How To Set and Accomplish Any Goal, Even When You Hit a Dead End

By Ted Charles


Nothing is more unfortunate than the saddening fact that most people will never ever make it in life. What a bitter pill to swallow? Most people have no focus, no direction and no course of action! Simply speaking, we barely know what we want. Add to this, most of us don’t have a clue where we are going?

Think of an aimless wanderer venturing into the unknown. Borne out by research, the statistics are out and the results are nothing short of disheartening. The experts are telling us that an estimated 5-10% of all humanity seldom think of their goals. Out of this, only a paltry 1-3% have clear written goals. It pains the heart when you think what happens to the remaining 90%! With an estimated global population of six billion souls and counting, you do the math.

People with clear goals always succeed because they know where they are going. Goal setting isn’t exactly rocket science. The sooner you get started, the better. Avoid the temptation to go hog wild with a mere wish list instead of practical goals. Why not give these few pointers a spin, and set of your life kicking into high gear.

First and Foremost, write your goals on paper! This simple task is so priceless yet it hardly crosses our minds. Charting a clear road map to your success makes the difference between living the high life and languishing from hand to mouth. Whatever you want to achieve, just grab a pen and paper or switch to your computer and write down those goals. It doesn’t matter. Even your New Year’s resolutions. Just list them down.

Start Small. You never climb from the top. Goals don’t always have to be big. Begin with something realistic. Most important of all, they should be challenging but achievable. When you set the bar too high, you are already laying down the path for setbacks, failure and heartbreak.

By now, you should differentiate between goals, wishes and dreams. When you ask people what their goals are, they give vague statements like “I want to be rich”, “I want to be successful”, “I want a good job”, “I want to be healthy”, “I want this and that” and so forth. For crying out loud, be specific! Remember the rule of SMART goals? Set your goals complete with date and time. Break them down into small, manageable units.

You can’t bite more than you can chew. As the adage goes, “By the yard it’s hard, but inch by inch it’s a cinch!”.

It’s no secret, the path to realizing your goals is filled with all kinds of challenges and endless distractions. What sets you apart from the rest is your commitment to concentrate and focus your time, energy and resources on one single objective. This is no time to get excited chasing trivial pursuits or getting carried away by aimless distractions. Everybody is desperately trying to accomplish so much, in such short time. And when everything comes a cropper, they call it quits. To get to the promised land, you need to set careful targets and avoid losing sight of your destination.

Nothing comes on a silver platter. Not even for the super achievers. No major accomplishment was realized without wading through a myriad of obstacles and failures! How do you keep the faith when your patience and fighting spirit takes a serious beating? A story is told of Thomas Edison when he was working on the world’s first light bulb. After countless hours of failure after failure, it took him over three thousand attempts before discovering how to make the light bulb work. Without unwavering faith, your goals are doomed to fail.

So how does one cultivate motivation and persistence? The answer lies in asking yourself the big “WHY?”. Get this and you got everything wrapped up in no time flat. We are not sure what Edison had in mind. Only Edison himself knew exactly “WHY” he so desperately wanted to make that light bulb work.

Ask yourself WHY? You will be surprised at the hurdles you can overcome. Why do I want to build a dream house? Why do I want better education? Why do I want to buy a car? Why do I want to lose weight? Why or why do I want to take my family to Disneyland next summer? With a whole bunch of big enough “Whys”, the target remains within your reach no matter what resistance comes your way.

Feelings of self-doubt will start to creep in and probably grind you to a halt. How do you know whether you will succeed or ruin everything? In addition to this is the fear of friends, co-workers and even family laughing at if you fail. Never mind. These nay sayers might come in handy if only to stretch you to the max. Don’t let them put you down.

Truth is, many of these fears are absolutely unfounded. In spite of the difficulties, learning not to let mere words bring you down is a must. Reason with your fears and more often than not, you will realize there’s no reason to be fearful in the first place. Don’t under-estimate yourself. Avoid the urge to slack off. When faced with these kinds of criticisms, just laugh them off. Take it from me, it truly helps.

Lastly, Procrastination is the thief of time. Time wastage and putting off things to a “later” date can go down in the annals of history as one of mankind’s greatest cardinal sins. What do you think would have happened had the Wright brothers put off tinkering with their ground-breaking invention for another time? Some lucky soul would have jumped at the opportunity, perfected the flying machine and gone down in history as the pioneer of Aviation industry. It’s about time to get out of your comfort zones and flush this procrastination bug down the toilet. So how do you rid this monster? Start by setting a strict schedule and stick to it to the very end. Time and tide surely waits for no man.

The road map to success is no bed of roses. Everybody gets spanked along the way. It doesn’t matter a lick if you get beaten. What counts is how you handle defeat and whether you have the nerve to keep fighting. Think of goal setting as muscle building. The more muscle you use, the stronger it gets.

Without a shadow of doubt, having rock-hard abs and that six-pack or sporting an attractive figure is the stuff of dreams. You don’t just rush to bench press hefty weights the first time you hit the gym. Building muscle is a gradual process. With time, the muscles acquire strength and the ability to withstand pain. And so is goal setting. Once you are ready to handle resistance, you can take on bigger pursuits. Get started with a few “warm-up” goals. Sooner than later, you will be schmoozing to mighty high success of epic proportions.