How to Keep Your Eyes on the Goal...

Having written over 300 e-books on goal setting and nurturing self-discipline and motivation to stay focused on your goals and follow through with them and having applied a lot of that knowledge in my own life to pursue my goals and fulfill them, I think I can offer some sound advice on how stay focused on the goal. I am no authority on the subject because I feel that takes years of experience, but I do know the subject to some extent. I was asked my @event-horizon to write something on the topic and since it's quite an important one to me as well, I thought now was a good time to offer my 2 cents on it.

So here's what I do to pursue my goals and I think what helps most of the people to keep their eyes on their goals and achieve them.

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Have a Compelling and Meaningful Goal to Pursue

To follow through with a mission, you need to feel really connected to the mission and there needs to be a compelling enough reason to fulfill it. You complete your workplace projects on time because you know doing so will increase your chances of getting a better bonus or a good promotion. If these reasons aren't compelling enough for you, you are quite likely to slack working on the projects and it is likely you don't meet your deadlines on time as well.

Whatever your goal is or whatever that it is you are trying to achieve, it must be powerful and attractive enough for you to become drawn towards it. If you have already set enough, but haven't pursued it yet or did pursue it but left it halfway, analyze it and figure out if it was really compelling enough for you or not. Ask yourself questions like:

Do I really want to achieve it?
What is it that makes the goal compelling enough for me?
Why do I really want to work towards this goal?
Why did I quit its pursuit?
Why did it lose its meaning for me?

Ask yourself these questions and ponder on their answers for a while. Make sure to focus on each question one by one and as you analyze their answers, you will be making some startling discoveries for yourself. Take your time through this process because rushing through it may make you slip on an important point.

Once you have enough answers, use them to re-create a compelling goal for yourself. If revisiting the previous goal made you feel you never really wanted to pursue it in the first place, set a new one for you. While setting a new, meaningful goal for yourself, do ask yourself:

What is it that I genuinely and desperately want to achieve right now?
Does that align with my core values?
Is it really what I want to achieve?
Why do I wish to achieve it?
What meaning will its fulfillment bring in my life?

Ponder on these questions one at a time and dig deeper into them. Make sure to pay special attention to the last 2 questions because they will help you discover compelling enough reasons to follow through with a goal and stick to it till you achieve it. The compelling reasons will pull you towards your goal and make you go after it till you accomplish it. They are the reasons you must achieve that goal and the reasons that make you think you cannot make do without that particular goal. For instance, my goal currently is to increase my earnings and I want that because I am tired of living from one paycheck to another and I want to escape this life when I have to think too hard for buying even a carton of milk. I am not saying analyzing your budget before making purchases isn't good; it is a great way to save money, but you know sometimes it can be hard. This reason is really pushing me towards my goal and helping me pursue it strictly.

Make Sure Your Goal is a SMART One

A lot of the times we quit the pursuit of our goals because they lack one or more of the following features:

They aren't Specific
They aren't Measurable
They aren't Attainable
They aren't Realistic
They aren't Time-tagged

Your goal needs to be Specific so you are clear on what you are trying to achieve. If you want wealth, specify how much. If you want to lose weight, be clear on how much.

Your goal must be measurable too so you know how to track your performance and measure your success. For that, you need to break your goal into milestones and set some sort of measuring unit. For instance, I measure my performance by analyzing my savings.

Your goal needs to be attainable too which means you need to start pursuing it using all the resources available to you at the moment. If you have only $100 worth of savings and you wish to start a business of your own, think of ideas that you can pursuit with that amount instead of crying over why you lack sufficient funds and doing nothing about following through with your goal. You could also look for ways to raise funds. Analyze your resources now and see how you can use them to pursuit your goal. Any skill that you have is also your resource so keep that in mind.

Your goal must be realistic. I am not saying you should not dream to become a billionaire. If that's your goal, pursue it by all means. However, make sure to give yourself enough time to go about it. You cannot become a billionaire in a month right especially if you are starting from scratch but you can become one in a couple of years. When setting a goal, ensure it is reasonable and realistic so you stick to it for good.

Lastly, your goal needs to have a time frame attached to it and a starting as well as an ending date so you know when you must start working on it and when it is due. This keeps you from slacking on it and helps you get started with it soon enough. When setting a deadline and a time frame to follow through with a goal, do assess your nature and what excites you. For instance, some people like challenging goals so losing 30 pounds in 3 months may work for them. However, the same goal may be overwhelming for another person and for him/ her having a 6 month deadline to follow the same goal may work.

I observed that most of my goals did not have all the elements of a SMART goal which is why I quit the pursuit of a lot of them. Now I try to pursue one goal at a time and ensure it is a SMART so I stick to it and this does help.

Make Your Goal Manageable Enough for Yourself

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Focusing on a goal becomes tough when the goal is too overwhelming to start off with. If you want to lose 60 pounds in 6 months, it can feel quite overwhelming even though the goal isn't that unrealistic. However, since it is a big one and you know you have to work hard to follow through with that goal, it overwhelms you. That's basically why many of us quit the pursuit of our goals because we feel overwhelmed by them. Get rid of this feeling by making a goal manageable and doable for yourself. How? By simply chopping it down into smaller parts, steps and milestones.

If you wish to lose 60 pounds in 6 months, how about losing 10 pounds each month and then breaking that goal into several weekly goals. When a big chunk is chopped down into smaller bite-sized pieces, things instantly become more easier for you to approach. Asses your personality before breaking a goal into smaller milestones and see whether a bi-monthly, monthly or weekly milestone would work for you.

When you have your milestones in front of you, create your plan of action.

Have Your Action Plan

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If your goal isn't backed by a plan of action, this is another reason why keep quitting its pursuit. An action plan gives you a sense of direction and also adds more clarity to how you will pursue your goal. Take the first milestone you need to pursue and think of the steps you'll take to follow and fulfill it. Make sure to have daily activities that you must do to achieve your goal so every day you do something meaningful to achieve your goal. For instance, I try to make at least a thousand dollars each month which is just enough for me and my family to manage our monthly expenses. I want to make more than that but I know to do that, I first have to achieve that milestone first and to achieve that, I try to do one e-book for a client and write at least one post on Steemit too. I do not always fulfill this but I try my best and on days when I cannot achieve this daily goal, I just stay calm and patient with myself.

Do Not Wait for the Right Time to Start Off with Your Goal

Whatever the first task on your list is, just get started with it on your peak time. Do not wait for the perfect time to start off with your action plan because there is nothing such as the right time to do something. You make the time right by actually doing something so get started with the first activity on your to do list to make a worthwhile accomplishment and feel proud of yourself.

Affirm and Visualize

To get started with your goal, practice positive affirmations and visualize yourself achieving your goal. This also helps increase your focus on it and follow through with it till the end. Say 'I am working on my goal' or 'I can do this' or 'I am excited about working on my goal' or anything that fuels your motivation to work on it and then imagine yourself achieving your goal and visualize that scenario for 10 to 15 minutes. Do this every day before starting off with your to-do list and before going to bed. In a few days your motivation levels will be increased by manifolds since both these practices rewire your mind to think positively and draw more positive experiences toward you by harnessing the power of the Law of Attraction.

Also, create a suggestion that suggests what your goal is, when you plan to achieve it and what you will be offering to achieve it and write it down three to four times while speaking it loudly in the morning and at night. Napoleon Hill talks about this technique in his book 'think and Grow Rich' as one of the most effective ways to achieve your goal. I am not regular with this one, but trying to nurture its habit and it is helping me draw positive opportunities my way. If you wish to make a million dollars in 1 year by working as a web-designer, your suggestion could read, 'By March 2019, I will have earned a million dollars by providing web-designing services to the best of my abilities.'

Believe in Yourself and Be Kind to Yourself

Follow through with your performance by analyzing it at the end of the day daily and if you have somehow not achieved a milestone, be positive, nice and patient with yourself. If you did not work out as much as you wished one day or did not do a task well, do not be harsh on yourself. Slip ups happen but if you'll be hard on yourself in this time, you may lose the motivation and hope to follow it completely and may quit its pursuit.

Also, believe in yourself and your power to achieve your goal and keep telling yourself that you can and must achieve your goal.

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Become Process Oriented

As much as it is important to keep your goals on the goal, it is equally important to become thoroughly involved in the process and the journey that takes you to the goal because when you become process-oriented, you start enjoy the journey that helps you reach your goal and stop being harsh on to yourself when you experience a slip-up or two. You credit yourself for the little achievements and use them to fuel your enthusiasm to move closer to your goal. This is what I do a lot and trust me it helps me. I am working on becoming a good and popular speaker too so even if I make one lucrative contact, I pat myself on the back for this achievement.

Celebrate Your Achievements but Not for Ever

Whenever you achieve a milestone, do appreciate yourself and even celebrate the big ones but make sure not to do that for days or weeks. When you keep relishing the good feeling for days, you often become tricked into the procrastination trap and stay stuck in it for a long time. I have been in that place and while procrastinating on something does not feel too bad occasionally, staying trapped in it for weeks does kill you from within. So enjoy your achievements for some time, but then get back on track. This is extremely important so you do not slack.

These are the tips and strategies I am employing to achieve my goals and they do work for me and I have seen a lot of the people fulfill their goals with the help of the same hacks too. Moreover, make sure to cut back on your interaction with the naysayers in your life and replace them with positive people so you stay inspired to fulfill your goal all the time. Get started with these tips and keep tracking your performance and soon enough, you will achieve your goals.

Do share your thoughts on the topic and any suggestions/ tips you'd like to add to it. Thanks a lot for your support.

Love and light,

Sharoon.

I am running a writing contest with 5SBD up for grabs for the winner so if any of you would like to participate in it, click on the following link:

Shary's Writing Prompt Contest #3 and Results of Contest #2

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