From an early age we are taught to go after what we want in life. Whether it be encouragement from your parents, that one teacher in school that truly inspired you, a sports coach or just a friend helping to bring out the best in you. With this long upbringing of encouragement and inspiration you would say we should all be a shoe in for success and nailing any goal that we set out to accomplish. One would think right? The truth is that many of us want great things in life that we should seemingly be entitled to however most of us never seem to accomplish what we set out to do. No matter what self help or business book you read, most of them will include a section on goal setting. If everyone talks so much about goal setting you would think it would be taken seriously and adhered to right? Wrong! The fact is that most people set goals but never achieve what they set after. If you want to achieve great things in life this is one area that you need to become awesome at. The people in life that are successful has truly mastered this skill and it engrains itself into your being.

Let’s spend a moment and take the biggest goal setting times of every year, yes you guessed it, New Years. The New Year is here and it is time to put old bad habits behind us and set our sights on bigger and better things. However, if you were to truly reflect back on the last few New Years you would soon realize that most of the New Years resolutions that either yourself or friends have set never got obtained. Why is this? We are taught we need to have goals, we want bigger and better things, we know we can accomplish them if we work hard, but yet we never obtain them. If you were to study truly successful people and their achievements you would see many correlations in the process at which they go about achieving their goals. Let’s spend a few moments talking about that key components of that process, which will give you the knowledge and tools to replicate their success. The key components are as follows:

GET CLEAR – What is it you are truly going after? Not just the end result of the goal but the state you are going after, how is accomplishing this going to make you feel? Why do you want it? Is your goal a must have or a nice to have? Must haves get accomplished, nice to haves sometimes happen but usually as a result of luck rather then you taking charge of making it happening and having a high probability of success. Step of this piece is to write your goals down and why they are a must have, build out as much feeling into what you write down as possible and bring your goals to life for yourself. Also be sure to put thought into the time frame that you would like to accomplish your goal. This will further push you into the right gear and plan appropriately to assure that it is obtained.

GET LEVERAGE – You now need to get further leverage on yourself to ensure you do are fully committed to getting to your goals. How is your life lacking by not currently having what you will be trying to obtain in it? If you don’t hit your goal, how will you feel? What pains will be associated with it? What joy will you get by obtaining this goal? What joy could you have now if you had the end result of this goal already n your life. The most important thing to remember about this piece is to bring it to life yourself. Truly live, feel and imagine what you are thinking about.

MEASURABLE – Is your goal measurable? If not figure out a way to measure it so that you can track how you are doing towards the success of it. In most cases your goals will be very measurable in areas like finance and weight loss. However, you may have goals like increase self esteem, popularity and other things that are harder to actually measure. If you can’t measure it you will never know how much progress you are making towards your goal and if in fact you even hit your goal. In some cases you could hit your goal and not even know it, which will cause you to never celebrate your success. If you have something that you are looking to improve like self esteem there is a way to make these types of goals measurable for yourself. To measure these areas you will have to put some arbitrary standards in place. Ask your self on a scale of 1 to 10 where would you rank your self on, for example, self esteem. If you rank yourself at a 5 write down why you rank yourself as a 5, how you are currently living, how people are interacting with you and what are you doing that would cause you to rank yourself as a 5. Next write down what rank you would like to achieve and in what time frame. For example if you decide you would like to hit a rank of 8 in 1 year write that down and get clear on what an 8 is. If you were an 8 today, what is going on in your life, how are you living and feeling every day. You need to define very descriptively what success is and that in this example being an 8. The last step is pick a few numbers in between where you are today and your ultimate goal and get clear on what some of those in between numbers are and how you would define those. This will allow you to better track your progress and help you keep momentum because you will be focusing on your achievements, or stepping stones, towards your ultimate goal.

ACTION – Start taking immediate action on obtaining these goals right now. Even if its scheduling time on your calendar to take a couple of more steps towards the goal. You will not be able to obtain what you are going after without putting a massive amount of continuous action in place to ensure you hit your goal.

DAILY REVIEW / VISUALIZATION – One of the biggest mistakes that people make is that they either don’t write their goals down or they write them down and review them every six months. If you want to be assured you will hit your goal, have all of the above information written out and review it daily. After you review it then spend a few moments and visualize already achieving the goal. Put yourself in place where you already accomplished the goal and have what you are seeking. Bring it to life in your mind as you are in possession of it now.

REVIEW – Track your progress regularly and most importantly be flexible. If some of your approaches aren’t working that is fine, great things seldom work out right with the first approach. Don’t give up and be flexible. Additionally trust your gut and input from positive people in your life and just make changes to your approaches until you start getting your desired results.

BE GRATEFUL – As you are tracking towards your goal be grateful for the small accomplishments that you are making as you track towards your complete goal. This is so important as It keeps you in the right mindset and focused on the things that are working and where you are getting results. Please don’t under estimate this area. Additionally this area is an important concept to apply to every area of your life daily. Spend a few moments every day focusing on all the things you are grateful for. You will be amazed at what a rush it will give you and how your focus on every aspect of life will change to the positive.

ACCEPT – Last but not least be ready to accept and celebrate your accomplishments. Also be sure to thank everyone that has played some role in your success including yourself and your new way of thinking.

If you follow the above steps precisely and religiously you will get rid of all the unknowns and fears that ultimately cause people from hitting their goals. You will get a tremendous amount of leverage on yourself and make obtaining your goals fun rather then an inconvenience. Additionally I would like to also add that you need to make sure you have belief in yourself and your ability to obtain great things. Belief is one thing that will help fuel your efforts and keep pushing forward even when at times your goal may seem unobtainable. After all people that obtain great things in life always do what the others were unwilling to do. One of the things that most people either neglect to do or are unwilling to do is put a good mechanism in place to ensure that their goals are hit.