Achieving Goals

“Well begun is half done” as the old saying goes, but how do you go about achieving goals, when times are tough?
If you follow the guidelines on writing out your goals, by using the templates or something similar, then you have begun well.
What about the other half, that is achieving and completing your goals? How do you make sure you keep on doing what you committed to doing, once the going gets hard? What about when you are stuck? An unforeseen obstacle crops up.
What about when you just don’t get started, because the goal seems too big?
Well this post on goals will guide you through what to do to get you back on track.

Staying on Track

By writing out well-formatted goals, you will have uncovered any obstacles before you start. This means that you can plan ahead.
Things do crop up, that you could just not foresee happening, so it’s important to have a plan to stay on track.
One of the key thing is to keep in mind WHY you are attempting to achieve your goal. This is where visualisation, affirmations, dream boards and all those new-age devices really do help.
When your motivational juice is low, you can remind yourself why you started in the first place. If you make a habit of visualising every day, pretty soon, your dream will be at the forefront of your mind. Read my book on the Law of Attraction, where I go into a lot more detail on how to do this.
The more mind programming you do, the more obsession and passion you can stoke up. You could even print off and cut out pictures representing your goal. Then you can put them around the house.
You will be subliminally programming your mind.
The other important thing to do is to break down the goal into the smallest chunks and milestones as you possibly can.

Running a Maration

Take for instance a goal of running a marathon. The goal is to be able to run 26.2 miles in race conditions. If you are not a professional athlete and are only used to running two or three miles a few times a week, it could take you about 16 weeks of focused training to be able to complete a marathon.
You would therefore have a plan for every training session you will run. This is usually be about five runs per week for 16 weeks, gradually building up the distance.
At the start of your training, you are pumped up, envisioning yourself passing the finishing line and collecting your medal, to the sound of cheering crowds. You start your training fairly well, moving steadily up to 6-mile runs.
Then your first challenge arrives. The weather’s cold and damp and you just don’t feel like going for a run today. Surely missing one day won’t matter. But wait. What about your plan? If you miss today, that means you will be behind this week, which means you won’t complete this week’s training. That means you will struggle with next week’s training and so on. This could seriously damage your chances of completing that marathon.
However, your plan will be successful in motivating you. You decide to go for the run after-all, rather than get behind in your training. The funny thing is, is that this process also exercises your psychological muscles, just as it does your physical muscles.
You will find that you start becoming more disciplined in other areas of your life as a by-product.