2 weeks to go – how you can achieve everything you’ve ever wanted

Well, I hope you have had a productive week since our last newsletter! Hopefully you’re all excited about the future and the opportunities it brings.

Just recapping on last week’s newsletter on how to work out what you really want out of life, it’s important that you set your goals based on what YOU really want, otherwise you’ll find them difficult if not impossible to achieve.

A quick test is the “Last person on earth” test. Think about your goals and ask the question, “If I were the last person on earth, would I really be interested in pursuing this goal?”. You obviously need to put this in the context of what your goals are as some goals (such as family goals) will involve other people on earth, but the gist of the question is to consider what you would really do if there was no audience to see you achieve your goal.

If you answer “yes” to this question, then your goals are probably true to your heart. If you answer “no”, then perhaps they are more aligned with keeping up with the Jones. But whatever the answer, it’s just another way at getting you to look at your goals and what you really want to achieve.

Anyway, after last week’s newsletter, hopefully you wrote down a description of your perfect life on a piece of paper. This is actually the first step in setting goals, because setting and achieving goals is how you’re going to make this perfect dream come to life.

So an activity for you now – read through your dream life again – don’t worry if it’s not perfect, you can add to this dream life or change it whenever you want to. Now, write down the gaps between where you are now and your dream life. Then each of these gaps points to where you need to look at setting some goals.

For example, in your dream life you might be slimmer and fitter compared to your current form. So a goal could be to lose 10 kgs, or to run 5km in under 30 minutes – which would help fill that gap.

What goals could YOU set to start filling the gaps between your current life and your dream life?

So the question now, is how can you achieve your dreams and goals?

A good way to think about your goals is to think of them as a target destination of a journey. To get to your target destination, or goal, you therefore need a map to get there, a vehicle and fuel. And if it’s a long journey, you’ll probably have some passengers, pit-stops and detours along the way.

If you think about goals in these terms, then the road map is your goal action plan, the vehicle is you and the fuel is energy, motivation and attitude. So lets talk about these.

The Road Map to Success Just as a road map give you directions to your destination, an action plan sets out the step-by-step directions and instructions on how to achieve your goal. And like a road trip, you can include stop-overs or mini-milestones in your plan too.

Vehicle Maintenance If you are the vehicle on the road to achieving your goals, then keeping that vehicle in tip top shape is critical in achieving your goals. And unlike a real car, you can’t trade yourself in on a new one – you have only one body and one life – so take care of it, and make the most of it.

Fuel the fire If fuelling yourself to achieve your goals was as easy as putting fuel in the car, everyone would be goal setting success stories. But in reality, keeping fuel on the fire is probably the hardest part of any goal setting journey.

In order to achieve your goals, you need to fuel your on-going desire to achieve them. And this desire will give you the motivation, the drive and the enthusiasm to achieve your goals.

But how do you actually do this? How can you fuel and on-going desire to achieve those goals?

Well, it’s not always easy, particularly when life gets in your way and you get those inevitable detours, road- works and difficult passengers!

But here are some techniques that can really help:

• Keep the end in mind – if your goal is something that you truly want to achieve, then even just the thought of achieving it should be enough to refuel your desire to achieve it.

  Keep your piece of paper with your ‘dream life’ description with you and use it to remind yourself of what you are trying to achieve. Read it out aloud every morning and every night before you go to bed, and slowly your sub-conscious will accept that this is the target and will help you get there. Or turn it into a Vision Board, after all the mind works in pictures.

• Use visualisation techniques – Even stronger than reading your goals out aloud, close your eyes and take the time to visualise yourself in your dream life, once you’ve achieved your goals. This should excite you, and give you that high octane motivation and drive to achieve your goals.
• Maintain a positive attitude – the power of a positive attitude should never be underestimated. And the destructive power of a negative one shouldn’t be either. No matter how many roadblocks and detours you get along the way, just shake it off, check your road map and keep on moving towards your destination.
• Use affirmation techniques – To help with the above, affirmation techniques can greatly support your goal setting efforts by programming your sub-conscious mind with positive thoughts of encouragement, self-confidence and mental ability to achieve your goals. There is a FREE affirmation course on this site – just click on the “Free newsletter’ tab in the menu for access...
• Use pit-stops – believe it or not, those little milestones along the way are an excellent source of motivation and help you refuel your soul. Pit-stops, or mini goals as we like to call them, give you a sense of achievement (because you HAVE achieved something) and boost your self-confidence in being able to go the whole way. Particularly if you have long term goals, make sure you break them down into management chunks and set some well-defined mini-goals to achieve along the way.
• Maintain your vehicle – stay healthy, get in shape (it ultimately gives you more energy and drive), and look after yourself physically, mentally and spiritually. If your vehicle is run down or faulty, it will be all the more harder to make your journey.

Get into the right mindset NOW, so by the time New Year comes around, you will already be thinking “Yes, I can achieve this”, whereas most New Year goal setters will still be thinking “What am I going to try and achieve this year”.

So your activities for this week: 1. Write down the gaps between your current life and dream life 2. For each of these gaps, think about a goal/s that you could set to close the gap 3. Try writing an affirmation to support the relevant aspect of your dream life 4. Every morning and every evening, read or visualise your dream life and really try to ‘feel the love in this future vision, and read your supporting affirmations.

And don’t forget, you can try one or more of the following FREE resources to help you on your journey:

So until next week, happy thoughts and big dreams!

Best regards

Sam Sander

Achieve Goal Setting Success