It’s New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow we wake to a new year. Are you ready? Did you make new year resolutions? Did you write out all of your new year goals, dreams and aspirations?
The sad truth is many will answer no to these questions because they are tired of not hitting their goals and not keeping their resolutions.
If that’s you I want to show you how to hit your goals every year in five steps. Notice I didn’t say five “easy” steps. There is nothing easy about doing anything worthwhile. If you want something it is going to take work.
In order to hit your goals every year they have to be achievable that year. Meaning you can’t set a goal that you don’t have the means to accomplish. For instance, setting a goal to climb Mount Everest by spring would not be possible if you are not already an extremely experienced climber. You have to set goals that require extra effort, that cause you to stretch but that can be accomplished in the time frame you set or you are setting yourself up for failure. So step one is setting goals that can be accomplished.
The second step to hitting your goals is you have to really want to achieve what you set out to achieve. It may sound over simplified but I can assure you if your doctor told you that if you didn’t walk at least an hour a day, you were going to lose both of your legs, do you think you would find the time to walk an hour per day? I should think so. So if you want something bad enough you will do what it takes. Again step two is only setting goals that you really want that can be achieved in the time frame you set out.
But you have to be very specific. Everyone thinks they want money but most people don’t really want money they want what that money will buy. What do you want to buy with the money? If your answer is nice things, you won’t get money because nice things do not exist. It’s too vague. But if you said, I want to purchase a 2016 Z06 Blue Corvette convertible with less than 15,000 miles by November 30th of the coming year, that is pretty specific.
Buying any item on credit doesn’t count because you didn’t actually achieve the goal you simply circumvented the actual work necessary by purchasing now what you can’t actually afford. Affording a payment and affording the purchase are two different things but I’ll save that for another discussion. I certainly do not know your ability to earn money but if this is achievable goal by the date you set, then by all means set it.
Step three is to create a plan that is achievable by the date you set this year. If this Corvette was your goal you would be looking at around a sixty to seventy thousand dollar purchase.
In this case, if you currently make a grand a week and your bills are eight hundred a week you are left with two hundred per week that you can save. If this were true, it would take you around 6 years to save up for the Corvette so this is too far away to set as a short term goal because it can’t be accomplished this year. It doesn’t mean you don’t want it. It just means it’s not a short term goal. I put this under the dream category. The dream category is something you really want but creating a plan to get it is highly complex because it’s too far away. In this case you can just write it in the long term column and if it’s something you really want it will stay in that column until you have the means to get it.
However if you make $5000 per week and you have $1500 per week of disposable income then you could accomplish this goal in around 45 weeks. Very achievable and if you really want it your plan might be to save $1500 per week until you have $70,000 which would take about 46 weeks. So it could be accomplished by the November 30th date but you would have to make sure you stuck to the plan. This goal would cause you to stretch but would be achievable provided you really wanted the Corvette.
Step four is to take action and follow the plan. The plan here is simple, in the example above you would save $1500 per week. Nothing more, nothing less. You simply have to follow your plan. If your desire to achieve your goal is really strong because you really want what you set out to get, then following the plan will be a lot easier, but not easy. Let’s face it life happens and if you set a goal obstacles will arise. Getting through them is 100% dependent on how bad you want what you set out to get.
Step 5 is don’t set too many goals. If you really want to accomplish your goals and they are achievable by the date you set and you have a plan that you will follow then keep the list short. I like to keep it under 5 but 1-3 goals might be better if you have not been good at keeping your goals. By all means start with one. One goal that no matter what happens you will accomplish your goal this year. I started doing this over 25 years ago and I have hit lots of goals and I can tell you it is enormously satisfying when you set out to do something and accomplish it. Set yourself up to win by keeping the list small. What will happen as the years go by your subconscious mind will assist you because when your subconscious mind sees that you mean business when you set your goals, it will work in unison with your conscious mind to hit the mark.
But what happens if you do fall short? If you don’t hit your deadline? You simply adjust the deadline. So in the above example let’s say you got to November 30th and you come up $9,000 short. You will change the deadline to the first couple months of the next year. It makes that next year even more exciting because you get a reward early in the year.
One area of caution. Never set a short term goal that you have no intention of achieving by the date you set. This sets you up for failure in other areas of life so don’t do it. Set goals that you truly want to achieve, by the date you set to achieve them, create the plan and follow the plan. Once you do this for a couple of years you will come to enjoy the process of dreaming of what you want to achieve over the next twelve months.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney
P.S. If you struggle with having the time to get everything done I will be launching a free program called The One Week Time Miracle. You can send me an e-mail at info@DavidMulvaney.com or just comment below and I will send you a link next week when it goes live. Happy New Year!