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This post is a basic guide to creating your plan of action to reach your goals. If your goal is a short term goal – less than a year to reach – there will be things you may not need to do.
I can promise you one thing when it comes to achieving goals. It’s going to take work to do it. You must work at your goal every single day and it needs to be a priority for you.
How To Achieve Goals
It’s not enough to just set a goal and make changes to your lifestyle to achieve a goal. You have to basically live, eat, and breathe your goal. It takes dedication, work, and drive to reach your goals.
Over the past 3 years I’ve harnessed these exact steps to reach my own goals. I used these steps to grow my business into a full time income. I’ve used these steps to helping us move home to Pittsburgh. I’m currently using these steps to continue to grow my business and help more moms build a life they love.
It took me a couple of years to learn how to turn my goal into actionable steps. These actionable steps give you small wins throughout your experience of chasing your big goal.
Steps To Achieve Goals
The steps are easy to do. If you want to try them out for yourself and want extra help getting through them I have a 5 day challenge that step by step helps you reach your goal that you can sign up for at the bottom of this post.
- Detail your goal
You want to detail out your goal. What will your life look like when you reach your goal? How will you feel when you reach your goal? Why do you want to reach your goal?
Having a clear understanding of exactly what you expect to have and feel when your goal is complete is the best way to start visualizing how you will achieve your goal. Learn to visualize your goal here.
- Break the goal down into quarters
Now you will take the time to break down your goal for the first time. What 4 things need to happen for you to achieve your goal. In what order do these things need to happen? Start with the first step and move through them till you reach your goal.
If you want to lose 50 lbs in a year, you will first need to change your diet to lose the first 20 lbs. Then you will need to add light exercise to your lifestyle to lose the next 10 lbs. Next, you will need to bump up your exercise routine to lose the next 10 lbs. Finally, you will need to bump up your exercise and add more metabolism boosting meals to your diet to lose the final 10 lbs.
If your goal is a short term goal – 3 months or less – you will most likely skip this step and go directly to the next step. If your goal is 6 months or more you may want to break it down into two parts.
- Break the goal down into monthly goals
Now you break your goal into monthly goals. Each month you will work to achieve the monthly goal that gets you closer to your big goal. This gives you more wins to enjoy faster and keep you motivated to continue your hard work.
In our example above you would break each quarter into 3 monthly steps. The first month would be focused on trying new recipes according to your diet and learning to cook in your new diet. The second and third months would be focused on following your diet strictly to reach that first 20lbs lost.
- Break the goal down into weekly actions
Now you’re going to break your monthly goal into weekly actions you need to take. This makes it so you are reaching a goal every single week. The key to making sure this work though is to set an action as a goal instead of an arbitrary number.
Instead of saying I will lose 2 lbs this week, you instead say, I will eat a healthy breakfast and a light dinner all this week. At the end of the week you will have a better feeling of accomplishment than if you were to only lose a pound instead of two.
- Do something for your goal everyday
Do something for your goal every single day, do it early if you can. Taking a step every single day towards reaching your goal gives you more motivation to continue taking steps towards your goal.
- Have more than one plan to achieve your goal
You will want to have more than one plan of action to achieve your goal setting as a plan b. This helps you make the best decisions for reaching your goals.
As you work towards your goal you will evaluate your progress to determine if you need to do more or do something different to achieve your goal. Having additional plans available to draw from means you aren’t wasting time researching when you should be working towards your goals.
- Evaluate how your work is paying off
You will want to do weekly or monthly evaluations of your work and if it’s paying off. Make sure you give your plans and your actions enough time to start working before making any changes.
Depending on the goal you will want to evaluate what worked well, what could improve, and what needs to change every couple of weeks or once a month. This prevents you from continuing with a plan that isn’t working the best for you.
- Learn when to pivot
Every goal is going to take a bit of time to complete. This means you shouldn’t pivot too soon. However, there is something to be said about a gut feeling. If you feel your goal isn’t producing results fast enough a slight pivot could help to change how quickly you are getting results.
Remember too, plateaus happen in almost any goal. You may find yourself stalled at a certain point. This is the point where you may feel yourself wanting to change things drastically or quit. A word of caution, sometimes drastic changes will lead to a back slide instead of a quicker uphill climb.
- Push yourself to do extra
Push yourself a little bit in your goal by doing a little extra thing toward reaching your goal every single week. It’s this small thing that you do that makes reaching small goals and eventually your large goal within your time frame.
- Keep Going
Don’t give up on your goal. Even if you slip up, just get back on your goal getting train and keep going. It’s important to keep seeing your successes, to see how far you’ve come, and to keep working towards that final goal.
How To Achieve Your Goals And Dreams
Reaching your goals means taking steps towards that goal. It means creating a plan, sticking to your plan, making adjustments to that plan when needed, and to keep working towards your goals.
Remember, it takes time and sometimes you will plateau. This is the hardest part about reaching goals. It takes drive and commitment to see your goal through till the end.
What is your goal? Let me know in your comments below. Follow me on Pinterest for more like this and pin this to your favorite goal and business boards.
Related Posts:
- How To Be Mindful As A Work At Home Mom
- Work At Home Mom Schedule That Works For You
- How To Use Task Batching To Save Time And Boost Productivity
- Create A Routine And Organize Your Entire Day
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