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.

Source

4 Components Towards Becoming A Better SELF

How can anyone become the best that he can be, unless and until he commits fully to enhancing his  or her personal persona? Whether one merely wants to take a true, objective, introspective look, or if he wants to perform to the peak of his potential, until one becomes ready, willing and able, to take an honest look at himself, it becomes nearly impossible to perform as well as possible. Far too often, many individuals proceed through life seeking to fool themselves into believing they were someone they were not! If you hope to become the best you can be, these four mnemonic components might help you become a better SELF.

1. The primary objective of maximizing potential is probably doing all we can to maximize our assets, so that we look at options from a position of strength rather than the far - more - often position of compromise and settling for good - enough! When we are strong, it permits us to focus on developing a systematic way to optimize performance. Combined with genuine and sympathetic mindset, we then become capable of developing the best strategy or strategic plan. When we look at things with confidence and expertise, we feel better about our-self because the experiences become far more satisfying.

2. While sympathy might be a genuine, needed emotion, we only grow as individuals when we utilize empathy. This means rather than merely feeling sorry for others (often after the fact), we get to better understand and appreciate their plans, priorities, preferences, and needs (in other words, we see things through their eyes). When we enhance our own education (not solely book - learning but actual expertise and development), everything we do becomes more enriching, which potentiates our energy, and thus produces our best efforts. Yet, it means we begin by committing to better knowing one's self.

3. Learning is the key to achievement. Only when we love what we do (and understand why we are doing it), are we willing to let others in, and thus objectively look deeper within ourselves.

4. Find your inner voice (and motivation), and then fully focus on what is most important and essential to you. Do you know how and what you truly feel? Then fight for your views, and become capable of freeing yourself from the obstacles and limitations created when you begin with pre - conceptions rather than open - mindedness.

How much impact and how good do you really want to be? When was the last time you took a genuine look within? Hopefully, using these four components will help you really, honestly, and objectively, know your SELF.

Source: 

How to Adopt A Productive Mindset

Everybody knows we live in an age of distraction. We have so many different things vying for our attention that it’s hard to focus on any one thing, let alone make progress on the multitude of tasks we have on our plates.

A lot of productivity advice would tell you that you need to cut out the distractions. If email or social media are distracting you, simply get away from them or use a program to block them for the amount of time you need to complete a task.

Here’s the problem: Being distraction-free doesn’t equal productivity. I’m a writer, and as a writer, I’m always working on building my platform and trying to connect with potential readers on social media. But there are times when I need to disconnect and just write.

How to Adopt A Productive Mindset

But just because you get away from the distractions doesn’t mean you’ll be productive with the time you have. As a writer, for example, it’s easy to justify doing anything other than writing as research or creative thinking.

We start to think that if we’re doing something, then we’re being productive. But you can work really hard at the wrong things, fooling yourself into thinking that you’re moving forward when you’re really just spinning your wheels.

The key to productivity is adopting a productive mindset and learning how to focus your creative energy on the things that matter.


1. Know Your Why

Leadership expert Simon Sinek says in his book Start with Why that “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” Sinek’s book is all about discovering the why that drives productivity and effectiveness.

There’s a why behind everything that we do, but it’s not always a conscious why. We eat breakfast in the morning probably because we’re hungry, but we don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about the purpose behind our desire to eat breakfast.

Having a productive mindset starts with identifying why you do the things you do.
Why are you writing that blog post?
Why are you contacting that client?
Why are you creating that product?

Questions like these force you to do some serious evaluation of your priorities because you’ll discover that the reason why you do some things isn’t a good enough reason to continue doing those things.

Knowing your why involves looking at your productivity strategy and identifying exactly what you hope to accomplish with all that you do and what motivates you to do it.


Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to move into the next step, which requires you to eliminate some of the things you do that aren’t aiding in your productivity.

2. Identify the Tasks that Make You the Most Productive

Any productivity system inevitably includes making a list at some point of all the tasks you have to do. This is good practice because it allows you to see on paper what you’re spending your creative energies on. It also forces you to see obvious disconnects between the more important things you do and the less important.

What are the tasks that make you the most productive?

Working hard isn’t enough to be successful at doing what you love because you can work hard at things that are only drying up your creative energy instead of creating results.

You have to identify the things that are most worth your time because they’re the most rewarding in terms of productivity.

If you’re a teacher and you want to learn how to better engage students in your class, researching engagement methods can be good, but there can also be a point when researching is only a practice in inactivity.

You have to identify what is going to be most productive for your context, which will likely include identifying the needs and interests of your students rather than reading about the strategies other teachers have used on their students.

Whatever it is you do for a living, identify the tasks that will make you the most productive in your professional arena.


3. Focus Your Creative Energy by Challenging Yourself

Once you have a list of the tasks that will make you the most productive, you need a strategy for actually completing those tasks. This is where going above and beyond the simple elimination of distractions is vital.

If you really want to get tasks completed, you have to challenge yourself. Tap into your naturally competitive nature and use it to your advantage.

Set a timer for a specific amount of time and challenge yourself to complete as much of a task as you can within that time frame. Of course, you want to complete the task well, so avoid using the timer as an excuse to do mediocre work.

Challenging yourself to complete a task in a certain amount of time assumes that you’ll be free of distractions.

Distractions would get in the way of reaching your goal.

A timed runner doesn’t stop to play a game or send a text message in the middle of a race because she realizes those distractions would only hinder her ability to reach her goal.

For a specific timing strategy, you might want to check out the Pomodoro Technique, which involves alternating between timed working on a task followed by a short break before the next dive back into the task.


“CHALLENGE YOURSELF EVERYDAY TO DO BETTER AND BE BETTER. REMEMBER, GROWTH STARTS WITH A DECISION TO MOVE BEYOND YOUR PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES.” – ROBERT TEW


4. Be Passionate About Results

A productive mindset requires a high degree of commitment to getting the job done. When the process makes you weary, it’s the results and your why that will drive you to keep going.

As a writer, it can be really easy to give up in the middle of a story because the process is starting to feel slow and unrewarding. But the story isn’t finished, and the only way I can see the result of a finished story is to keep going.

If you’re lucky, you’ll love what you do, but don’t focus too much on loving what you do because on some days, you won’t.

On those days, you still need to be productive, so when you’re not passionate about the process, at least be passionate about the results so that you’ll keep going to see the results in the end.

If you want to be more productive, you have to start with adopting a productive mindset. You’ll only make things happen when you begin to focus your creative energy on the things that matter.


How did you adopt a productive mindset?

And if you still haven’t done so, which of the points above do you think was most important?

Source

6 Simple Questions You Need To Ask Yourself When You Become Fearful

6 Simple Questions You Need To Ask Yourself When You Become Fearful

"One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do." Henry Ford

There isn't an individual who hasn't been afraid or faces difficult circumstances that caused them to be fearful at some point. Fear is one emotion that most of us dread, but all will have experienced during our lifetime.

What are you afraid of? What makes your heart stops when you think of it? What stresses you out more than anything else? What is it that worries you most?

Are you worried about your future like so many of us? Do you worry about the security of your job or the future for your children? There isn't a shortage of things to cause us fear. Life is unpredictable and because of the uncertainty and the unknown we develop a fear for the future.

If you are like most of us, you need to develop the right attitude to overcome your fears. Living in fear is never the answer. You need to face the fears you have and find solutions to avoid dealing with them over and over again.

Find the source of your fear and deal with it head-on. The great thing about confronting your fears is that once you have dealt with it, it will no longer cause you to fear. You will also become stronger and better able to deal with other uncertain issues in your life.

Here are six questions you should ask yourself when you are feeling fearful that will help to manage your fears.

1. Am I fearful for the right reasons?

Fear is a good thing as it helps to keep us safe. Use your fear in the right way and for the right reason. Do not spend your life being fearful of life. Use your fear to motivate you to go after your dream. Do not be consumed by the fear of the future but use those fears to work on making your future brighter. Face your fears by channeling them into areas that will give you the results you want.

2. Are my fears positive or negative?

What are the things you dread most? Are they positive or negative? Which type of fears do you tend to focus on? Rather than be fearful of the things you have no control of, channel your energies on to things that will make your life easier and less stressful. Take the time to focus on the positive and do not focus on negative things. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Franklyn Roosevelt

3. What meaning am I giving to challenges?

Think about it seriously, what are you focusing on? Are you giving these fears a life by constantly thinking about them? If so resist the urge to worry and reclaim your power and focus your attention on things you want to achieve. Focus on the things that will help you to become a better person.

4. Am I causing fear to rob me of my life?

If you spend your life in fear, you will never enjoy your life. There will always be something to fear. Why spend your time worrying about things that might not happen and you cannot control. To be happy, you must rid yourself of fear as fear robs you of your joy. You can never enjoy life being afraid.

5. Are my fears real or imagined?

Many times you cultivate fear when, in fact, there is nothing to fear. When a situation arises, you give it more power than you should? Quit giving your fear the power to grow. Remember things always seem worst than they truly are.

6. What can I learn from these fears?

Find out what lessons life is trying to teach you. Do not miss the opportunity to get the message you are being sent. Whenever you feel afraid, find out what it is that scares you the most and what you can do to reduce your fear.

Our fears will never go away, but you must be able to control your fears and not allow it to control you. Live your life in confidence expecting the best, and the best will happen. When you feel fearful find the cause of your fear and find a solution and if you can't stop worrying about it because there is nothing you can do about it.

Source

7 Ways Smart People Deal With People They Don’t Like

Wouldn’t it be great to interact exclusively with people you like?

It would, but the truth is, you will often encounter people who rub you the wrong way, who say or do things that irritate you.

It could be that someone is habitually late or doesn’t do what they say they’re going to do.

Perhaps it’s someone who is rude and disrespectful. It could be someone who doesn’t listen or who is very arrogant and full of themselves.

How Smart People Deal With People They Don’t Like

Whatever the situation, whether this person is a family member, a colleague, or simply someone you encounter at the grocery store, here are some tips to help you feel better about any interaction with them.

1. Accept them

There will always be people who don’t see things the way you do and who don’t behave the way you would.

When you have high expectations of yourself, most likely you’ll have very high expectations of others as well, and the higher your expectations, the more you risk being disappointed.

Before you judge someone else though, recognise that you don’t fully know them or their situation (even if it’s someone you’ve known for a long time). You’re simply seeing their behaviour in this moment.

You don’t know, and can’t know what’s really behind that. Everyone has a unique story.

Everyone has challenges and difficulties that can cause them to behave in ways that you might find unacceptable. You don’t have to like everyone and not everyone will like you. Nor will everyone think or behave the same way you do.

You’ll find people much easier to deal with if you accept this.

Then, depending on the situation, you can make a choice about how you want to deal with them. It’s easier if it’s a casual interaction and you can choose to simply walk away.

But what if it’s a family member or someone you have to work with?

Even when you’re forced to interact consistently with someone you don’t like, it’s much easier if you can accept that you don’t like them and be okay with that. This can help you make an informed decision about how you will interact with them going forward.

2. Identify what bothers you

Get clear on exactly what it is about this person that bothers you.

Related:  10 Bill Gates Tips to Becoming Successful & Wealthy

Stick to the facts and do your best to keep the emotion out of it.

For example, this person might be a total narcissist, making everything about them, taking credit for everything good and blaming others for everything bad. You might find that this really bothers you, and you may wonder why everyone else is not able to see it.

Getting upset about it won’t help you. It’s never going to change who this person is. This is simply what narcissists do. Now that you know this, it’s up to you to decide how you want to interact with this person.

Perhaps you make sure, wherever you can, that other people receive credit for work they have done so all the credit doesn’t go to one person. Perhaps you can train yourself to ignore the behaviour or at least not let it affect you emotionally.

It may help you to know that narcissists behave the way they do because it covers up their insecurities and low self-esteem. They are extremely vulnerable to criticism, and have a deep need for admiration from others.

When you identify what bothers you and dig a little deeper to go beyond the behaviour, you can arrive at a strategy that helps you deal with the person and their behaviour in the most positive way possible.

3. Focus on the benefits

One technique that can help you is to think about their positive aspects.

Everyone has good in them. What do they do well?

For example, the person with the narcissistic personality may be an extremely good organiser. He or she may have a talent for organising people and making things happen. They may be very committed and show up when and where they’re supposed to.

Look for the good and focus more on that than on what bothers you. You can even sincerely compliment them on their good attributes. This can help to put you in a more positive emotional state when you need to deal with them.

4. Release the need to be right

The more attached you are to being right, the more you will struggle with people you don’t like.

If you need to be right and you feel a need to prove it, you will waste a lot of time and energy in conflict. You can know that you are right without having to argue the point or prove your case.

Related:  How to Take Charge of Your Life Like Dwayne Johnson

In fact, in a heated discussion, letting the other person be right (even if you know that you are the one who is right) can take away all the negative energy and antagonism. You can make your point and simply walk away.

You don’t have to prove that you’re right. When two people have an intense need to be right it can escalate any simple discussion into a heated argument which can result in long-term disagreements and antagonism, just because both are determined to be right.

Ask yourself: Is being right worth the time and emotional energy expenditure?

5. Remain positive

Do you find yourself thinking about the person you don’t like and having conversations with them in your head or find yourself going over and over what it is you don’t like about them in your mind?

When this happens they have taken over your thoughts. You have given away your power to that person. The only thing this does is to negatively affect you. It does nothing to or for the other person.

Try to stick to the facts of the situation and disconnect emotionally.

When you are connected emotionally it becomes your problem. It can take over your life. Don’t let it. Focus on what you need to do in order to be able to detach. Find positive ways to think about the situation. Think of positive ways to deal with the person.

Look for something positive and make the decision that you will not let them take over your thoughts or steal your present moment awareness and peace.

6. Become an observer

If you find yourself reacting to someone you don’t like, you’re giving your energy to them.

Sometimes you may encounter people who try to manipulate your energy or who try to project their issues onto you. When you react to that, you feed them energetically. This leaves them feeling stronger and you feeling weaker.

They start to feel better about themselves and you start to feel worse about yourself.

Next time you encounter such a situation, see if you can simply observe their behaviour without being triggered or getting pulled in. You’ll notice something interesting.

When you don’t feed them or the situation with your energy and when you refuse to take on their issues, they are left with it all to themselves.

Related:  5 Success Lessons We Can Learn From Kobe Bryant

This leaves them feeling more and more uncomfortable because they’re having to deal with their own negative energy all by themselves, since you’re not engaging. You don’t need to take on their stuff, and you don’t need to let them take your energy.

Become an observer and stay empowered. They will soon learn that you are confidently grounded and can’t be messed with, making your interactions with them much more positive for you.

7. Be willing to learn

There is always something to be learned from any difficult or negative person or situation.

You can learn a lot about yourself, as well as others. Whenever a difficult person enters my life I ask myself what they are teaching me about myself. I know that once I learn whatever I’m supposed to, then that person won’t be a problem for me any more.

Either they will move out of my life, or our interactions will be positive. If they remain in my life, it doesn’t mean that I have to like them, although that may be a possibility. But I can learn how to deal with them in a positive and empowering way.

I can learn to interact with them in a way that feels good to me, and ultimately that is my main objective, to feel as good as I can, as often as possible.

When you are willing to learn and to actively look for the lesson this person can teach you, you take control of your life. This is a proactive and very powerful approach. It will teach you how to respond, as opposed to reacting to them.

Summary

Recognise that there will always be people you don’t like and that don’t like you – and that’s perfectly okay.

It’s all part of life and its many lessons for us.

What I have learned is that the more positive you are, and the more you apply the techniques mentioned above, the fewer encounters you’ll have with people you really don’t like, and when you do, you will have the tools to deal with them in the most positive way possible.

And remember to be grateful for all the difficult people and situations that challenge and frustrate you, because often they are our very best teachers.

Source