Learn how to achieve goals by getting essential clarity. Predict your success and ease your hardships.
Imagine starting a race, without knowing when, how far, or even if there is a finish line. Sounds crazy right? Yet, this is exactly how most of us go about our goals. We take a laissez-faire “I’ll know it when I see it” approach. But without essential clarity, we cannot know our route, progress, or if we’ve arrived at the destination.
Wise people create predictors of success by gathering valuable data and analyzing it before determining any course of action. Yet many of us smart folk jump into a daily grind with the blind hope that it’ll move us closer to where we need. We do this without assessing the key pieces so we’re unsure how valuable or worthwhile our efforts even are. Here we’ll take a look at the five key questions that will give each of us essential clarity on our goals, and set into motion our own predictors of success.
How to Achieve Goals — Your 5 Question checklist:
1) What is the pinnacle of my goal?
2) How will I know when I’ve reached it?
3) How do I expect to feel when I achieve my goal?
4) Will I be okay if I don’t achieve it and have to change my course of action?
5) Am I realistic about what it will take to get there and is it worth the cost?
Take your time with these. The more specific answers you come up with, the more information you’ll have to shape your own path. This is high-value personalized data that will only be revealed by you to you. Use it to craft the road ahead.
How to Achieve Goals Q1: What is the specific pinnacle of my goal?
What is the endgame of your goal? Try to expand on the standard short-form: “I want a promotion” or “I want to buy a house” or “I want to start a business.” Be as specific as possible.
Do this by adding in (a) descriptors and (b) the personal why. Descriptors are any narrowing details. For example: “I want a promotion in marketing for a tech company in Seattle.” See how that narrows down the playing field? This lets you create a visual which helps you focus on what you’re working towards.
In (b), you want to add the “why” of it. Why does this specific goal matter to you? What will it provide you that you really want? Again, be specific. Don’t just say “money” or “title” but rather “added income plus experience managing X and Y types of accounts.”
How to Achieve Goals Q2: How will I know when I’ve reached it?
This one is vital because without it you will treat yourself like the donkey chasing the carrot on the stick. The carrot always moves and you set yourself up to feel awful and exhausted.
Make your endpoint realistic. If the goal is complex or has phases, be sure to create milestones that serve as markers on your race.
This will also help your mind register the reward for its efforts. More goals can always be added. But chasing one that never ends is thankless.
How to Achieve Goals Q3: What do I expect to feel when I achieve my goal?
This one is very revealing about — you guessed it — your expectations. If you pin all your hopes to the endpoint, that’s a strong indication that the journey itself needs to change. The path should also be rewarding.
For example, if you think “I will feel happy” when “I get the promotion,” then you are creating a condition for your happiness. This messaging is internalized by the mind, which believes “only when I get the promotion will I be happy.”
It misses opportunities to cultivate this on the inside, along the way. Creating your own happiness is essential. And it is mostly done in the small moments, not the few and far between big ones.
Also, if you attach any part of your wellbeing to the goal, you’re gambling your internal harmony on an outcome often outside your control. Let’s say, the company decides to hire from a competitor or decides to cut the position because of stock losses. Then what? You plan to be miserable? I hope not.
How to Achieve Goals Q4: Will I be okay if I don’t reach it and have to change my course of action?
No matter your unique drive or ambition, it is safe to have a contingency (or a couple) and be okay with any of them.
Sure this isn’t your first choice. You want to realize your goal, but life can be unpredictable. The only real control you have is the ability to be adaptive. So yes, go all-in on your vision, but don’t fear change. Know that you are more important than any singular goal. As long as you have you, you can do anything (even the unplanned).
How to Achieve Goals Q5: Am I realistic about what it will take to get there and is it worth the cost?
What about your internal costs? These are the precious resources that we neglect to account for because they’re hard to quantify. We don’t notice until they’re spent and we’re left depleted.
Big ones: Your energy, relationships, attention, rest, ease, stress, sleep, wellness, family time, hobbies.
Be honest with yourself about these costs. Then do a cost-benefit analysis. Is your goal truly worth what you will invest, sacrifice, and deplete?
If it is, then you can proceed with both eyes wide open about what the toll it will cost you.
And if it isn’t, now you have that as essential clarity. You figured it out before toiling for years. The goal wasn’t as important or at least not compared to the resources it’ll bleed. All of this is valuable insight.
THE BENEFITS OF A complete picture:
Armed with this data, you can make more informed decisions at every level.
Specific Goal — You know just what it is you’re working towards.
Well-designed Path — Milestones and markers to guide you forward and give you pause to reflect. Is the course still the right one? Does it need to change at all?
Alternatives — You’re more prepared in case circumstances throw a wrench in your plans. You’ve got this. You aren’t obsessed with the goal.
Rewards along the way — The journey is as important as the pinnacle. So you invest in cultivating skills to be happy/well now instead of deferring it.
Realistic accounting of costs — If you decide to pursue your goal, you’re much more likely to succeed if you know how much of you it’s going to take. This preparation will serve you well.
CREATE MOMENTUM WITH YOUR PRACTICE:
How does this feel? Do you have more clarity now? Can you explore this more in your journaling? How has this changed your goals?
We break this exact process down for you and go much deeper than what we can show you in this article in our goals and objectives 2023 workshop. It’s a powerful session that talks about goals in a whole new way — helping you understand what your brain prioritizes, how that competes with what you want, how to bridge the gap and get your brain onboard so it supports you.
Remember, right there is the key to making it all work. Taking the time to work through the steps. The art is in our implementation and action. Spending a short amount of time now to reflect, analyze and decide yields a major return in time, energy, resources, and emotional heartache avoided.
Take it a step further, people set goals but don’t actualize them and a lot of that has to do with the brain’s defaults and priorities. Don’t let this be another year, especially with the pandemic we’ve lost a lot of time.
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