Tangible
One of the most important characteristics that an objective must have in order for you to achieve it is that it can almost be touched, that it can be measured.
For example, if your goal is to get more customers in your company or business, specify exactly how many customers you would like to have, what is the ideal number of clients you want to get?
Affirmative
It is very important that our objectives are ALWAYS positive. Focus on the idea of affirmative goals. Our mind does not understand no, nor does it distinguish between the negative or positive emotions that automatically invade our mind when we read something.
That is why it is important that our goalsreflect what we want to achieve, not what we don’t want.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but believe me, we make this mistake more than we think.
We write that our goal is to stop being fat, instead of being fit. The goal is to stop eating junk food, instead of having a more balanced and healthy diet. See where I’m going?
As we said before, when our mind reads a negative sentence, it automatically fills with negative thoughts and creates that image that we want to avoid, whether we want to or not. So always remember to write your objectives in the affirmative.
Realistic
The second characteristic to consider when setting new goals is to make sure that they can be achieved within the time limit you have set for yourself (a step we will soon talk about).
The perfect balance for a resolution to be realistic is that the goal can be achieved in the time frame set, but at the same time we can maintain that idea of a challenge.
In other words, you have to establish a realistic deadline but your goal should still seem like a challenge.
Another thing to keep in mind to make sure that the goals we set for ourselves are realistic is to take into account your ability or rather the skills you need to accomplish them. The answer to this question also conditions the time we will need to complete our resolutions.
So ask yourself: what skills or abilities do I need to achieve my goals?
If, for example, one of your goals is to eat healthier, the skills you will need for this are not only cooking oriented, but also to the discipline needed to follow a plan if you establish one, or to say no when you feel you have to.
Gain
It´s time to seriously ask yourself what you gain and what you lose by achieving that goal. Many times we set goals without considering the consequences they have in our life.
So this is the time to ask yourself really seriously the consequences of your goals and evaluate if you are willing to accept the changes these will have in your life.
Evidence
If you can imagine that goal, if you can visualize it, if you can create it in your mind, it will be so much easier to achieve it. Determine exactly when you will feel that you have achieved your goal.
Create an image in your head so real that you can describe it as if you were living it in real life. The place you are in, the people around you, the smells, the sounds, the way you feel knowing that you have accomplished one of your dreams.
The key is to create or describe the moment in which you have accomplished your goal.
Many times we focus so much on the objectives, on what we have to do, on the day-to-day that sometimes we do not even realize that it is already done, that we have achieved what we have set out to do.
Other times we write that goal or the place we want to get to in such a vague way that we are not clear when or what determines that we have achieved it. As a consequence, that resolution may even seem impossible or unattainable to us.
That is why determining and creating an image of the exact moment when we have accomplished our goal is important.
Not only does it help us to accomplish our goals, but imagining our life at or after we have accomplished our goal makes us vibrate at the same frequency and with the same energy as them.
Time
A goal is a dream with a deadline
– Seth Godin
It is essential to put a date to our purposes for two main reasons.
The first is because we have the bad habit of postponing things when there is no deadline. We procrastinate, we start making excuses, making false promises… Sometimes we even forget about the goals we set after a couple of weeks.
The second reason is that an objective or goal that has a deadline makes it more tangible, more real. This makes the goal seem easier to achieve.
Remember that as Seth Godin, a management and marketing guru, said, what makes a dream become a goal is its deadline.
So review your goals and give them a deadline. Meditate on how long you think it will take you to accomplish your goals and mark them on your calendar or agenda. Write it down in a place where you can see it often to keep it in mind. A goal without a deadline is just words in the air.
Motivation
I want you to think and write next to each goal why you want to accomplish it. What motivates you, what do you hope to get out of it?
Once you have this defined, write it down in a place where you can easily see it: your diary, your phone wallpaper, your reminder board, the fridge… Or just read it every time you feel unmotivated, start making excuses, procrastinating, etc.
Losing the motivation and desire with which you started and letting procrastination win is easier than we would like to admit, so the purpose of this exercise is to regain motivation and remind yourself of why you started.
Divide your goals into to-do lists
This is the key tip that will make the goals you have established have a tik by the end of the year. It simply consists in turning your goals into a longer to-do list.
In other words, start by choosing one of the goals you have set for yourself and divide this big task into smaller ones, including all the necessary steps you must take to accomplish them.
Going back to the previous example of eating healthier, you could divide this big goal into smaller ones by first of all deciding that you´ll include two healthy meals a week.
Then you´d have to research healthy and fun recipes, and lastly buy all the ingredients you need for those recipes.
This step is extremely useful and important because when we set our minds to do something, we may feel overwhelmed or unmotivated because of how big accomplishing this task seems.
However, by dividing your goal into smaller tasks your mind finds it easier to complete them, lowering the chances for you to sabotage yourself.
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