7 Steps To Achieving A Goal

7 Steps to Goal setting

Successfully executing any personal strategic plan for change requires that as you develop your plan, you effectively incorporate these seven steps for attaining each and every goal.

1. Express your goal in terms of specific events or behaviors.
For a dream to become a goal, it has to be specifically defined in terms of operations, meaning what will be done. When a goal is broken down into steps, it can be managed and pursued much more directly. "Being happy," for example, is neither an event nor a behavior. When you set out to identify a goal, define what you want in clear and specific terms.

2. Express your goal in terms that can be measured.
How else will you be able to determine your level of progress, or even know when you have successfully arrived where you wanted to be? For instance, how much money do you aspire to make?

3. Assign a timeline to your goal.
Once you have determined precisely what it is you want, you must decide on a timeframe for having it. The deadline you've created fosters a sense of urgency or purpose, which in turn will serve as an important motivator, and prevent inertia or procrastination.

4. Choose a goal you can control.
Unlike dreams, which allow you to fantasize about events over which you have no control, goals have to do with aspects of your existence that you control and can therefore manipulate. In identifying your goal, strive for what you can create, not for what you can't.

5. Plan and program a strategy that will get you to your goal.
Pursuing a goal seriously requires that you realistically assess the obstacles and resources involved, and that you create a strategy for navigating that reality. Willpower is unreliable, fickle fuel because it is based on your emotions. Your environment, your schedule and your accountability must be programmed in such a way that all three support you — long after an emotional high is gone. Life is full of temptations and opportunities to fail. Those temptations and opportunities compete
with your more constructive and task-oriented behavior. Without programming, you will find it much harder to stay the course.

6. Define your goal in terms of steps.
Major life changes don't just happen; they happen one step at a time. Steady progress, through well-chosen, realistic, interval steps, produces results in the end. Know what those steps are before you set out.

7. Create accountability for your progress toward your goal.
Without accountability, people are apt to con themselves. If you know precisely what you want, when you want it — and there are real consequences for not doing the assigned work — you are much more likely to continue in your pursuit of your goal. Find someone in your circle of family or friends to whom you can be accountable. Make periodic reports on your progress.

Try this handy sheet for keeping track of your goals!

Now Is The Time For Goal Setting

NOW IS THE TIME FOR GOAL-SETTING
Excerpted from Independent Executive National Sales Director
Emeritus Arlene Lenarz’s Seminar 2000 Speech

You will never achieve your goals living on the “aisle” of someday. Someday “aisle” win my free car. Someday “aisle” be a Star Consultant. Someday “aisle” become a Sales Director.

You know what?

Someday is not a day of the week.

You can’t just stroll to your goal. You can’t lounge your way to the top.

Launch your way to the top, and your launching pad is your skin care class.

O’Henry tells the story of the New York artist who planned to paint a great masterpiece. His picture was to be colossal. Those who heard him tell of his plan were thrilled by the concept. It would send his name echoing forever down the ageless corridors of time. It would make him a companion of the immortal DaVinci and the magnificent Rembrandt.

But he couldn’t start the picture today. Things just weren’t right - a touch of rheumatism, a gloomy day, bad light, not in the mood.

So it went on and on until one day his friends found him dead in his bed. They took up his lifeless body and buried his unfinished masterpiece with him.

Will the masterpiece you have dreamed your life to be, be buried with you because you lived on the “aisle” of someday? Someday “aisle” achieve things that will surprise everyone. Someday “aisle” startle the world of Mary Kay with my accomplishments. Someday “aisle” get tired of standing outside, and I will force my way
into the banquet hall and demand my place at the banquet table.

Someday...

and while you talk about someday, the days slip away and the fabric of life wears thin, and as Mary Kay said, “Far too many people go to their graves with their masterpiece unpainted, their music unplayed, and their dreams never realized."

But your dreams are in the making - so seize the moment - today, not tomorrow.

Yesterday is a cancelled check.

Tomorrow is a promissory note.

Today is instant cash.

Just be your own hardest task master - expect more of yourself than anyone else does. Just know that you have the power, the energy, the magic within you
to make your life a masterpiece.