We've all got hundreds of things we want to achieve. But with limited time and so many distractions, how do you take action on your goals without feeling overwhelmed?
Whether you’ve got life changing dreams or a handful of goals to improve your current life experience, how you take action on your goals either makes or breaks your chance of success. The problem isn’t that your goals are too big or unattainable. The issue you may have, is not having the right system to encourage you to take the actions needed to move closer to the goal.
As an avid goal setter, it’s taken me a while to realise my results were not based on the actual goals I’d set for myself. My success was all down to the systems I had in place to ‘take action’.
It’s taken me a few years to find a system which makes it easy to take action on my goals – no matter what I’m trying to achieve. It took a bit of trial and error developing the right process to actually get things done. But I’ve been doing it so long now that it’s become second nature. Setting and achieving goals is part of my lifestyle habit.
By following the actions below, (and of course tweaking them to work for you), you can begin to take real steps towards the things you want to achieve in life.
HOW TO TAKE ACTION ON YOUR GOALS
Know Where to Start
Get yourself a brand new note pad and lets figure out what to focus on!
1. On the first page, write down all the goals you would like to achieve in your life time. Make them big, scary and amazing. Don’t worry about how you will achieve them or what other people may say if they knew your deepest desires. Dream Big!
2. Next, review your list and decide which goals you would like to achieve in the next 12 months. (Highlight your 12 month goals.)
3. Turn to a new page and rewrite your 12 month goals ranked by importance. (Number one being the most important thing you want to achieve this time next year.)
4. Take the 4 most important 12 month goals and write each one as the title on the next four pages. (Each goal on an individual page.)
You now have four things to focus on over the next twelve months. Just four! Your other life goals haven’t been forgotten – you can come back to those next year. For now, you’re going to concentrate and focus on the four most important things you want to achieve over the next 365 days.
Be Clear on the Actions You Need To Take
You may not know exactly what you have to do to accomplish your goal. However, if you think about the type of person who has already achieved it, what are some of the actions they may have used to reach success.
1. Taking each of your four goals, write a list of the actions a person who achieved that goal may have taken. If you need help, do a quick ‘how to…’ Google search. Try and get a minimum of 5 actions and a maximum of 10 for each of the four goals.
2. With your list of actions all written down – DO NOT PANIC! (Remember, you are creating a process! You have 365 days to take action.)
3. Highlight the two easiest actions you could take for each of the four goals, over the next month.
You now have eight actions to carry out over 30 days that will move you towards achieving your 12 months goal.
As you start provocatively working to attain your goals, you will discover more actions that need to be completed. But the great thing is you don’t have to panic and think they need to be be done now! Add the newly discovered actions to your note pad and use the system below to work at them at your own pace.
Creating Your Action System
The process of taking action requires your mind believing it will be easy. Eight actions to accomplish over thirty days will receive less resistance from your mind about the task ahead.
1. As this is your action process it has to work for you! Take a look at the 8 actions you have to achieve in the next 30 days. (Some of them may have to be broken down into smaller actions). In your diary, start to plot what days you will carry out the action.
- Plot the easiest ones first – this will help with momentum.
- Spread the actions out over the whole 30 days.
- Don’t try and do them all at once to ensure you’re not stressed.
- Think about your other commitments for that day or week. Be realistic about what you can do.
- Ensure actions will not take more than 90 mins.(Break it up into smaller actions if it does)
2. Over the next 30 days, each time you complete an action, return to your note pad and put a tick with a date next to the action. Tracking your progress starts to build self confidence and new beliefs about yourself.
Staying on Track
You now have a plan that will help you complete 8 actions of your 12 months goals in 30 days. But it doesn’t stop there!
1. At the end of your first 30 days, review what you’ve achieved. (Don’t forget to congratulate yourself!)
2. Look at the remaining actions from your four goals and plot another 8 actions to complete over the coming 30 days.
3. Keep repeating this process every 30 days until all the actions have been completed.
At the end of a 12 month period, you would have completed at least 96 actions to achieve your top four goals!! Now that’s progress!
Imagine how different your life, mindset and overall feeling of self confidence will be in 365 days!
Use the basis of my process on how to take action on your goals and adapt it to you own needs. Remember – don’t caught up on the how or if you are doing something right. The main point of achieving any goal, is making the action easy to start. If you prefer to focus on one of the four goals for an entire 30 or 60 days – do that. Make it work for you!
Let me know in the comments below if you need any assistance with creating your own system. But most importantly, come back in the next 30 days and let me know when you have taken action and ticked off something on your list!
3 Comments
Patricia
Thank you for the excellent step by step guide 🙏🏾on how to set out my goals and achieving them within a time scale ⚖ .
It’s one thing knowing you have the ability but making that head start is easier said than done. So 👀 seeing it map out infront of you step by step is no longer an excuse to hold back.
So Chantelle I keep you abrest on my progress and thank 🙏🏾you 😊 for the heads up.
Can I do it. YES I CAN.
Chantelle - I Am Brazen Spirit
Hi Patricia, I agree – yes you can! I can’t wait to here how you are progressing over the next weeks and months. Make sure you come back and let me know.
Chantelle.x
Ashraf Mohamed
Found your website through your article on ‘How to take action on your goals’… Triffic 😀
Keep up the great work. I appreciate you.