The first key to setting goals is to create goals that will challenge you and drag you kicking and screaming far enough out of your comfort zone to make reverting to old habits impossible, while at the same time being realistic enough so that it feels possible for you right now.
If the goal is too big and too daunting then it just leads to a feelings of overwhelm. The feeling over being overwhelmed is what stops us doing most things in life. It causes stress. It leads to failure and we begin to despair of ever achieving our goals.
In order to succeed we need to make our goals manageable. Few people would endeavour to run a marathon without first putting in a lot of hard training. If we are smart we find a good training program either online or in a book and start out walking and running until at last we can run one mile. Ever notice some days you can run farther and faster than others and some days you cannot run at all. The trick is to persevere – it gets easier.
Once we have run one mile we go onto two miles, then three until eventually we are ready to stand on the starting line with hundreds, perhaps thousands of others as we set out to complete the twenty-six mile journey. It might feel daunting and a little bit scary but if we have put in the training we know the goal is manageable and achievable.
If we haven’t done any training then we are likely to feel very overwhelmed and failure is almost guaranteed. Likewise, it is going to be very difficult to create a massive goal, unless we have succeeded in creating and achieving smaller goals.
What happens when we try to achieve a big goal?
Our conscious mind, whose main aim is to protect us and which is programmed by past experience, goes back over our experiences and brings up all the times we failed in achieving any sized goals and concludes that we probably won’t succeed this time either. The conscious mind knows no better. So we will either start and fail, or we don’t start at all because our conscious mind keeps telling us we are likely to fail this time too, so why bother.
If we don’t succeed with smaller goals then the bigger goals really are just going to overwhelm us. So if you are struggling with your big goals, look to your smaller goals. Achieve success there first. Your conscious mind will soon learn to associate goals with success. Achieving your goals will give your confidence a well needed boost. Then start tackling progressively larger goals.
Or try to break your large goals down into smaller pieces if you can. If you are finding this difficult you just need to put a bit more thought into it. Get out a large sheet of paper and write down everything you know about that goal. Some steps may become obvious. If not, it doesn’t mean you will never achieve this goal. It might just means that the time isn’t quite right for you now.
Write down a list of all your goals and store in a loose leaf binder. Then on separate sheets write one goal with everything you now know about that goal. Prioritise them in a way that makes sense for you, you can always reprioritise later or even lose a few. Review them regularly, giving your most important goals the most time, adding ideas or any additional information you have learned and steps you need to take or may already have taken.
Work on the ones that come easiest for now, get a habit of success and achievement. Know what achieving your goals feels like.
By focussing on goals even when you are not working on them you will find a wealth of ideas and resources become available to you. But be sure to write down any ideas when they come to you, don’t assume you will remember them as ideas can disappear as quickly as they appear.
As time passes you will find that you have achieved at least some of them without even realising it.
Most of us forget that goal achieving is a journey not a destination and that destination may change over time.
Determine you success by how far you have come rather than how close you are to where you want to be.
