10 Building Blocks of Achieving Goals

People who have achieved goals in their lives have already gone through certain steps of goal achievement, consciously or unconsciously until they have attained what they wanted in life. Before one achieve important goals in their lives, it is very important that they go through certain stages before their goals can be turned into reality. I call these building blocks of goal achievement, anyone who wishes to achieve their long-term goals must go through these stages in order to succeed, whether it’s business goals or career goals or simply personal goals...They just have to pass through the following stages....

People have numerous wants and may even have conflicting motives, but to be successful we must establish priorities and make choices. Successful people know what they want as well as whom they want to be and what they want to do, and they are willing to pay the price in time and effort. Whatever the guidelines, the successful person has both short-range and long-range goals. One’s primary purpose in life can be thought as one’s personal philosophy.

Life lived on daily basis and over the years consists of numerous ambitions and goals. However we may have long-range goals for example. Related to saving or material possessions, career achievements, interpersonal relationships, or services to others.

Each long-range goals can be broken down into short-range goals. These are what we’ll be working on day-to-day basis. We find then that achieving a series of sub-goals helps us to reach long-range goals.

It is important that all these goals be related, in a sense that achieving one goal makes it easier to achieve others. Those who do not determine goals might develop one habit or activity that’s conflicts with something else, they want. Although we can expect to have conflicts, we should learn to recognize and resolve them in a way that does not defeat our own purpose.

People with clear goals live one day at a time, but they know what they’re trying to accomplish and why. They have a primary purpose and related goals and sub-goals. Each day, therefore, has a meaning and purpose.

It is important not to only earn an adequate amount of money but also managing it to your advantage is very fundamental if you want to keep it long. This is especially true in our societies where everything we do involves expenditure of money in some way or the other. Whatever we do or what we want to get, involves spending money.

May people claim that they don’t have a budget because of either, “they don’t have enough money to budget” or “they have enough money to the extent they don’t need to budget it”.

But many financial crises and other money problems can easily be avoided when a budget is set, there are emergencies or accidents which may arise anytime. That’s why even the government sets its budget despite the fact that it has plenty of money or few of it in some poor countries.

By preparing a budget, you not only manage money well to meet your emergency needs when they show up, but also you make a detailed plan of your money in terms of expenditure; you manage the revenue and expenditure of your money to meet a certain target. You know how much you’re getting over a certain period of time and from which resources.

We live in a world of surprises, things show up out of nowhere unexpectedly, the more we’re prepared for these surprised the more we’re able to handle them calmly and easily. So it’s better to plan the expenditure of your money well despite how much of it you have.

Time……….”you can’t save it for later”…….”you can’t decide not to spend it”…….”you can’t borrow it”…….”you can’t take it with you either”…

You can’t make or find more time, or add more time in your life but you can learn to use the one which you have left with more effectively. This is the reason why other people accomplish more than others, it’s because they have learnt the secret of time management and thus using it to their advantage every time.

Some people may have more lifespan, live more years, but we all have the same number of hours in a day, week, or month…it’s a fixed thing. Even if you may know that it’s still important to be reminded of things we already know but forgotten, so we do not neglect or overlook the obvious.

There are certain instances in our lives where we no longer have control over our time. Waiting in line of a hospital, stuck in a traffic jam, we work in a very demanding job, we take someone else somewhere to solve important issue…..all of these are beyond us. But we can do some creative thinking and still make the most of the time we idly spend turning it into productive one, doing important things while we spend that time so it doesn’t go into waste.

We should also determine the bad habits of spending time idly, like watching tv, and thus set priorities first so that precious time doesn’t go into waste. Things like watching tv or doing other thing irrelevant to our goals should be minimized if we want to achieve that goal badly.

To change your behavior or ways for a certain purpose, that’s called flexibility. As we all already know that sometimes or should I say, most of the time things will not go our way when we’re on the triumph of accomplish our goals. It takes proper analytical abilities, courage and creativity to be flexible but not everyone can do that.

Flexibility is a common factor and an important one when in a triumph of achieving your goals. It is easy to act according to established rules, predominant habits as many people do, especially for those people who wonder why they’re not successful. There’s a saying which goes….”To get what you haven’t gotten before, you’ve got to do what you haven’t done before”…..that’s when flexibility comes to play. You have to learn to change when situation demands you to, and that’s when you’ll spot more opportunities.

Achievers are movers, always changing their course of action towards their final destination; it’s why they succeed all the time. Being a fixed minded won’t get anyone anywhere, because they’re simply not moving. Achievers are not afraid to say that they were wrong and try something else, change their course of action to another direction. Life demands you to change constantly so you can grow, so you should do just that when you want to achieve your goals.

The ability to recognize opportunity is not something everyone has naturally; you’ve got to have self-awareness first so you can spot opportunities. And in order for that to happen, you’ve got to do deep self-analysis or introspection as they call it….you’ve got to look deep into your personality’s psyche, determine all of your weaknesses and strengths, in order to know what you need in order to reach where you want to be.

When you’ve known your limitations, your priorities and strengths; the more readily you’ll recognize opportunity and utilize it when it shows up. Some people can associate this with luck, intuitions, pull or insight but these things won’t show up until you get a good understanding of yourself as an individual.

When you know what you want to achieve or who you want to be, it can also be very helpful when you meet like-minded people to share ideas, cause that’s where most opportunities comes from….networking is a proper terminology for that. People can really simplify the things you once though as hard or help you reach the position you wanted, when you express your words outwards and be an open minded person.

- This is the obvious one, we all know it and hear it all the time; the truth is that, you’ll never achieve what you want to achieve until you believe in yourself and your ability to get what you want; whatever it might be. Self confident results from a positive and realistic self-concept. It is bolstered by knowing what you want and recognizing your capababilities.

People begin to feel confident when they have established realistic goals and see that they are making some progress towards their desired achievements. If they see that they lack a certain skill which is needed in order to achieve their goals, they do anything to make sure they get that skill even if it means taking a class so as they can gain a knowledge about what they want to achieve. Sometimes and most of the times things won’t always go your way when pursuing your goals.

The most important thing to do when in such a situation is to have unshakable faith in yourself and your abilities, because the good things in life won’t come easily without a fight, you’ll have to fight very hard before life surrenders to you and hands you what you really want. The kind of reality which you want for yourself has to be molded by your faith first before it manifests into your physical world.

The amazing ability of sticking with one thing at any cost, without shifting your concentration, is called perseverance. It’s the ability to be wired and fixed completely on something without being distracted or giving up at any cost. When you’re on your way to achieve something important to you, it is very important that you become very committed to it without shifting your interests or concentrations, because strokes of genius and opportunities shows up when you’re completely immersed in a problem; it’s where the saying “opportunities only goes to those who already on the dance floor” comes from.

It is very important to follow through your every decision, it not only gives you power and boost your self-esteem, it also gets you integrity from people and respect. It gives you personal power of believing in yourself and your abilities once you’ve achieved your goal.

Many important and successful people knows the importance of working hard and long, it’s not about the pain that you get at that moment but it’s about the long-term benefit that you get from your hard long labor as a pay-off. What you do sometimes can be tiresome or boring, the road to success is always uphill and progress is not always assured, the next milestone is not always in sight thus it’s very natural to be less motivated and be discourages and drop the whole thing. But the important thing to remember is that, persevered people work hard towards their goals when encouraged and work harder when discouraged.

Self-discipline is very related to perseverance, success is about following through with whatever is needed to achieve your goals, regardless of the state you’re in or situation. Use whatever little tools you have or resources so as to achieve the big things which you want, it’s possible but you just have to figure it how. Many people say they want something, but they don’t want it bad enough in order to sacrifice their comfort zones and make the required effort until they get what they want.

It is very easy to give up when you encounter a road block in the journey of going towards your goals, giving up becomes incredibly natural. Or when someone criticizes your effort when doing something, it’s tempting to punch that person right in their face and say..”Criticize that you prick”.

But we should learn to see these things as challenges, which directs us towards our desired direction, they should motivate us instead of frustrate us and making us angry. When you make a mistake, you automatically learn what works and what doesn’t. Also learn from criticism then profit from it. It is very easy to resent the person who’s criticizing you, to defend the attacker from hurting your self-esteem. You must calm down, then evaluate the criticism because most of the time the outside people are the ones who can read you more than yourself, they can study you from outside then help you in offering their opinions through criticism. It is also important to examine the qualifications of the critic to determine if they know what they’re talking about and have valid reason for criticism.

It may be impossible to please everybody, but again you’re an ever-evolving-being, you grow everyday so it’s important to develop yourself as much as you can through self-analysis and people’s opinion, and criticism is through that.

Mistakes and flaws are what builds us eventually, they’re our only teachers towards our progress; correct our approach to certain problems. Making a mistake isn’t the end of the world; it’s the realization of new one, because each mistake pushes you towards a particular path which leads you to your destination; if you’re determined enough.

When you pursue your goals, whatever they may be; at some point when you make a mistake or when your will power has already being drained, or when you’re just exhausted; you’ll feel like giving up. It’ll feel so natural and easiest thing to do. Unless you’re motivated or inspired constantly, going towards your goal can be the hardest thing ever in your life.

Without some kind of drive, you’ll eventually stop.

Willpower itself can be drain after a certain amount of time when the going gets tough; it’s called “willpower depletion”.

This is when rituals come in, rituals are some things which you do from day to day to motivate yourself or inspire yourself, when reaching for your goals. These can be things like weightlifting for men, jogging, reading motivational books/articled/quotes, listening to something motivating, read a story of your role model or doing anything that you find uplifting to you.

We all have resources, whether we know that or not, it doesn’t matter what we get from those sources. There are some people who can finance us in reaching our goals, there are people who give us advices about anything, there are those who motivate us through their words of wisdom and inspiration and there are those who are willing to assist us towards reaching our goals with their manual contribution.

Think carefully about your goals, think about the things which you need in order to reach them faster, what kind of assistance you would need who is currently in your life?!. Even if we don’t like to admit it, we all need each other in one way or another. The earlier you realize this, the easier it becomes as a process; the crucial and wise thing to do is to start early in evaluating your resources. There are people in your life which can help you reach a certain point in reaching your goals, it can be your mother, father, sibling, relative, friend, an acquaintances or even a stranger….but you won’t know for sure who it’ll be until you have evaluated your goals to determine what you need. So EVALUATE…!!