4 self-management principles that help you achieve your goals

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

We talk about the basics of self-management and share four key principles that will help you consciously manage your life.

The science of self-management is designed to simplify the process of our development and personal growth, regardless of what goals we set for ourselves: quit smoking, get a promotion, or start running in the morning. It is based on a set of principles, the understanding and application of which will inevitably improve the quality of your life.

What is self-management?

A person must learn to obey himself and obey his decisions.

Cicero

Self-management is the use of key management functions (planning, organization, motivation, control, coordination) to consciously manage your life.

In our life, these principles are embodied as follows:

• Planning - finding a mission, seeing your future, setting long-term goals and targets, as well as developing plans and tasks for the near future.
• Organization - work with vital resources: time, finances, status, as well as the formation of the environment, the search for partners, friends, mentors.
• Motivation - training your willpower and building a motivating force for further work.
• Control - setting standards and principles of one's life position to assess achievements and successes.
• Coordination - getting feedback from those around us, and constant adjustments to their plans, life position and sources of motivation.

Dozens of books have been written about each of these areas, but only if the key principles of their interaction are observed, impressive results can be achieved.

So what are the four key principles of self-management?

1. The principle of consistency

Find simplicity among confusion, find harmony among discord.

Albert Einstein

The cornerstone of life transformation is a systematic approach to change. Only by acting step by step, you can be 100% sure of the final result. Self-management can be represented as a circle, each element of which represents a step towards the implementation of the next stage.

If you set a big goal, then take care of your environment and resources. Are you done with this? Move on to motivation. Have you trained enough willpower? Raise your standards and measure your progress.

Act consistently and nothing will stop you.

2. The principle of small action

The path of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

Confucius

This principle calls for making minimal but continuous efforts to achieve the goal.

Let's say you decide to start running in the morning. If you raise the bar high right away and decide to run 10 kilometers every day, you will quickly give up. For development to occur constantly, it must be progressive.

Challenge yourself to run for 10 minutes every morning. And every day at the same time. If you manage to practice in this mode for a week, then soon you will feel the result, because your will will get stronger thanks to the small success that you have achieved. After that, you can already increase the load.

Your goal should always be greater than your daily result. Once you accept your little work as the building block of your ultimate success, the fear of ambitious goals disappears.

3. The principle of inner purpose

Regardless of what task you set for yourself, you need to understand what your intrinsic motivation is based on.

A person who quits smoking experiences incredible joy at finally getting rid of his bad habit, not only because he has become a fighter for a healthy lifestyle. He became more confident in his abilities and more attractive in the eyes of others.

When setting a goal, one should proceed from what desire lies at its basis. If you really have a goal of quitting smoking, ask yourself first why you decided to achieve this goal. The root cause always has only one of two reasons: avoiding suffering or receiving a reward.

Do you want to break a bad habit to stop feeling imperfect? Or to make a positive impression by feeling better?

Once you have defined and formulated an inner goal, you can very easily choose the appropriate first step. You will look for new sources of achievement until you feel more confident.

Ask yourself the question: "What do I really want?"

4. The principle of inert development

If you develop one thing, then everything that is around changes.

Paulo Coelho

Don't set yourself overly ambitious goals. Always start with self-development as your main mission. Stop tormenting yourself with the intolerable desire to earn the coveted million rubles and just start working on yourself. In any area.

Read more, take a trip, learn a new language, communicate with successful people. In the desire to develop, any of your actions will be aimed at achieving success.

Work with habits, emotions and attitudes, and professional growth will be an inert reflection of your success.

In your goal, the main thing is the desire to become the best version of yourself.

What do we have to do?

• Develop systematically and keep track of which stages you need to work harder on.
• Take a small action today and do it regularly until your willpower is strong. Read five pages a day, run for 10 minutes, tell someone: "I love you."
• Your goal is more important than simple desires. Ask yourself the question: "What do I really want?"
• Your little victory today is your professional and personal success tomorrow. Victory attracts victory, success attracts success. In any area.