3 easy steps to achieving your goals

Planning is the first step to any meaningful change in life, whether it be fighting a bad habit or working on a relationship. Many people, unfortunately, do not attach due importance to this stage and, as a result, abandon their ambitious goals. In order to follow this path successfully, you must first understand what planning is and how to use it.

What is planning?

Planning brings the future into the present and allows you to do something about it now.

Alan Lacaine

In the practice of self-management, planning is the setting of goals and the formation of ways to achieve them. This stage is key. If you were able to ask yourself what to do next, then you started a change.

Planning helps not only to develop a procedure for changing ourselves, but also to better understand what we really want to achieve. Too often, there is a hidden need for recognition or understanding behind the simple desire to break a bad habit. If you identify it, then you can simplify the work on yourself.

In self-management, planning includes four stages:

Mission.
Target.
Tasks.
Plan.

Having familiarized yourself with this simple scheme, you will start moving towards your goals today.

Mission. What is it all for?

- You're not going there! The lights are on the other side!

- I don't care, I'll light mine.

From the vastness of the Internet

Very often the first stage of planning is called goal-setting, which is far from always correct. The goal implies a specific expression of inner desires, which, even if achieved, may not be satisfied. The first step in planning change should be a mission statement.

The mission is our inner goal, the same secret call that we are not used to voice when we begin to strive for something.

- Why do you want to quit smoking?

- I want to stop hurting myself.

- Why do you need this?

- I want to improve my health and live long.

- Why?

Simple habits can have big inner desires that you must expose. Thus, striving for them should become an end in itself. The beauty of a mission, as opposed to a goal, is that it is unattainable and is always a stimulus when working on oneself. So, even after a person quits smoking, he will maintain health, be able to start actively playing sports or switch to healthier foods.

Step 1. Whatever your goal at the moment, take five minutes to dig deeper. Find your true mission. Write it down as simply and understandably as possible. Let it always be in front of your eyes: put it as a screensaver on your phone, write it on a sticker and stick it in a prominent place or fix it on the title page of your diary.

Remember to constantly remind yourself what all this is for.

Target. Where does the mission take?

Set a goal, resources will be found.

Mahatma Gandhi

So many books have been written about goal-setting and so many wise words have been said that I will try only to summarize the knowledge that I have and share a working technique.

After defining a mission that will be your main motivator for change, you can return to your original goal.

The most effective tool for formulating goals for me is SMART criteria, according to which the goal should be:

S- accurate. Unlike a mission, your goal should be expressed in the specific result that you want to achieve.

M- measurable. Express your goal in numbers. For example, last year I decided to read more. My desired result was 30,000 pages read per year.

A - achievable. How do you know if your goal is achievable? Unfortunately, this is the point that most often scares people because they are afraid of not living up to their high expectations. You should remember that your work will consist of constant and sequential small steps, so the result of the first day will not let you lose heart. Do not be upset if your goal is not 100% realized. In any case, you will be glad of the efforts that you put into working on yourself (for example, by the end of the year I read only 22,074 pages, but this year I am already ahead of the schedule by a month).

R - significant. If your goal is truly in line with the mission, do not doubt that it is of absolute importance to you.

T - limited in time. The big question for people is what time frame to target. I plan for a maximum of one to two years. I decided so, because at the moment the implementation of my plans does not require a long time frame, and the limited time frame only stimulates me.

Step 2. Right now, under your mission, set yourself several goals for the near term, which will not exceed one year. It is better that there are no more than three goals, otherwise your attention may start to dissipate. Review them periodically and don't be afraid to make adjustments. Your goals shouldn't become dogmas. They are benchmarks to rely on and which can always be revised.

Tasks and plans. When to start working?

- If you have performed an action, then you will definitely get a result, whether you want it or not.

- Some kind of mysticism.

- Mysticism is to perform an action and think that nothing will happen.

Vladimir Serkin

Tasks are a direct extension of your goals, but they are time-bound. It should be one to two months. Such fragmentation is necessary so that you can always see the intermediate result of working on yourself.

For example, if your goal was to quit smoking in a year, then your goal for the current month would be to reduce your cigarette consumption by four a day. That doesn't sound so scary, right?

After that, you can start putting together a plan, which is key to your success. It is the plan that helps determine the first step that will bring you closer to your goal right now. It will be a checklist of what you will accomplish today.

Most of us set ambitious goals, but, frightened by their scale and not knowing how to approach them, we quit before even starting. The only way to achieve what you want is to write a plan of what you will do today to get closer to your mission right now.

The plan can include just one action. For example, today you will calculate how many cigarettes you smoke per day, and you will smoke one less. The same will be the plan for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, until the first task for the week is completed. Agree, it is easier for a person who smokes a pack a day to give up one cigarette today than to shout, throwing the entire pack into the trash: "Never again!" And the next day, buy a new one and return to addiction.

Your first action isn't just one day's victory. This is the realization of your mission. This is the whole secret. This is how those who seem to us to be successful and happy people live. They don't see their sacrifice today as part of a larger goal. Their daily work on themselves is the very goal.

Step 3. Take a piece of paper right now and write down for yourself a plan for today, what you should do to get closer to solving the first short-term tasks (just do not forget about your ambitious mission).

Summary

Always look for the source of your inner desire for change, ask yourself the question: "For what do I want to change?"

Set long-term goals, but don't make them dogma, work with them and celebrate your victories.

Make a plan right now for what you will do today to start enjoying your mission.

Are you still sitting and reading this article? Get up immediately and go to fulfill your potential! I wish you success!