Now that we have talked about how to set your goals and what goals to set, (if you missed this go back and read part 1) it is time to talk about how to actually achieve them. Setting goals is always a fun process as you think about the possibilities of the future. Putting in the work to achieve them, however, is the total opposite. It's a lot of hard work and dedication. This is also, not consequently, where most people fail. I want to give you some tools to use that will help you achieve your goals, whatever they are. The fun part is over. It's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
If you took my advice from the first part of this series then you should have two or three big, scary goals. They should scare you a little bit, but if you achieve them they will have the biggest impact on your life of anything you wrote down. They should be very specific, and they should have a timeframe. If your goals fit all of these characteristics then you are already ahead of most people. Let's talk about the next steps.
The first step is to figure out what actions you need to do to complete your goals. You need to think about what you need to do every single day that will get you closer to achieving your goal. This could be many different things, but identifying this process is THE most important thing that you will do. Every goal is different so this can be tricky. There are a lot of ways to do this. You can get a coach who can tell you what you need to do. You can ask someone who has done what you want to do to tell you what it takes. You can read a book about someone who has done it, or watch a YouTube video of them, or a documentary. Or you can Google it. There are a lot of ways to get this information but it is imperative that you find it. If your goal is to lose weight then this might be track your food and exercise every day. If you want to save more money then this might be automate a money transfer to your savings account every month. If you want read 50 books it might be read for 30 minutes every morning. You need to do this for each of your goals. What can you do every single day that will take me closer to the goal?
Once you know what you need to do every day then it is time to make it a habit. We all are the sum of our habits, whether they are good or bad. We go through our day to day life driven by small habits that we have developed over the years. Some of them are good. A lot of them are bad. What is imperative that you understand, however, is that the better that your habits are, the more success you will have. It really is that simple. So how do we set habits? There are a couple of great books on this topic (The Power of Habit & Atomic Habits, among others) but briefly I will give you the basics. It takes around 28 days to develop a habit, and every habit starts with a cue (think Pavlov's dog and the bell) and ends with a reward (think the food the dog got to eat after the bell was rung). All throughout our days we have cues, which cause us to perform the habit, which gives us the reward. Every time our phone dings with a notification it is a cue to check our phone, where we will get the reward of reading a new piece of information, for example. It is important that we understand how habits work so that we can use this information to our advantage. If your goal is to work out every day then you need to figure out what your cue to work out is. It could be getting in your car to drive home from work. It could be your alarm going off in the morning. It could be a notification you set on your phone. You need to find what works best for you. After you set your cue you need to set your reward. This can be the breakdown at the end of a class. This can be an ice cold Kill Cliff. This can be putting a big red X on a calendar. Whatever it is you need to have a specific reward that you use every single time. Once you figure our the cues and rewards for your habits then you need to do them EVERY SINGLE DAY for a month. Remember earlier I said it takes about 28 days to develop a habit. Once the habit is set it will be harder to NOT do the thing that you want to do than it will be to do it. That is why it is so imperative that you develop the habit. The first month will be the hardest part of your whole journey if you can set the correct habits.
Now that you have your habits set it is important to set benchmarks. I like to set monthly or even weekly benchmarks that I know I need to hit so that I know that I am on the right track. This will let you know if your plan is working or if you need to tweak it. If your goal is to lose 100 pounds in a year then that breaks down to about 2 pounds a week. Check in every week and if you get off your trajectory for a few weeks then you need to tweak something (add another gym day, or subtract 100 daily calories, etc.). You should always know where you are in the process and whether you are on track to achieve your goal or not. Don't worry if you get a little off track. This is common. The big thing is that you realize it quickly and correct it.
The last step is as simple as following the process. Keep doing what you are doing until you achieve your goal. This sounds simple on paper but a lot of times can be the hardest part. You need to have a relentless pursuit of your goals if you want to achieve them. You need to know, deep down in your gut, that no matter what YOU WILL ACHIEVE THIS GOAL. It is a foregone conclusion at this point. It is not a matter of if, but when. Have you ever wondered why successful people are so confident? It's because they know that they will do whatever they set their mind to because they won't stop until they get it. They have developed so much trust in themselves over the years by doing what they say there are going to do that they know without a shadow of a doubt that they will achieve something.
There are a few other motivational tactics that I want to give you that can help as well. Life can be a grind sometimes and we just don't have any motivation. These are some things you can do if you are low in motivation. The first is to put a reminder of what you want to do in front of you as much as you can. Hang a shirt up in your closet that you can't fit into yet that you see every time you open up your closet. Put a picture of the house or car you want to buy on your computer desktop, or put the total amount of money you want in your savings account on your bathroom mirror. Every time you look at your reminder it will keep your goal at the forefront of your mind. Another tool is to write down an affirmation every day. You can write what you are going to achieve and when you are going to achieve it. Write it over and over and over. It will imbed so deep in your subconscious mind that there will be no question that you will achieve it. Another idea is to give one or two people the ability to impose a penalty on you if you don't do what you say you are going to do. If you don't save the money you said you were going to then you have to wear your rival college’s shirt to work one day. If you don't go to the gym then your coach gets to donate $20 to a cause you don't support. You get the picture. Make the consequences of not achieving your goal so bad that you will not stop until you achieve your goal.
Let's go back to our example of John Smith. If you remember he has three goals:
1. Lose 100 pounds by January 1, 2021
2. Have $10,000 in his savings account by January 1, 2021
3. Go to the gym 300 times in 2021
If we follow our plan then we need to figure out what he needs to do every day. The first is to track his food every day and to make sure he hits his macros. He buys a giant calendar for his house and at the end of every day he puts a big red X on the day if he came within 5% of his calories and macros. For goal number 2 he will set up an automatic transfer from his checking account to his savings account on the day he gets paid at the beginning of the month for $834. For goal number three he realizes that he needs to go to the gym 6 days a week to achieve his goal. Therefore he sets a time for each weekday (5:30 PM on the way home from work) and for every Saturday (9 AM). He puts these classes on his calendar on his phone and sets a reminder each day. He makes sure and logs every workout he does so that he can monitor his total workouts for the year. He also hangs up an outfit in his closet that he can't wear now but will be able to wear in 100 pounds and writes $10,000 on his bathroom mirror. Now he is set up to succeed! It took a lot of work on the front end to set it all up but now he just needs to follow the process. Every week or two he will weigh himself and monitor is weight loss, making sure he is on the right track. Every month he will check is total weight loss and make sure he is on pace, check his savings account, and check his total class attendance. He can make adjustments as needed as he goes, but if he follows this process he will most likely succeed, and even if he doesn't he will be much closer to where he wants to be than he would have been otherwise.
Now you should know what goals to set, how to set them, and how to achieve them. In part 3 I'm going to give you some real life examples from my life, as well as talk about some good and bad goals that I have seen other people set. Stay tuned for part 3!