7 Fool-Proof Steps to Achieving Your Goals In 2017

Years ago Scranton University did a survey and found that as high as 92% of people who set their New Year resolutions fail to accomplish them. Only a small 8% of people managed to achieve their resolutions. Why is this so?

Everyone wants to be successful and accomplish their goals; unfortunately, most people fail to do so. And this article is going to show exactly how you can turn your goals into reality.


7 Steps to Achieving Your Goals In 2017

You are going to learn the 7-step strategy that you can use to improve your chances of hitting your goals greatly:

Step #1 – Create the Intention

The first step you need to do is to create the intention. Most people fail because they are not taking any action, or they forget about their goals.

In other words, they never have the intention in their mind. Thus, if you want to achieve what you want in life; build the intention by constantly thinking about your goals.

Successful people are successful because they cannot get their dreams and their goals out of their mind. They constantly think about what they want and what they want to accomplish.

When you think about what you want, you will activate the Law of Attraction and build the intention; hence, you are more likely to take action.

So what do you think about most of the time? Do you think about your goals and what can you do to achieve them all the time? Or do you think about what to eat for dinner, which movie to watch or what you should do over the weekend?

Action Steps: Create intention and reminders for your goals. Practice daily goal setting by writing down your goals every day. You have to review and visit your goals from time to time to program them into your subconscious mind.


Step #2 – Make your goals tangible

The next step you need to do is to make your goals tangible. For instance, you can use affirmations, creative visualization, and a vision board to do this.

You want to make your goals as real as possible. This is why a vision board is so powerful because whenever you look at the things that you want, you remind yourself and consciously think about them.

Most people’s goals are just too vague and they cannot tell if they have achieved them. For example, if your goal is to be happy, or to get rich, how can you measure it?

If it is not measurable, it is not tangible. If your goal is to get rich, how much money do you need in order to become rich? Make it specific and make it tangible.

Action Steps: Make sure your goals are something tangible that you can actually perform and measure. Make your goals actionable.


Step #3 – Practice the ‘Big 5’ Strategy

What you need to do here is to take 5 action steps that will move you toward your goals. No matter how big or small the steps, you must do it.

Action is the bridge that connects what you want and your reality. Without taking action or doing anything, there is no way you can manifest your dreams and your goals.

The action can be as small as making a phone call or sending an email. If you follow this method of doing 5 little things each day, within a year, you will have accomplished 1825 small victories.

Never underestimate the power of consistency. What you do every day is more important than what you do once in a while.

If you take small but consistent action each day, you will eventually reach your goals, as long as you never give up.

Action Steps: Create your plan and milestones to hit each month and each week. Write down the 5 things you need to do the following day the night before.


Step #4 – Improve Your Skills

Abraham Lincoln once said;

“GIVE ME SIX HOURS TO CHOP DOWN A TREE AND I WILL SPEND THE FIRST FOUR SHARPENING THE AXE.”

Sadly, most people never spend any time to improve their skills or knowledge. Most people never read a book after their school days.

Imagine if you read 2 books a month, after a year you will have read 24. And if you can learn something new and improve your skills by at least 1% from a single book, you will become the best in your industry within a few short years.

Why do you think successful people are able to produce remarkable results in their lives? It is through hard work, persistence and their will to constantly improve on what they do.

Action Steps: Commit to reading and learning for at least 30 minutes a day. If you can’t find time for this, just wake up 30 minutes earlier. By just investing 30 minutes into reading, you will have read about 2 books in a month and 24 books in a year. Can you see how this can positively impact your life?

Step #5 – Make A Public Declaration
One of the main reasons people fail to reach their goal is because they are not committed to it. They say they want to build an internet business at night, but when they reach home after working, they choose to watch TV and waste time on Facebook.

When you are interested, you will do what is convenient, but when you are committed; you will do whatever it takes to achieve your goals.

So make a public commitment so that you will be more committed toward your goals. You don’t have to shout to everyone and share your goals with everyone. Choose to share them with those who will support and inspire you.

You can share with your spouse, your friends, colleagues or even your boss. Put yourself on the line so that you cannot fail.

Action Steps: Identify at least 3 people that you would like to share your goals and progress with. You have to create some form of commitment and accountability to put yourself into action.


Step #6 – Tracking Your Progress

This is a very important step that most people never do. They think that goal setting is a one-time job, and they forget about their goals a few days after they set them.

Never let this happen to you. You must consistently track your progress. Create a scoreboard for your actions and the results you are getting.

You should do this at least once a week. People who keep score on their goals are more committed; they know their standings, and they know what they need to do to hit their goals.

When you switch on the TV to watch a football match, the first thing you will check is the score. Imagine the football players playing without the score; do you think they will play as seriously?

When you know your progress and your score, you will understand if you are making progress or are you lacking behind. Your score will motivate you.

Action Steps: Create a scoreboard to track your progress each day. You just need to use a simple spreadsheet for this. It should be something easy to understand and simple to update.


Step #7 – Review Your Results

What happens when you take action but never get the results you want? And what happens if you don’t manage to reach your goals by the deadline?

This is where most people will give up and quit. Please understand that the main reason you set a goal is so that the goal can direct you and tell you what to do and where to go in your life.

If you fail to reach your goals, it does not mean that you have failed. As long as you are taking action and doing something to progress toward what you want in life, you are much better than when you first started.

The key is to make progress. Thus, if you did not reach your target, simply review your goals and create a new one.

Maybe you overestimated your ability or the time frame you set wasn’t reasonable. Review your goals and set out to accomplish them again.

Action Steps: Review your results each month or every quarter. If you hit your milestones, congratulations and keep moving forward. If you fail, do a post-mortem and find out where you can improve to get better results for the next term.


Conclusion

Achieving your goals can be something challenging especially if the goals you set are high. It doesn’t matter what your goals are. The most important thing is to make it challenging and make it fun.

Follow these 7 steps above and build a fool-proof strategy to achieve the things that you want in life.
So what do you think about this article? Do you think that these steps are useful to you? Share with me in the comment section below and let me know your thoughts.

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How to Conduct Your Personal Mid-Year Review

How often do you take the time out to really reflect on how you are progressing towards your goals for the year?

Now that we are at the half-way point of the year, it’s the perfect time to conduct your own personal mid-year review!


Why Conduct a Personal Mid-Year Review?

Conducting a mid-year review gives you the time and space necessary to evaluate your progress towards your goals.

Without taking the time out to reflect, how do you know whether your decisions, behaviour and actions for the first 6 months have helped you move towards where you want to go in your life?

Reflection is one of the most fundamental skill-sets of successful people.

If you are serious about creating your best life and making your dreams a reality, then you need to reflect to ensure you are making the right decisions and working towards them in the most effective and efficient way.
Benefits of Conducting a Personal Mid-Year Review

There are a tonne of benefits from conducting your own mid-year review.

Some of the major benefits include:

• Determine if your actions are progressing you towards your goals
• Determine if you are progressing at the right speed (i.e. will you reach your goal on time?)
• Determine if your goals are still relevant
• Understand the challenges you have faced and what learning’s you can make
• Identify more effective or efficient methods of achieving your goal

The more often you can conduct a personal review, the more effective you will become in your life.


I would recommend that you at least do a 6-monthly in-depth review of your goals. In fact, I encourage you to do it as often as you can. When I talk about these reviews, I’m talking about your ‘big life goals’.
Conducting Your Personal Mid-Year Review

Let me guide you through the process that I go through when I conduct my own personal reviews.

It is a process whereby I ask myself specific questions which help me understand exactly what I can do moving forward to work more effectively and efficiently towards my goals.


Get Yourself Setup

Before we get to the questions, the first thing you need to do is get yourself ready for your mid-year review. No, this doesn’t mean you have to dress up nicely and look pretty, it simply means you need to get yourself in an environment that is conducive for reflection.

So, to get setup:

Find yourself a nice, quiet environment
Have your goals and any other supporting materials with you that you can use to look over
Make sure you have something to write with

One piece of advice on the environment… try conducting your mid-year review away from your ‘normal’ working environment. This would mean getting out of the office, or away from your home and out into a park or somewhere where you can think about your life more objectively and freely.

Let’s get into it!

Question 1: Are My Goals Still Relevant?

Goals change over time. Life is full of surprises!

This is not something to be concerned about, but something to be aware of.

The first thing to do when conducting your personal mid-year review is to look over the goals that you have set and ask yourself whether they are still relevant.

How have your goals changed?

Sometimes when you originally set your goals the future is murky. It’s impossible to predict the future and to know with 100% certainty that a set of circumstances will eventuate. In-line with this, you may have had some clarity on the general direction of where you want to go, but now that you are six months into the year you have realised that there is a slight alternative that you are now working towards.

This is fine and goals are to be constantly tweaked and refined… this is all part of the process!

The key is to ensure that your goals are still linked to the things that you are passionate about.Passion creates the drive, energy and enthusiasm necessary for success.

When looking over your goals, it’s also good to remind yourself of WHY you are working towards them. Your goals and your life need meaning. Answering the question of why will reinvigorate the drive for making them a reality.


Question 2: What have I achieved?

Do you fall victim to ‘setting and forgetting’ your goals? Hopefully not now that you’re part of The Start of Happiness!

Now that you have confirmed that your goals are still relevant, the next step in the process is to reflect on what you have actually achieved.

How are you tracking towards your goals? What ‘mini-goals’ have you met or what smaller steps have you done to help you reach where you are?

Taking the time to reflect on what you have achieved will help you to determine whether your actions and progressing you towards your goals and whether you are likely to achieve them on time.

One of the best things about asking yourself this question is that it will highlight the behaviours and actions that have worked. This is super-important to being able to progress further in the back half of the year.


Question 3: What challenges have I faced?

When you are looking back over your progress for the year, it’s important that you also look at the challenges you have faced.

Very rarely can you reach your most important goals without a challenge being thrown your way.

Reflect on what these challenges have been. Why did these obstacles or challenges occur? How did you feel when they were presented? What did you do to overcome these challenges?

Resilience is a key factor in overcoming challenges. Understanding how you have faced these challenges and managed to overcome them helps you to build this resilience. It helps to embed the confidence in yourself that no matter what gets thrown your way you will be able to continue moving towards your goal.

The other thing that this question can raise is what can you do in the future to prevent these challenges from happening again?

Question 4: What have I learned?

Life is one big learning experience.

When you’re making progress towards your life goals you’re going to make a million decisions. Some good and some bad. One of the key ingredients that separates successful people is the ability to learn from their actions.

Looking back over your answers to the previous questions, now is the perfect time to ask yourself what have you learned from these experiences?

That is, what have you learned about your goals in life?

What have you learned from your achievements?

What have you learned from the challenges you have faced?

Taking the time to understand the key things that you have learned will help you get set-up perfectly for answering the next question.


Question 5: What can I do differently?

Now is when your mid-year review has its biggest impact. Your future.

Based on everything you have learned from answering the above questions, it’s time to think about the actions that you will put into place to make sure that the back half of the year is even more effective than the first half.

It’s all about continuous improvement! Never get complacent.

What habits do you need to change?

What extra support do you need?

What processes do you need to put in place to be more effective?

How will you address your next challenge?

This is a perfect opportunity for refining your goal and working on a specific strategy for the next 6 months of the year. You can start to map out the exact things you will do in this time to get you there.


Next Steps

There are 2 things you need to do first and foremost as next steps:
Set yourself a date for your next personal review
Write down 3 things that you can do immediately (or sometime today) to start building momentum in your life…. and go do them!

Your personal review should be a regular thing. If you can make it habitual then you’re well on your way to success.

I know of many people who write down their to-do lists or goals for a specific day, but how many people look at how those specific things on their to-do list help them progress towards their bigger goals in life?

The more regular you can review your progress towards your bigger, life goals, the more effective and the more speedy you will get there.

If you’re yet to create goals or want to go even a step back and start to look at the bigger picture in life (that is, understanding yourself and where exactly you want to go), then I highly recommend you check out our Launch Your Life Academy which guides you the proven process of making positive change in your life.

So, what are you waiting for?

Let’s make the next 6 months a ripper!

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7 Weekly productivity Hacks

Weekly planning is an integral part of running a successful business. Creating a plan will keep you on track to meet your yearly goals, help you track results, analyze your business, and keep stress off your back. Start planning today by following these 7 productivity hacks.

1.Pick a Planning Day

It takes weeks for proper habits to form, so do yourself a favor and stick to a specific time and day for your weekly planning. It helps to be consistent, so make sure you’re doing some form of planning every week – even if you start with just one goal for yourself, you will be moving forward.

2.Pick a Place

Pick a place you can go to every week that has a good environment for your weekly planning. Maybe you do better out of the house so pick a local coffee shop. Maybe you love spending time outside, sit on your porch and plan. Whatever environment is inspiring and/or relaxing for you, go there.

3.Brainstorm Projects/Goals

What projects and goals can you assign to yourself that will progress your yearly business plan? It could be as simple as setting a sales goal you want to hit each week. However, how we hit those sales goals often correlate with how often do we blog, how often do we create new product, how often do we post on social media…the list is endless. Take that list and break it down. What things can you be doing weekly to improve your business? Start setting those goals for yourself along with a sales goal.

4.Set Measurable Goals

No matter what projects and goals you set for yourself, make sure they are measurable. For example, don’t word a goal like this – “I’m going to post on social media more this week.” Instead word it like this – “I’m going to post on Twitter 5 times this week and make a Facebook update everyday.” At the end of the week when you review your results it will be very easy to see if you hit your goal of posting 5 times on Twitter, won’t it? So make sure, you are being specific with your projects and goals. Especially if you are working on projects, like building a bench, make sure you set yourself up for success by outlining how much of each day will be dedicated to building that bench and where you want to be with that project at the end of each day.

5.Set Deadlines

Set deadlines for yourself, this goes hand-in-hand with setting measurable goals. If you are going to post on Twitter 5 times or build a bench when should those things be completed by? Personally, I’d take it one step further and set a daily action goal of “1 Twitter Post Today.” Deadlines help you manage time wisely and give you urgency to complete the goals you have set for yourself.

6.Challenge Yourself

If you’re new to planning or have just started a business don’t overwhelm yourself and set unrealistic expectations. Start slow. Schedule in what you know you can do and then one or two things that push you. Make sure that every week you are challenging yourself, whether it’s setting a goal higher or adding in an additional task, make sure you are capitalizing on your full potential every week.

7.Review Results
When you sit down to do your weekly planning make sure to start with reviewing your results from the week before. Did you hit your sales goal? Did you finish the bench? Did you post on Twitter 5 times? Celebrate your successes and note your opportunities. Analyze why certain tasks got completed while maybe others didn’t, did you plan too much for your week or did you just not manage your time well – what was the cause of this effect. Now that you have reviewed your previous week it’s time to plan the current week!

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