lot of responsibility on their plates.
Well, here’s what I tell them…
It’s time to get serious. This will require, at the very least, the same vision, commitment, discipline and tenacity that you put into your business.
So, here are 8 powerful ingredients to help you design a dazzling life and succeed on-purpose most of the time, rather than by-accident some of the time.
And these tools are used by elite winners in all walks of life.
#1. Get clear on your passions. What are the things you will spend time on when no time appears to exist? The things you spend an inordinate amount of money on? The things that you are only willing to be excellent at? The things you really get excited about when you talk? And that you feel a real deep sense of loss on when you can’t do it – when something blocks you?
Those are your passions. What are yours? I have 4 passions in my life and I spend all of my time living those 4. Family, fitness, business, and playing baseball. Those are my 4 passions. What are yours? Get clear on them.
#2. Maintain an ongoing, never ending, and life-long master want list. This is critical. Get in the habit of writing down all of your dreams and commitments right there on your master want list. If it’s important to you, get it on the list. Don’t trust your memory, write it down.
#3. Track your fulfilling events. This is like you keeping an autobiography of your proud moments, your rewarding accomplishments. Keep a running list and browse through it often for a shot of self-motivational adrenaline, anytime you are facing a tough challenge. And this is a great family pass-along, by the way. Something you will want to pass along to your children, your grandchildren, and beyond. You are building the story of your life when you track your fulfilling events.
#4. Get in the habit of goal setting and do it effectively using just a simple one-page format that drives your own self-motivation. Decide exactly what you want and create a timelined game plan for action that sets you into motion. Include a deadline – all goals must have a deadline – month, day, year.
They must follow the SMART principle: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Reviewable, Time-dated.
If a written goal misses on any one of the 5, keep working at it. You’re not there yet. It needs greater specificity.
Get clear on what the benefits are that will come to you when you achieve the goal. Identify roadblocks and solutions. What resources will you need? Write out an action plan and then sign it. That’s right, turn it into a contract with yourself. All that creates good goal setting.
#5. Use positive affirmations. These fuel your own fire of self-esteem every day with powerful success-focused affirmations. They are positively written, present tense statements, that create a powerful, “I can do anything” mindset, but you must combine them with action. They will not reliably work alone.
#6. Get clear on your life mission. Know exactly why you are on this planet. What is your dynamic purpose and live it every day?
It is this simple: If a new endeavor you would like to explore doesn’t fit your life mission, you won’t be passionate about doing it and you’ll bail out. So these are the things you say ‘no’ to.
To figure out your life mission ask yourself deep, thoughtful questions like:
“What’s my proudest life accomplishment up to this point in my life and why?”
“Who are my heroes and why for each?”
“If 4 people could give speeches at my funeral – one from my family, one from my business colleagues, one from my friendship group, and maybe one from my business or civic associations – what would I want them to say? If I could write the speech for them to say at my funeral, what would it be?”
Well, are you living that life? Those are all clues to what your life mission is.
#7. Get crystal clear on your behavioral core values.. Core values are key. Live them every day with every decision you make and every action you take. Your values are the best decision-making criteria that you’ll ever have. They define the behavioral limits that you most respect and most hate.
Always write them in one sentence with an “I believe…” format, and memorize them. Values that are not memorized give you no help. You don’t want to have to find the sheet of paper that your values are on when you’re making critical decisions.
#8. Hold yourself accountable to your commitments with an Eagle Team or a Mastermind Group. This is key.
It’s a group of like-minded, success-driven superstars who are fixated on improving their lives just like you, and who are willing to meet regularly to support each other. You’ll achieve more of your goals with this team than without.
Give it a fancy motivating name like Mastermind Group, or Eagle Team, or Personal Advisory Board, or A-Team. Names matter. Good names electrify. Bad ones bore you.
And, this Eagle Team is critical because statistics show you have a 95% probability of achieving your life goals when you have a specific appointment with an accountability agent – one person or a team of people. So this accountability team is critical.
Employ those 8 steps in your life and you will achieve more of your life goals than you ever thought possible.
Wait!
The article may be over, but don’t leave yet!
Want more bold life-inspiring and business-beefing ideas?
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