Do you have goals that you set repeatedly and never get accomplished?
Now you may get started on it but you don’t complete it or you might not start at all and yet they keep making it on your list of goals. Have you ever wondered what would get you to achieve the goals you desire? Do you want to find a way to get motivated and stay motivated?
Here are seven steps to achieve a goal based on years of study on understanding motivational triggers in people.
1. The first question to ask is why is the goal important?
What are your reasons to start? Is it because of what you will gain or what you will lose? Remember accomplishment of long-term goals is not about skill or knowledge; it’s about how you get motivated and how you stay motivated. So
a. Are you motivated toward the goal/ toward achieving what you want? or
b. Are you motivated to move away from what you don’t want?
If your goal is weight loss and your reason is a slimmer, fitter body. That is what you will achieve, what you are going towards. You need to ask yourself what will you get away from. Is it illness, aching joints, lack of energy, low self esteem?
Getting away from something is often what gets you started and going towards what you want is what keeps you moving/ motivated. If you know only what you want and not what you want to get away from you might never get started.
2. In a competition between will power and imagination your imagination usually wins
So if you want to lose weight, maintain weight, and all you see in your minds eye is that big piece of chocolate or glass of wine, then what’s in your minds eye is going to draw you and attract you.
So Create 2 visual representatives
a. What you want to get away from
b. What you will gain by achieving your goal.
It is like having a visual of the past and one of the future, the past being what you don’t want, and the future being what you will achieve. Practice visualizing these two images twice a day or at any time you feel your will power being tested.
3. Schedule it, plan it and turn it into a procedure
Any behaviour you want to do, stick it into a routine/ ritual you already do. I want to exercise every morning. I drop my daughter to the bus stop at 6:50am every morning. So I wear my gym clothes and after I drop her to the bus stop I head to the gym. This has become my ritual and this works perfectly, until the school holidays…
4. Commitment
So after you turn it into a routine/ ritual you stay committed to it. Now I know it is the holidays and that disrupts my routine, so I need to plan for it. I need to decide to be stubborn about my goal and flexible with how I get there. So I may want a lie in in the mornings but I still need to get my workout in. I can exchange it for something but I cannot remove it.
5. Accountability
Do you need to be accountable to yourself or others? Some people work better when they are accountable to others, examine if you are one of those people and if you are find an accountability partner/s.
6. Break it down into small steps
Know exactly the steps you are going to follow everyday, week and month in order to achieve the goal. Often we have too many options and that keeps us from doing anything.
7. Make the goal a necessity
Write down the consequences of not achieving the goal. Necessity makes it happen. If it is not a necessity it is less likely to happen.
Follow these 7 steps and you will achieve your goals. That’s right!
*Based on LAB Profile by Shelle Rose Charvet