How To Make Your Goals Easier To Achieve This Year

Written by Dave Navarro on January 3, 2008

Most people face a new year realizing they only achieved a small fraction of the goals they had planned to knock out the year before. If you’re not one of them and you’ve hit 100% of your goals for last year, you should skip this article and read something else. If you can relate to “Oh crap, I didn’t get it all done,” then read on before this year makes you a repeat offender.

The #1 Reason Why You Don’t Achieve A Goal You’ve Set
Obstacles, setbacks and unexpected circumstances can certainly slow you down when it comes to reaching your goals, but ultimately failure to reach a goal comes down to one deadly decision:

Goals die when you don’t re-commit to them every single day.

In other words, if you aren’t looking at your goals every day, reminding yourself why they are important and focusing on what you’re going to do to take action on, nothing is ever going to happen to get you even remotely close to achieving them. Ever. Period.

It’s harsh but true. Your goals are your compass. Pilots don’t take off, aim for their destination, and hope to get there. They constantly look at that compass to see if they’ve gotten off course, and they make the necessary corrections. The longer they go without checking that compass, the farther off course they get.

How Often Do You Recommit To Your Goals?
If you’ve set a goal for this year, here’s what’s going to happen:

1. You’ll say “Yay, goals!” and take some action to achieve them.
2. Life will get in the way.
3. Life will still get in the way.
4. “Oh ****, life’s still getting in the ****ing way!”
5. ???

Guess what #5 is? It’s up to you. If you’re not recommitting to your goals every day, by the time you get to #5 you’ll be saying, “Well, you know, I’ve been busy … you understand, right? I can only do so much …” And you’ve gotten nowhere.

But if you are recommitting to your goals every day, when #2 happens (yeah, go ahead and laugh), you’ll be saying “I’m going to take care of this urgency & get back to goal-stompin’ action.”

When #3 happens, you’re going to be saying “**** that, I’ll handle that emergency and and work a little later tonight to stay on track.”

When #4 happens, you’ll say “Nice try, life, but I’m still fighting. No excuses coming from me … I may be running behind schedule, but I’m damned sure I’ll keep moving forward.”

Then when you get to #5, you’ll be saying two words: “Hell, Yeah.” (Note: Your two words may vary.)

For All You Skimmers, Here’s The Summary
Get your specific goals on papers/PDA/textfile/whatever and review those bad boys every. single. day. Without fail. And without fail, you’ll move a lot closer to your goals, a lot faster than you think. And that, my friend, is serious leverage.

I was listening to an audio program today and the narrator told a story of Jack Canfield (of Chicken Soup For The Soul fame) being asked how he had accomplished so much. His response was to pull a 3 by 5 index card out of his pocket. His top 5 goals were on it, and he reviewed them every day. And you know how much action he took as a result.

How Do You Keep Your Goals In Front Of You?
How do you (or will you) make it drop-dead simple to keep your goals in front of you every day? Let us know (and share any tips you have) in the comments below. And when you’re done there, subscribe to this blog to get more kick-in-the-a$$ tips all through the year.