Stop pursuing success, believing that you can achieve any number of goals, if you follow and stick to all the principals described in the self-help books you have read. The principal for achieving all your goals is simple:
· Clarify your vision and purpose
· Create goals that are aligned with your vision
· Build an effective plan to realise all your goals
· Go about the business every day of carrying out the necessary activities to realise each goal.
If this all seems so simple, why have you reached the end of another year where you feel like you have been spinning your wheels and you are no closer to achieving your dreams than you were a year ago? The solution in 2012 is to add one more crucial element to the mix, namely prioritisation.
Action Idea: List all your goals and dreams, carefully recording them, ordering your thoughts and getting complete clarity about exactly what you want. You can call this your bucket list, where you keep a record of all your dreams. Now invest time to discover your three most important goals for 2012. These must be the three goals that you are going to supremely focus all your energy on achieving. These are the three goals that are the most important to you and could potentially have the most dramatic impact on your life and lifestyle, when accomplished. Resist the urge to become distracted during the year by other shiny objects or better opportunities that may come your way. Complete focus is the only way to turn 2012 into the year you finally make a lasting difference to your life.
Now choose one goal that is going to be the focus of all your energy for the next 90 days and begin the process of creating the framework you need to realise this goal. Remember though, that achieving this goal is not about the process of dreaming, writing down and planning, that is only a very small part of the puzzle. The way to realise any goal, is always about making the right decisions about activity every day, where you carry out consistent behaviours of doing what you said you would do, consistently, until you realise each goal.
The only way to ensure that you consistently carry out all the daily activities or behaviours you need throughout the year; is to develop a success habit set that allows you to perform all these activities each day, without even thinking about it.
Action Idea: The best way to develop new success habits is to first identify the new behaviours you need to develop and turn into your new success habit set. I call these new behaviours my “Code of Personal Achievement” or commitments I have with myself, each day, to carry out a minimum number of new behaviours. My head does not hit the pillow until I have applied sufficient willpower to perform these new behaviours each day. After applying my willpower to carry out these new behaviours or routines for about 90 days, they become ingrained success habits.
I have found that I get best results by scheduling time each day to carry out these new behaviours. I refer to this time as “Meetings with My Future”. This is time that I schedule into each day, to carry out my new behaviours. Meetings with My Future are scheduled each Sunday and nothing short of a real crisis will ever force me to cancel or reschedule these daily meetings.
Whatever gets measured gets done
Track your performance daily to ensure that you are consistently measuring and improving your outcomes. Tracking also keeps your awareness of your goal in the forefront of your mind and helps you to stay focused. I refer to my daily tracking system as my “Performance Management System” Make tracking and managing your performance one of your new behaviours or success habits next year.
Action Idea: Constantly reinforce your willpower by joining or starting an appropriate mastermind group, identifying a peak performance partner to share your goals with once a week, identify a mentor to guide and inspire you or even use a public forum to post your weekly progress (Facebook, website, blog etc.).
Now all that is left for you to do in 2012 is to pull the trigger and have fun, as you travel through a fantastic year. Lighten up and enjoy the journey next year, by celebrating and rewarding yourself for all your victories and observing everything that crosses your path as part of the trip. Everything that happens, both good and bad,is ON your way to the success you desire.
Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers
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