A Proven Guide to Everything You Need to Achieve Your Goals
How do you achieve the goals that you set out to do?
There are some goals which you are confident to achieve and there are some goals which you are doubting yourself about.
But if you were to be honest, there is a secret part of you that wishes that all your goals can be achieved.
So what is the secret of success?
In my past decade of coaching, I have coached hundreds of people to succeed in their goals.
These are some of the things that my clients have managed to do:
Tripled their income
Mended decades-old relationship rifts with their loved ones
Inspired hundreds of people through charitable movements
Written, published and sold books in 5 weeks
Gotten hired for their dream job in another country
And I have observed that there are 7 critical factors you must have in order to achieve your goals.
I have seen people achieve miracles when these 7 factors are all in place.
I have also seen people fail dramatically when one or more of these factors are missing.
Success Factor 1: The value of the goal must be clear
Most people set goals where the value of the goal is not apparent to them.
Example of goals where the value is not apparent:
Do 3 social media posts a week
Lose 10kg in weight
Get a promotion
There is no benefit to these goals, only the action or result. To motivate yourself, you need to make the benefit of achieving the goal clear.
Fortunately, there is a very simple tweak that you can do to make the value of the goal apparent.
Just fill in the blank of the following statement.
You achieve a goal so that you can ___________. Fill in the blank with whatever that is of value to you.
Example of the above goals after tweaking:
Do 3 social media posts a week so that I can get 10 new customers for my business
Lose 10kg in weight so that I can be confident of my appearance again
Get a promotion so that I have enough money to pay off my mortgage
By stating the value of the goal, you know exactly what you will gain by achieving the goal.
Why is this important?
Ensuring that you get the value that you intended
Stating the value of your goal helps to focus your actions so that you are sure that the benefit that you want is achieved.
For example, posting 3 social media posts a week can be done in many ways. You can post useful content or try to get people to share your posts, but if the posts do not lead to your intended outcome of getting 10 new customers, then the outcome that you want is not achieved.
Keeps you motivated
Goals require effort to achieve and usually there is some suffering involved to achieve your goals.
To do 3 social media posts a week, you will need to think of good content.
To lose 10kg, you need to experience aching muscles and dietary deprivations.
To get a promotion, you will need to make the boss that you absolutely detest, happy.
By nature, human beings do not like pain and would avoid it if possible.
Being clear of the value of the goal motivates you to put in the necessary effort to achieve the goal.
It helps you to say, “I need to suffer this temporary pain to get this (value) at the end of the day.”
The value of the goal must be clear to you. You need to know why a goal is important.
Because when the going gets tough, the only thing that will keep you going is the value of what you would get when you achieve the goal.
Success Factor 2: Desire the journey
Have you ever had an important goal that you are absolutely crystal clear of the value that it would bring to you, but yet you dread taking the action steps required to get to the goal?
This is a classic case of wanting to get to the destination but not the journey.
Realistically speaking, for most stretch goals, there would be something undesirable about the journey or else you would have achieved the goal already.
Want to have your own business but hate cold calling?
Want to improve your relationship with your family but unwilling to sacrifice the time needed from your work?
Want to get fit but cannot stand exercising?
Guess what? These parts of the journey are what causes you to grow in the first place. The reason why you get a high after achieving a goal is because you have overcome difficulties.
Nobody is really excited or happy when they achieve something easy for them, they get happiness and fulfillment from achieving something that is difficult.
So embrace these difficult parts and learn to love these parts of the journey, welcome them as opportunities to grow.
Tip: One way to make the journey more desirable is to break the process down into chunks.
Then reward yourself after completing each part.
The power of getting something done builds confidence and momentum, which helps to spur you on to continue.
Success Factor 3: Get knowledge (both tested and untested)
There are two types of knowledge, tested and untested. You need both types of knowledge to succeed in your goals.
Tested knowledge
Tested knowledge is knowledge which has been proven to work. You have succeeded in it. You have the know-how to do it.
If asked to break down the step by step basis of what it takes to achieve a goal, you know exactly what details you need to do it.
Tested knowledge also refers to knowledge that other people have that can help you to succeed. This is where good mentors and teachers come in.
Want to create a great piece of art but don’t know how? Find the best art teachers that you can find and get them to teach you.
Try to find mentors and teachers who have succeeded in that area AND are great at teaching. Just because a person is successful in an area doesn’t mean that the person will be able to impart the skills of how they have succeeded.
Untested knowledge
Untested knowledge is knowledge which is not proven to work.
Untested knowledge is useful when the area that you are venturing into is unknown and nobody has done it before.
For example, nobody has put a person on Mars before, so achieving that goal would mostly involve dealing with untested knowledge.
Dealing with untested knowledge requires that you be resourceful, to think on your feet. When you are dealing with untested knowledge, you need to iterate and plan to fail before you can succeed.
When dealing with untested knowledge, the faster you fail and learn from your failures, the better.
If your goal involves untested knowledge, plan to fail.
And treat it as part of the process that you need to go through in order to succeed in your goal.
When to use tested knowledge and untested knowledge?
When it comes to achieving your goals, determine whether you are dealing with tested or untested knowledge.
Whenever possible, try to find proven methods that work and go with tested knowledge.
Go with untested knowledge if you want to create something new and innovate. The rewards are greater when something has not been done before.
Be clear on what type of knowledge you are using, because this minimizes disappointment and wasted energy.
2021 has just started and you are probably setting goals for what you want to achieve for this year.
There are some goals which you are confident to achieve and there are some goals which you are doubting yourself about.
But if you were to be honest, there is a secret part of you that wishes that all your goals can be achieved.
So what is the secret of success?
In my past decade of coaching, I have coached hundreds of people to succeed in their goals.
These are some of the things that my clients have managed to do:
Tripled their income
Mended decades-old relationship rifts with their loved ones
Inspired hundreds of people through charitable movements
Written, published and sold books in 5 weeks
Gotten hired for their dream job in another country
And I have observed that there are 7 critical factors you must have in order to achieve your goals.
I have seen people achieve miracles when these 7 factors are all in place.
I have also seen people fail dramatically when one or more of these factors are missing.
Part 1 of the first 3 critical factors can be found here, while the remaining 4 factors are listed below.
Success Factor 4: You need Urgency
Need to lose weight to become healthier? However, that possible heart attack from being overweight is years away.
Have a dream of having your own business? You can always do that someday because you still have a comfortable job.
Want to have a neat and well-maintained house? The messy house that you are living in is still tolerable because nothing is breaking down, yet.
The problem with some goals is that the consequences for not achieving those goals are far ahead in the future.
When the goal is not urgent, it is easier to Netflix and chill rather than to suffer the effort of making the goal happen.
So unless there is urgency in wanting to achieve the goal NOW, the likelihood of the goal being perpetually stuck in the to-do list is high.
One of the ways that you can overcome this is to hire a coach to keep you accountable to your timelines.
When you pay for a coach’s services, the psychological stake that you have in achieving the goal increases. This creates motivation and compels you to take action to complete your goals.
Your coach would also remind you when you are slipping from your targets, reminding you of the importance to complete your goals even if it’s not urgent.
Success Factor 5: Prioritization and Setting Aside Time
Everybody has 24 hours but there are many ways that we can maximise these 24 hours.
I once had a client who wanted to write and publish a novel. He was working a full time job and he didn’t have much time to write. His daily routine was to wake up at 5.30 am and take the company bus to work and would only get back home around 7.30pm. After dinner and a few chores, it was time for him to go to bed.
The solution? He wrote on his mobile phone every single day for a month on his morning commute on the company bus. It takes him 45 minutes each way to get to work and back. So he typed away on his tiny phone screen for 90 minutes every day for 5 days a week.
Most people would take about a year to finish a novel.
He got his novel written in a month.
To find enough time, look for pockets in your day and prioritise the goals that are important. When there is a will, there is always a way.
Success Factor 6: Have Favourable Circumstances
Say you have a goal of opening your own cafe where people can mingle and socialise.
However, we are in the middle of a pandemic right now. It would be an uphill battle to get your cafe going.
The circumstances that you are in affects whether you can succeed in your goals.
The tricky thing about favorable circumstances is that there will never be a time where everything is 100% favorable.
It will always be a tussle between prudence, risk-taking or just YOLO-ing ahead.
You need to be clear when your fears are in the way of your success or whether it is genuinely unwise for you to achieve your goals now.
Seek the advice and opinions of different people if you are not sure. Asking objective third party points of views would help you to clarify whether the circumstances that you are in now are favourable to achieve your goals.
Success Factor 7: There are Non-negotiables
No pain, no gain is a common refrain.
However, if you want to be the CEO of a company, would it be worth it to give up your family time and miss seeing your children grow up?
If you want to complete a marathon, would it be worth it to push through your injuries to train?
When would the cost of achieving your goal be worth the gain?
There will always be sacrifices that need to be made but you need to decide when these sacrifices are too much.
Before you set out to achieve your goals, list out all the non-negotiables that you would not be willing to compromise on.
Do this because you don’t want to be in a situation where the victory that you have achieved becomes a hollow one.
There is nothing sadder than when the efforts that you have put in costs you what you hold dear.
Conclusion
To recap, these are the 7 critical factors that you need to succeed in your goals.
The value of the goal must be clear
Desire the journey
Get knowledge (both tested and untested)
You need Urgency
Prioritization and Setting Aside Time
Have Favourable Circumstances
There are Non-negotiables
While it may seem like a lot of effort to even set goals, do know that when you do this right, the chances of success skyrocket.
Just imagine the joy that you would feel after achieving these goals.
If you could do this year after year, what would your life be like?
Wouldn’t it be worth it?