The change of calendar is a great time to assess where you are in your business. Right before the ball dropped you probably made a few resolutions that you swore you would stick with this year. These are the changes to your lifestyle or your business that you have been meaning to start since the end of last summer. New Year’s resolutions are great but for most people they only last a few weeks, tops. The main reason for this is that goals without a plan and a vision are nothing more than wishes. Wishes simply fade away after a few days. Fortunately there are a few things you can do to will help keep you on track all year round. Here are five tips to help turn your New Year’s goals a reality.
- Visualize The Result. Stop for a second and think about how you would feel if your goals became reality. You would probably feel a sense of accomplishment and pride that would propel your business to new heights. It is this feeling that should drive you in everything you do. Anyone can write down what they want but few are willing to go the extra mile to achieve it. Achieving goals starts with making it seem real. Once you have the feeling of what accomplishing your goals would feel like you are more inclined to put the work in. Think about what steps you need to take or what people you need to help you. Think about any potential roadblocks and how you plan to get around them. Understand that achieving your goals will not happen overnight and will not be easy. Once you visualize the result actually doing it doesn’t seem as daunting.
- Look At Your Habits. Human beings are creatures of habit. Once you do anything for a few days it becomes a habit. The longer you do something the more difficult that habit is to change. Fortunately this works both ways. Good habits are just as difficult to break as bad ones. As you begin the New Year you should take a look at your daily routine. Track everything you do from the minute you wake up till you go to bed at night for a week straight. At the end of the week do some honest evaluation of your habits. For many investors their bad habits are the directly getting in the way of what they want. Instead of doing things to achieve your goals you should first work on changing your habits. Waking up a little earlier or spending less time on electronics can directly influence how much work you accomplish over the course of the day. Whatever your bad habits are you need to work to break them before you can take the next step in business and in life.
- Action Plan. How do you get your goals from vision to reality? Like anything else you do you need to make a plan. If you were making a cross country trip you probably wouldn’t just hop in the car and go. You would determine your route, plan some stops and calculate how long it may take to get to where you want to go. The same process should be applied with accomplishing your goals. You should make a clear plan of what you will do to make it happen. Write down what specific actions you will take every day and how long you will do them for. Your goals will not happen overnight. You need to make a specific time commitment before you scrap your plans and start from scratch. One of the things that are so great about goals is that they can be anything you desire and you can take any path you want to achieve them. With a good action plan in place anything is possible.
- Daily Evaluation. Your goals should not be something your write down in January and then never check again. They should be something that you check every day. When you get a quiet moment at the end of the day you should take a look at everything you accomplished over the course of your day. What steps did you take to turn your goals into reality? Did you do anything that would cause you to take a few steps back? On the flipside did you make small progress that you could build on? By holding yourself accountable at the end of the day you are much more likely to take action. Instead of waiting weeks or even months before looking back at your goals you should give them at look every day.
- Get Right Back On Track. The biggest reason that people don’t accomplish their goals is because they don’t know how to get back on track once they get off. They often feel that the minute they break their routine the process is over. The truth is that you probably will have missteps along the way, everybody does. The difference is that people who accomplish their goals know how to dust themselves off and not let it get in their way. They accept that there will be slip ups but they can quickly refocus. Don’t let one bad day spoil the six strong ones you may have had.
Your goals are more easily attainable than you may think. This doesn’t mean that accomplishing them will be easy but by following these tips you can make them a reality.
