To achieve your goals, you need to be specific about what you want to accomplish. You should break down the steps involved in achieving that goal into manageable chunks. Next, look at the big picture of how each step will contribute to your overall success. Set a date for when you want to achieve each step or milestone in reaching your goal. Gain the support of others who can help hold you accountable (and cheer you on). Give yourself permission to fail and learn from mistakes along the way—and create contingency plans in case things don’t work out exactly as planned.
Be specific
Before you can achieve your goal, you need to define it. And when defining your goal, specificity is key. A vague goal such as, “I want to get better at art” isn’t specific enough to work with. Instead, make sure your goals are clear and concise by focusing on the end result you’re trying to achieve. This means that instead of saying “I’ll draw more,” say “I’ll be able to draw this particular character by next month.” Or instead of saying, “I want my portfolio ready for spring,” say something along the lines of “My portfolio will have five completed pieces.”
Break it down
Breaking down a goal into smaller tasks is essential to achieving it. For example, if your goal is to write a book by the end of this year, how do you break that goal down? You first need to determine the type of book it will be: fiction or non-fiction, children’s or adult fiction/non-fiction. Then, once you have an idea of genre and target audience (age), determine some necessary steps required in order to complete the task at hand (for example: outline plans for each chapter while considering how many pages per chapter would be appropriate). Once this has been decided and committed to paper (or typed up digitally), proceed with writing each separate chapter individually until it is finished! This method helps greatly because now instead of trying to tackle such an enormous task all at once without any direction, you are able do something small like writing just one paragraph first instead.
Look at the big picture
The first step in achieving your goals is to look at the big picture. Instead of focusing on details that might seem insignificant, take a moment to consider what you want to achieve and why this is important. Next, think about why it’s difficult for you to achieve your goals. Is it because they’re too overwhelming or intimidating? If so, break them down into smaller steps; this will help keep things manageable and make them more achievable. If you’re having trouble staying motivated, remember that other people aren’t necessarily doing better than you are—and even if they are doing better than you, there’s no reason why they should stop there! Don’t compare yourself with others; instead, focus on yourself and what makes sense for YOU as an individual.
Set a date
To set the date, you must first decide when you want to achieve your goal. Don’t make it too far in the future, but also don’t go for something that is so easy it will be a breeze to achieve. You want it to be sufficiently challenging that you feel motivated and driven by a sense of urgency and determination. If your goal is weight loss, for example, maybe aim for losing 5 pounds in two months or 15 pounds in six months—but not both at once! Choose one option. Once you hit your target, the motivation may die down or disappear completely because there is nothing left to do except stop dieting now (which then leads back into our previous problem).
Get support
You’re not alone! Get support from friends and family, a coach or mentor, or a group of people with similar goals. Ask yourself: Who can I turn to when I need help? Who can provide me with accountability and motivation? Is there someone else who has struggled in the same way as me, and able to advise me on how to overcame obstacles (or at least share their experiences with me)? Even if you don’t have anyone like that yet, it’s okay—you’re not going to be doing this alone forever.
Give yourself permission to fail
The first step to achieving any goal is to give yourself permission to fail. Otherwise, you’ll never start. Failure can be scary, but it’s also an important part of learning and growing as a person. If you’re afraid to fail at something, you’re probably not going to try new things or take risks that might lead you down a different path than the one you’re currently on. It may seem counterintuitive to say this, but giving yourself permission to fail actually increases your chances of success! You may think that if something doesn’t work out well for you the first time around (or even the second), it must mean that this particular thing isn’t right for your life: maybe there are other things out there? But when we give ourselves permission not only for failure but also for experimentation and exploration—and allow ourselves room for setbacks and mistakes along the way—we open ourselves up more fully than ever before possible before toward new opportunities as well as potential disappointments. The key here is learning how best to utilize these inevitable setbacks, making them positive rather than allowing them drag us down emotionally or exhaust us mentally and emotionally.
Create a contingency plan for failure
When you’re setting goals, do prepare for what happens when you don’t achieve them. In order to do this, create a contingency plan for failure. This can consist of: What happens if you fail? Are there other ways that the same goal can be achieved? If not, maybe that goal wasn’t worthwhile after all, and should be adjusted or scrapped altogether. If so, how does one go about achieving the original goal in a different way? Is there an alternative goal that is more likely to succeed than the original one?
Delegate tasks, don’t micromanage
You can’t do everything yourself. If you try to, you will fail. You need to delegate tasks to others and trust them with your vision. Find the right people for the job. A project manager should be able to make recommendations based on their experience and expertise on resources available at your workplace. If there isn’t anyone like that available, consider hiring someone temporarily or asking friends who might be interested in doing some extra work on an independent contractual basis. You also need to trust the people you delegate tasks to—even if they aren’t perfect fits for their roles. Give them a chance before assuming that their skills are too different from yours (or worse yet—that they’re incompetent). We often judge others by ourselves: if something seems challenging or difficult for us, we assume it would be impossible for someone else. If something comes naturally or easily for us, we assume that everyone else should just be able to figure this out equally well! However, this assumption is often wrong—and can lead us down a path of self-defeatism. We imagine that no one has what it takes until proven otherwise!
You can achieve your goals!
- Set your goals
- Break your goals down into smaller tasks
- Prioritize your tasks
- Set deadlines for each task
- Gain support for your goals, if necessary
- Give yourself permission to fail, if necessary
Conclusion
So what are you waiting for? Set your goals and get to work! If you follow the steps above, you’ll be able to achieve all your goals with ease.