Introduction

It is said that "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step". Not so. A journey of a thousand miles first begins with the decision to walk those one thousand miles. Not only that, who is to say that after you take that first step down the one thousand mile journey that you will not stop short and give up your goal of walking a thousand miles? To keep from falling short of your goal, you must develop a blueprint that will not only state very clearly what your goal is but also how you are going to go about achieving it. Your blueprint should have the following five parts:

• Decision: Decide what goal you want to achieve.
• Strategy: Decide how you plan to achieve that goal.
• Sub-goals: Break your overall goal into smaller goals.

Sub-sub goals: Break your smaller goals into even smaller goals if necessary.

• Action: Get off your rusty-dusty and spring into action.
• Persistence: Keep a-going.

Set a goal

The first thing you must do to achieve your goal is to decide what goal you want to attain. In other words, decide just what your goal is. Do you want to be able to run a half-marathon (12.6 miles)? Do you want to become a millionaire in 10 years? Do you want to lose 20 pounds? Or, do you want to organize the clutter in your basement? Whatever your goal is, you have decide what it is and state it in clear and specific terms.

Map out a strategy

Second, you have to decide on a strategy that you will follow in order to achieve your goal. Let's say, for instance, that your goal is to clean up and organize your cluttered basement. Now you must decide how you are going to go about cleaning up and organizing your basement. One way you might go about doing this is to start off by cleaning up and organizing the clutter by the wall on the right and then moving in a leftward direction doing the same thing until you have returned full circle to the right wall that you started from. After that, you might decide, last, to attack or clean up the clutter in the center of the room.

Break goal into sub-goals

After you have decided on a strategy on how you are going to achieve your goal, you should, next, break your overall goal up into several smaller sub-goals. Let's go back to the cluttered basement example. Instead of just stating that we want to clean up and organize our cluttered basement, we also decided how we were going to clean up and organize it. However, as they say, "the devil is in the details". That being the case, we must break our overall goal down into simpler parts while, at the same time, adhering to out strategy. Thus, we might decide that we want to have our basement totally cleaned and organized within 5 days. On the first day, we will clean up and organize the clutter near the wall on our right. On day two, we will do the same thing on the wall immediately left to the wall on our right. On the third day, we will clean up and organize the clutter by the wall that is left of the wall that is left of the wall to our right. On the fourth day, we will do likewise to the wall to the right of and adjacent to the wall on our right that we started off. (Note: we have come full circle.) Finally, with all the clutter cleaned up and organized by the four walls that compose a square, on the fifth and last day, we dive in and do the same thing with the clutter in the center of the room. With that done, we will have achieved our goal of cleaning up and organizing the clutter in our basement in 5 days!

If necessary, break your sub-goals into sub-sub goals

Sometimes you will have to break your sub-goals down into sub-sub goals. To return to our example of the cluttered basement, suppose we lived in a huge mansion in which the rooms were gigantic. Then instead of cleaning up the basement in 5 days, we might have to modify our goal somewhat, and have it cleaned up and organized in 10. Instead of cleaning up and organizing the clutter by each wall, including the center, we might decide that we take two days on each wall. That is to say that we will clean up only half the clutter per day. That will take us a total of 10 days to achieve. You do the math.

Put your goal into action

Now that you know what your goal is, how you are going to go about achieving it, and you have broken your overall goal down into manageable chunks, you must take action. You can have the best plan since kingdom come, but if you don't take action to achieve it, as my mom would put it: "It's not worth dooly-squat." It's just a pipe dream. Again, to achieve your goal, you must take ACTION! Don't procrastinate! Start cleaning up and organizing your basement now! Start stepping now! A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Commit to your goal

Now that you have actually put your plan into action, you have to commit to seeing the project through. You have to be persistent. You have to promise yourself that you will let nothing get in the way of achieving your goal. It will take both commitment and will-power on your part. You must "keep a-going" until you achieve your goal.

Summary

If you do all that I set forth in this blueprint, you should have no problem realizing your goal. What are those steps again? First, decide what goal you want to achieve. Second, map out a strategy as far as how you are going to go about achieving that goal. Third, break up your goal into smaller and hence, more manageable goals. If necessary, break up those smaller goals into even smaller goals. Fourth, take action by immediately putting your plan into effect. Last, make a commit to see your goal through.