In the thick of the holiday season, it’s easy to make promises to yourself about the New Year. In January, I’ll eat healthily / stop smoking / cut back on drinking / exercise regularly / start studying for that qualification …

Some experts might tell you to get started on your goals straight away (“there’s no time like the present!”) – but that’s not necessarily realistic advice. If you know that December is going to be hectic, you don’t want to set yourself up for failure.

So, instead of making a start on your big goal right now, here are three things you can do to make your New Year’s resolution much more likely to succeed.

#1: Decide What You Want to Accomplish

This might seem like a very basic step – but we don’t always follow it.

Rather than figuring out your goals on December 31^st, start considering them now. Don’t pick too many things, either: one big goal or two – three smaller ones will be much more likely to succeed than a dozen self-improvement projects.

If you’re struggling to decide, write down all your possible goals and ask yourself which of these would make the biggest difference to my life?

#2: Ask for Gifts That Will Help

Once you’ve picked a goal (or a couple), you’ve almost certainly got a few potential items to put on your Christmas list.

For instance, if your goal is “lose 50lbs”, you might want:

• Recipe books with healthy, low-fat meals
• A subscription to a health/fitness magazine
• Sports kit (comfy workout clothes, trainers)
• Sports equipment (exercise machine) – or gym membership
• Some yummy but healthy snacks

These gifts will help you to keep your goal in mind during Christmas. They can also be a good way to let friends and relatives know about your resolution: these people can keep you accountable and encourage you towards your goal.

#3: Pave the Way with Small Steps

You might not want to begin outright just yet, but you can still take some small steps towards your goal. For instance:

• If you want to exercise more, check out local gyms during December (when things are quieter!) rather than in January.
• If you want to get a new qualification or learn a new skill, look into courses and fees. If you want to start on a course in January, you may need to sign up several weeks before.
• If you want to write a book, set aside a space in your home and get any necessary supplies (e.g. index cards for planning, a spare USB pen for backing up your work).

Right now, you can gather information, look into different options and decide how best to move forward. Don’t wait until January – otherwise you might end up dithering for weeks, without starting on your goal.

Depending on your resolution, you might need to avoid backsliding before January 1^st. If you want to lose weight next year, for instance, it’s clearly not a great idea to gorge during December: finding that you need to lose 60lbs not 50lbs isn’t going to make for a good start to January!

All of these steps are simple and don’t need to take up much time – but they could make the difference between success and failure next year. Which of them could you do today?

If you’ve got another tip to add to this list, let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Do you have a tough time accepting help?

A few years ago, I thought that achievements only really “counted” if I did everything alone. I was afraid that accepting help would make me look weak. But the truth is, getting help isn’t a sign of weakness – it’s a way to maximize your potential.

Getting help can cover a whole range of situations, so let’s take a look at some of the most common ones.

Public Accountability

This is the most basic level of assistance: feeling accountable to someone else. You don’t even need the other person (or people) to take any active role here.

If you tell your family and friends that you’re going to lose 30lbs in the next year, you’ve made a public commitment. As time goes by, they might ask you how you’re progressing. When you’re tempted to eat a candy bar or dig into a bag of chips, that accountability can be enough to give you the willpower boost that you need.

Accountability works on smaller goals, too. Perhaps you’ve decided that you want to spend 30 minutes writing every morning. You could tell the world on Facebook or Twitter that you’re about to get started on your daily writing – that way, you’ll feel more motivated to actually do it.

Emotional and Practical Support

While accountability helps, you’ll probably find that you need a higher level of support and encouragement in order to stay on track long-term. That means finding people who can get directly involved.

There are a couple of key ways they can help you:

• Emotional support. This might mean praising you when you’re doing well, or encouraging you to keep going when things are tough. You might need a sympathetic ear, or a pat on the back.
• Practical support. Some goals require time, energy or physical resources. Do you have family or friends who can help out in practical ways – perhaps looking after your kids while you exercise, or letting you use their home gym?

At this level of help, your friends or family don’t need any involvement in your actual goal. If you want to be a writer, it doesn’t matter that your partner has no interest in doing likewise – what does matter is that s/he accepts that your goal is important to you.

Advice from Peers

While family and friends can be a real support, they won’t always be able to give you advice that can help you towards your goal. Look around for people who can – like-minded individuals, working towards a similar goal to yours. You may need to pay a membership fee to join an organized group.

For instance, if you’re struggling to lose weight, you might want to join a local club or an online forum. Perhaps your friends all seem to be effortlessly thin, and they can’t offer you any useful tips – but the members of your weight-loss group may be able to show you where you’re going wrong.

At this level of help and support, there should be plenty of give and take. You want to find a group where you can advise other members too, sharing what you yourself have learned. This can help you too: teaching others may allow you to consolidate your own knowledge and experience.

Expert Assistance

This level of help isn’t right for everyone: it may mean a substantial commitment of money and probably of time. If you’re going for a big goal, though, you may find it’s very worthwhile to invest in expert help.

Whatever you’re working on, there’ll be people who can help in the role of a teacher, mentor, tutor or coach. With some goals, these individuals are essential and their involvement is pretty much automatic (if you’re aiming to get a degree, for instance). With other goals, you may have to look around.

Experts might be consultants who can teach you how to run your small business more effectively, teachers who can give you weekly music lessons, life coaches who can give you new insights into your behavior … pretty much anyone who’s at a level above you and your peers.

If you can’t afford to pay for one-to-one time with an expert, look for opportunities to attend group sessions (such as a seminar) – or even consider buying a book that you can learn from.

——

How are other people helping you on the road towards your goals? Is there any level of support that you’re missing out on? Feel free to share your experience and thoughts in the comments below…

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We’re getting dangerously close to the end of 2011. If you made any New Years resolutions this year (and if you read this blog, I’d wager there’s a pretty good chance you did), how are those coming along?

If you’re like a lot of people out there, you might find that those hopeful thoughts in January are starting to get replaced by excuses or maybe even a sense of defeat or futility.

But why is is that people don’t achieve their goals? What keeps them stuck, unable to lose that weight, make more money, find the love they really want, or do the countless other things to make themselves happy?

Here are the 4 things that keep most people from reaching their goals.

They Don’t Have Clarity About What They Want

Maybe you know that you want more friends, you want to make more money, or you want to start a business. You probably have at least a vague idea about what you want, but have you ever sat down and painstakingly thought about exactly what you want down to the last detail?

One exercise I like to do is to take several hours (yes, several hours–not just a few minutes!) and actually write down exactly what I want my daily life to be like. To help you as you do this, consider answering questions like:

• What do you do?
• Who do you do it with?
• What do you talk about?
• What do you eat for breakfast?
• When do you wake up?
• What do you dream about?
• What are you most proud of?

When you can put yourself in the ‘future you’ shoes and start to imagine life from that point of view, you’ll have a real and concrete idea about what you’re working toward. Your goals will be clear and you’ll know exactly what you want.

They Don’t Have the Right Plan

Maybe you know what you want extremely well. However if you don’t have the right plan, you’ll likely never be able to achieve it.

Taking action is great, but if you’re just taking any old action, you won’t be making consistent and steady progress toward your goal. Somethings might take you a step closer to what you want, while the next things moves you away from it.

A common example of this is when someone tries to learn how to start an online business. Many beginners (like myself, not too long ago) end up getting seduced by the latest ‘shiny new thing’ and keep jumping from one program or course to the next, never really making any progress.

The solution to this is to study someone who is successful at what you want to achieve and follow the same plan that they used to get there. Success leaves clues, so follow those and use them as your plan to guide the way.

They Are Not in the Right Environment

Are you around negative people most of the time? Is your life just too hectic to give you a moment’s peace to get clear thinking? Maybe your workspace is too cluttered to focus on what needs to get done.

I’ll be honest, not everyone is gifted with being in the right situation, especially when they are just getting started reaching their goal.

If you don’t feel like you are in the right environment to support you, you may need to take some actions to fix the situation. Make the effort to create a tidy space to keep your creativity flowing, block off time away from cynical people to do the things you want to do without guilt or judgment, take some personal time to just hear yourself think once in a while, or do whatever it takes to get yourself into a situation that maximizes your chances of success.

They Don’t Have the Right Mindset

The last big thing that keeps many people from finding the success they want is a proper mindset. If you’re reaching for something that’s just outside your comfort zone, it’s not uncommon to go up against your limiting beliefs.

Fears that you’re not good enough, doubts that you don’t have what it takes, or even hesitations and second-guesses that what you want is really even possible are common.

Many years ago, I learned that the best way to overcome a limiting belief is to try your hardest to prove it true. Commit to giving it your best shot and move forward anyway despite the fear.

If you have a belief that you are too shy to ask someone out, then prove it! Go and force yourself to ask out ten people. If you think you just can’t lose weight, then prove it! Improve your diet and exercise routine and see if those pounds don’t budge.

This will likely make all of your fears go from a quiet whisper in the back of your mind, to screaming at you at maximum volume, but keep pushing through it. The point isn’t to back down when your limiting beliefs come up, it’s to get in the habit of barreling through that fear and taking action anyway.

Before you know it, you’ll embrace the fear and, although you may still feel afraid, you won’t use that as an excuse to not take action.

Do any of these sound familiar to you? If you’re anything like me, you can probably relate a little bit to each of them. But if you recognize any of these roadblocks, you shouldn’t feel bad.

Accept that they are keeping you from success, and work on overcoming the specific obstacles that are holding you back rather than feeling stuck by vague limitations. Getting clear and identifying exactly what’s in your way is the first step to moving past the roadblocks that keep you from where you want to go.

Clay Andrews has a lot of personal, first-hand experience with dealing with obstacles. Although, he hasn’t got it all figured out yet, he likes to think he’s made some good progress. He also writes a blog on relationship advice and another on lifestyle design. Go visit one of them and say he (he doesn’t bite, and he loves meeting new people!).

When you’re working on something big, you often start off with great intentions … only to find your motivation gradually slipping away.

Whether you’re studying for a qualification, tackling a mammoth project at work, or writing a book in your spare time, you’re only going to succeed if you can stay motivated. (That’s particularly true of goals where you haven’t got a boss/parent/mentor checking up on you…)

So, here’s how to keep going:

Step #1: Break Your Project into Small Chunks

If you get a little way towards your goal then flounder, there’s a good chance that you’ve not broken your project into sensible chunks or milestones.

Sometimes, your project is already segmented for you – for instance, if you’re studying a degree program, you’ll have a certain number of classes that you need to take in order to graduate. You might want to create a list of these and put it in a prominent place, so you can cross off each one as you complete it.

Other times, you need to come up with meaningful divisions. Maybe you’re trying to write a book. Your “chunks” could be individual sections or chapters – or specific pieces of research that you need to complete.

Do it: Even if you’re not sure of all the steps to get to your goal, write down the next five major ones. You might want to add a deadline – make it a bit challenging, but realistic.

Step #2: Take the Time to Learn – and Implement

Whatever your goal is, you’ll get there faster if you spend some time learning things that can help you. And the more you learn, the more confidence (and hence motivated) you’ll be.

• If you’re writing a book, get a good “how to” guide to help you
• If you’re taking a qualification, learn about good study techniques
• If you’re preparing to deliver a big presentation, take some public speaking classes

Don’t fall into the trap of learning without doing, though. I see this a lot with would-be writers who’ll read about writing – or attend courses and seminars – but who rarely finish work on an article or a short story. Every time you learn something new, look for ways to apply it to your project.

Do it: Find one good book or website that can help you. As you read it, jot down any ideas, questions or new tasks that relate to your project.

Step #3: Keep the Big Picture in Mind …

Whatever your project is, you’re probably motivated by the end result. You’re thinking of how great it will be to see your book in stores, or to get that qualification which will help you take your career to the next level.

Don’t lose sight of that big picture. It can be hard to stay motivated when the tasks on your list seem relatively mundane – editing a chapter of your book, for instance, or memorizing some facts before an exam. Create a reminder of your ultimate goal to keep you going.

Do it: Find an image that represents your goal. Keep it somewhere visible – you could set it as the wallpaper on your computer, or put it in your wallet.

Step #4: … But Focus on One Piece While You’re Working

Once you sit down to work on your project, you need to mentally “zoom in” to look at just one piece. If you keep on thinking about the whole finished thing, it can be hard to concentrate on what you need to do right now – and you might start to get overwhelmed.

For each “chunk” of your goal, write down specific action steps, like “read article X” or “write section Y”. Focus on one of these at a time, and don’t let yourself get distracted. If you can see yourself making clear progress, you’ll stay motivated.

Do it: Write down three – five tasks that will help you meet your next project milestone.

What project(s) are you working on right now? Have you got any motivational tips to share? If so, let us know in the comments!

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Remember those New Year’s resolutions you made at the beginning of the year?  Did you make good on them or did you forget about them by February 1?  With less than 100 days left in the year, you can still turn those resolutions into a reality and reach your goals before 2012 officially rolls in.  Whether it’s losing weight, getting out of debt, organizing your home or whatever, all it takes is a little mental toughness.

Get Really Clear and Committed to What You Want

One of the biggest reasons people don’t stick to their New Year’s resolutions is because they aren’t clear about what they want to achieve.  You must get really clear about what you want to change, define it in detail and get totally committed to doing it.  Don’t just say, “I want to lose weight.”  The correct way to define this goal is to get really specific.  Instead, say, “My goal is to lose 20 pounds in the next two months.  I’m going to commit to being at the gym every morning at 7am and eat healthy and nutritious meals.”

The other big mistake most people make is their lack of commitment.  In mental toughness training, we say it’s all or nothing.  If you’re on a diet, for example, you can’t let those old thoughts, habits or temptations to cheat in the door for even a second.  It sounds harsh, but 99% compliance is failure.  You wouldn’t cheat on your partner in a committed relationship, and you shouldn’t cheat on your diet either.

Expect Obstacles

Military training is filled with obstacle courses.  The purpose of this is to train soldiers to be ready for anything.  Same concept holds true for making and keeping a New Year’s resolution.  Everyday isn’t going to be smooth sailing and there will be times when you want to throw in the towel.

If you know ahead of time that you are going to run into obstacles, you can be better prepared to deal with them.  There will be days when you don’t feel well, your kids are stressing you out, and you’ve had a bad day at work or a fight with your partner.  Whatever the case, know that days like this are going to happen.  While you can’t change that, you can take control of how you handle these situations.  Have a plan to stay on track.   If you’re not ready to suffer during adversity, you’re not going to be successful.

Develop A World Class Self-Talk

One of the most powerful mental toughness tools is developing a world class, positive self-talk.  Do you pay attention to what you say to yourself?  What you think to yourself plays a major role in your attitude and what you are capable of accomplishing.  It’s estimated that 77% of the average person’s self-talk is negative.

Self-talk is what we say to ourselves all day long, yet it’s also how we say it.  Most New Year’s resolutions aren’t an easy or quick fix, and the difficulty involved usually leads to a party of negativity in your self-talk.

Begin monitoring everything you say to yourself and others.  Ask yourself if your self-talk is programming you for success or failure?  Start listening to the way people around you use their language.  Are they programmed for success or failure?  This is an eye-opening experience.  You must develop a world-class positive talk if you want to make your resolutions a reality.

Choose Discipline Over Pleasure

Discipline is the watchword of great performers.  Discipline makes the difference between the good and the great.  It’s the ability to stay the course and complete promises you’ve made.  The fulfillment of these promises, or resolutions, builds confidence and self-esteem, which eventually leads you to believe that almost anything is possible.  Discipline is a logic-based decision that performers adhere to, regardless of whether they feel like it or not.  Discipline will push you past pain and punishment.  The average person sees discipline as a painful chore to be avoided at all costs.  The world class sees it as the ultimate power tool for performance.

To achieve your New year’s resolutions, rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 7, 7 being most disciplined.  How disciplined are you in the different areas of your life?  How disciplined have you been in the past about resolutions you created?  If you’re weren’t really disciplined, you need to get disciplined if 2012 is going to be your year.

Become Future-Oriented

The average person often lives in the past, while champions look toward the future.  Pros habitually focus on the present while creating their ultimate vision for, and landscape of, the future.  This future orientation allows them to dream of grand visions and unlimited possibilities.  It also keeps them motivated and moving forward by keeping the proverbial carrot out in front.

When it comes to your New Year’s resolutions, you must be future-oriented.  If you’re trying to lose weight, for example, think of how great you’ll look with a sexy, lean body.  If you’re trying to make more money, think of all the things you’ll do with that money.  How does it make you feel?  Use this as your motivation to keep you moving forward.

2012 is right around the corner. Sharpen your mental toughness tools and finish off the year strong!

Steve Siebold is an internationally recognized mental toughness expert.  His corporate clients include Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, GlaxoSmithKline and Proctor and Gamble.  He’s author of the international best-selling book 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of The World Class.  A former professional tennis player, today Siebold is a mental toughness coach to Fortune 500 corporations, entrepreneurs and other super achievers.  To learn more, visit www.speakerstevesiebold.com and http://www.mentaltoughnesssecrets.com/

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“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.” – Senator Robert F. Kennedy

The working of the human mind naturally lends itself to metaphor as in: the playground of the mind, the battlefield of the mind, the mind as a prison. What all these allusions depend upon is framing – the mind’s natural process of capturing an idea and using it to define and focus your attention on whatever is within its scope.

Framing is the process that truly confirms the Biblical statement: “As a man thinketh in his heart [Hebrew for mind] so is he.” If you think of your mind as a playground for ideas – it will be. If you think of it as a prison – it will be.

For some people their thinking does seem to imprison them through the spiraling of their negative thoughts; it brings ceaseless unrest.

What they need is a way to break out of that cycle to create mental freedom.

So what can help? Enter the two words: “What…if…”

Do not scoff at these little incantations – they are not magic in the Harry Potter sense – but given what they can do the results can seem magical. They can help you step back, step up and step out of a limiting way of thinking.

You have probably heard about the power of acting “as-if”. It seems so trite on paper and I think many people give up on the process because when they try ‘faking it’ the original behavior is so strongly engrained that they strain against it – and fall back.

But these two words can act to open up a new world of thinking and I’m going to tell you how.

So let’s say you want to start thinking more positively and you feel you can’t.

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming the challenge to ‘I can’t’ is usually: ‘What if you could?” Pick something that is possible in the world but doesn’t seem possible for you and ask yourself: “What if I could?” You need to be prepared to push yourself but what the question does is challenge your brain to find a way to make the transition work.

• What if you could learn passionately and quickly?
• What if you could do mathematics? What would open up for you then?
• What if you were totally wrong about the sheer amount of potential you have?
• What if you did resist smoking for a week and saved yourself £10? What then?

If no answer comes, ask again, and again. Yes, forcing it can work in this situation.

Several things can and will happen after this point. At the least you’ll start to create the possibility in your mind. Yes, you might fall back and say “well, that would be great but I’m just pretending.”

Understand that actually you are not pretending (in a physiological sense.

Neurologists have said that the same neural pathways are used to pretend as to do. That is why Korean War veterans came out of five years internment better golfers than they went in – by using mental rehearsal.

The resistance you experience is likely to be a higher frame like ‘it’s just pretending’ and you’ll need to deal with that. In fact, ask “What if pretending actually caused me to make a seismic shift in my thinking and suddenly I found myself starting to demonstrate those behaviors in everyday life?”

You may find a little loosening feeling but still feel you have further to advance. This is fine, merely question yourself as to what is stopping you, and ask “What if…[you had overcome it]. If you are not good at getting information from yourself yet see my article http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/personal-development-an-essential-key/

You can then start getting a little adventurous by presupposing what you want to happen has happened. This technique regularly opens up new mental horizon for me.

• What if I suddenly stopped feeling fear about taking aggressive action on my dreams?
• What if I was able to love others regardless of their behavior?
• What if I woke up tomorrow morning willing and able to change any belief?

Another great way of doing this is to use the Miracle Question format (by Steve De Shazzer).

What if, when I went to bed tonight a miracle occurred and when I woke up I had suddenly developed a learning state of mind that enabled me to take in and use information quickly and easily? What would be the first thing that would let me know this was the case?

This is the next level of pretending. Trainers often use two chairs for this – one for the ‘night before’ and one for ‘after the miracle’.

It seems so simple but often, just doing this causes a shift in thinking when you mind recognizes a more desirable state of affairs.

Asking ‘what if’ can open up new therapeutic and generative personal worlds. It has the power to heal and create.

• What if I truly was significant?
• What if I counted in this world?
• What if my learning state enabled me to take that masters in 2 years instead of 3?
• What if I woke up tomorrow morning and was able to recognize the positive intention behind the behavior and work with that instead of getting annoyed at what’s in front of me.

I created an extremely powerful use for the ‘what if’ questions in the NLP User’s Toolkit which you can find here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/NLP-NS-Users-Toolkit-ebook/dp/B004BSGY7A. I use it almost every day and in coaching sessions.

Perhaps one of the ultimate applications of ‘what if’  is Borrowed Genius http://www.winwenger.com/borrow1.htm which involves putting on the ‘head’ of a respected figure from history and using a process called Image-Streaming to ‘think’ their thoughts.

You may wonder if this will work for you. I ask you to consider: What if it did? What if it could? What if it does?

Try it, and find out.

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The inner jerk is the anti-conscience of your thought process. It is the tiny voice inside your brain that says, “you’re not good enough. You’re not pretty enough. No, you can’t do that. You’re a loser. You’ll never amount to anything.” Sometimes it makes a home inside of your brain. It might even be the kind of jerk who makes frequent visits to your thoughts.

We all have an inner jerk that feeds us negative thoughts about us, but we don’t have to listen to its nasty comments. There is a way to defeat the inner jerk within ourselves.

1. Establish a Goal

Set your sites on a goal, something you want to accomplish in your life. Envision yourself achieving this goal and enjoying the rewards of your success. This will inspire you to work towards meeting that goal and it will also give you hope. At the same time, be open minded and be realistic about things. The path to success is a rocky path and you need to be prepared and fully equipped for the trip. There will be times when you will stumble and fall. But, don’t look at your falls as failures. Learn from the mistakes you made and establish a guideline on what you plan to do differently in the future. You learn and grow from your failures and you become a stronger person. Most importantly, always keep your eye on the prize. When you are focused and committed to the pursuit of your goal, you give your inner jerk no chance to hurl insults at you.

2. Get Involved

Involve yourself in social groups and/or professional organizations, like Toastmasters, your local theatre community, a book club, or any leisurely activity you enjoy doing when you’re not working. When you get involved in any activity, you give yourself the chance to develop a new skill and to meet like-minded people. That is how lasting friendships form. Also, your confidence builds up when you learn a new skill.

3. Surround Yourself With a Network of Supportive Friends

Choose your friends wisely. Surround yourself with people who are trustworthy, positive, encouraging and open-minded. Avoid people who are pessimistic, overly competitive, jealous and superficial. These people will only bring you down, not build you up.

4. Establish Healthy Boundaries

In a world where negativity prevails, you must have a good intuition. Know when to say NO to people who try to take advantage of your kindness and know when to give in to those who genuinely need a helping hand.

5. Believe in the Power of Prayer

At some point in our lives we all face obstacles that seem insurmountable and instinctively, we know that we cannot overcome them alone. Perhaps you have to deal with a very self-centered, domineering co-worker, a lover who has decided to break up with you, or maybe you’re a newly published author who has no support from your publisher’s marketing department. In hard situations like these, it is easy to become confused and depressed because they are beyond your control.

While you cannot control what life gives you, you can seek out guidance to steer you in the right direction. You don’t have to be a Christian to pray. There is a loving God who knows you and the situation you are in and He only wants the best for you. If you seek Him, He will provide guidance. At the same time, God does give us free will. Therefore, He requires you to meet Him half way. With His help, you can take control of your situation and can make important decisions that will redirect your life on the right path.

With strength from above, you will be strong enough to repel the voice inside of your head that tries to put you down.

If you take all five of these steps, you will become a well-grounded, happy person. Why? You will know yourself as an individual, what you want in life, where you belong in this world and you will have a purpose. So, if your inner jerk decides to tell you otherwise, you can tell it, in a strong voice, to go away and never return.

Deanna Proach is the author of two novels. Her first novel, ‘Day of Revenge’ is a historical suspense that is set in revolutionary France. Her second novel, titled ‘To be Maria’ is a contemporary YA suspense.

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Maybe you’ve got a big goal in your life – something that excites you but also scares you.

You might have been thinking about this goal for months, years, even decades. And, even if you’ve made a start on it, you might not have got very far.

Your goal might look something like this:

• Run a marathon
• Write a novel
• Pay off the mortgage
• Get a PhD
• Become self-employed

All of these are big goals – most of them would take years to achieve. And if you really want to reach them, you need to break them down into manageable chunks.

Here’s how.

#1: Define Your Goal

First, you’ll want to come up with a clear description of your end goal. Too many big goals are so vague that it’s hard to start and impossible to finish.

For instance, if your goal is “write a novel”, what would finished look like?

• A first draft?
• A novel that you’re happy with?
• A published novel?

If you want to run a marathon, what exactly does that mean?

• Would walking the whole marathon be okay?
• Or do you want to finish under a certain time?

Get clear about your goal. Decide what you’re aiming for, and write it down. Once you’ve done that, you can start on the next step.

#2: Break Your Goal into Major Milestones

Most goals can be divided into clear milestones. For instance, let’s say you’re planning to become self-employed. Your milestones might be:

• Get everything ready to start the business (plan, funding, tools)
• Make $500/month from the business
• Make $1000/month from the business
• Make enough to quit your day job and go full-time

…and so on.

These are still quite big steps, but they’re easier to grasp. You can start to imagine what’s necessary in order to achieve each milestone – and that’s what we’ll be covering in the next step.

#3: Come Up With a Task List

You don’t need to map out your entire goal – just your first milestone.

Come up with a clear task list: what exactly do you need to do? Try to phrase these as action items like “write proposal” or “ask John about tools”.

Here’s an example:

Goal: Run a marathon

First milestone: Jog for thirty minutes

Task list:

• Buy kit – trainers and loose-fitting clothes
• Get an exercise plan – ask for Sue’s help putting this together
• Jog three times a week and gradually build up to thirty minutes

Your task list doesn’t need to be long or complicated, but it should be clear. If any items are vague, then break them down further.

By now, your big goal has been divided into little steps. You know what you need to do during the next week or two – and you can see the milestones mapped out for the next few months or years.

“Run a marathon” is daunting. “Buy trainers” isn’t. But all those little steps really do add up – and in a year’s time, you could have achieved something amazing.

How could your big goals break down? If you want to share your thoughts, the comments are open…

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‘There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.’ ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

You want to lose weight, but you keep eating poorly.

You know you need to exercise, but you just can’t seem to get moving.

You’d like to start that project, but maybe you’ll do it tomorrow when you aren’t so tired.

Our dreams and good intentions are powerful, real, and hold the promise of a happier life, a better you, a sense of pride and accomplishment. But when the rubber meets the road, when it’s time to take action, it feels like you are wading waist-high in water with weights tied to your feet. Your heart is willing, but your mind and body resist. The mental difficulty of even the smallest actions can be shocking and immensely disappointing.

If you have intended with all of your heart to create a good habit, drop a bad one, fulfill a goal, or complete a project, and you have failed at it, you are not alone. Nearly everyone has difficulty maintaining resolve and following through. Even those who are self-disciplined weren’t born that way. It is a learned skill — one that takes practice and the specific knowledge of how to go about it.

When you become a master at launching but a failure at completion, self-esteem inevitably plummets.

Thoughts like, “I’m weak, I’m lazy, this is too hard for me,” often creep in to poison your confidence and further weaken your resolve. To save face, perhaps you create excuses — you’re too busy, you aren’t feeling well, you don’t really need to change. All of this behavior is smoke and mirrors, an attempt by your psyche to keep you comfortably ensconced in inertia and the status quo.

It is as thought there are two people inside of you. There’s the one who wants things comfortable, easy, uncomplicated, immediately satisfying, and unchanging. But then there’s the other you — the one who won’t allow the first to be satisfied with the status quo. It’s the “potential you” who continues to attempt positive change, growth, and life betterment. These two are in a constant battle, with the “status quo you” coming out on top more often that not.

So how does one strengthen the “potential you” with the resolve to conquer the status quo? How does one get over the hump of resistance, inertia, and discomfort that is the standard response to anything new and hard?

You know it can be done, because you’ve seen others do it. Unless you have a mental or physical handicap, your circumstances and difficulties are no different that anyone’s.

If you aren’t following through to create a habit, accomplish a goal, and complete a task, there are really only three things standing in your way.

1. Lack of desire. You may say you want something, but you don’t want it badly enough to deal with the discomforts and inconvenience of getting it.

2. Lack of honesty. You are not being real with yourself about your desire for this accomplishment. You aren’t accepting 100% personal responsibility for making this happen. Everything is a choice — your choice.

3. Lack of information. You don’t have the practical information or skills to overcome resistance and follow through consistently.

Each of these roadblocks can be overcome, allowing you to strengthen your resolve to accomplish just about anything your mind and body are capable of accomplishing. Here are 12 strategies for doing just that:

1. Do your research. Before you begin any new habit or goal, give yourself several days to know exactly what’s involved in making this change happen. How much time will it take? How will you insert it into your day? Who else will it impact and how will you deal with them? What special equipment or information will you need? What preparation is necessary? What must you give up to make this happen? How will it impact your life once you’ve accomplished it?

2. Make an honest decision. Armed with the knowledge from your research, make an informed and honest choice. Are you willing to do the work involved in making this thing happen? Will the outcome be worth the effort? It’s hard to know for sure until you start taking action, but you should have some idea of what to expect before you charge ahead.

3. Reduce overwhelm. If the goal or habit seems daunting, it will quash your desire to work hard for it. Break it down into small, simple, and brief actions or tasks. Make it so easy to do that it doesn’t feel like a chore. With a new habit, start with five minutes a day, every day — slowly increasing your time over several weeks.

4. Make a public promise. Tell people what you are doing. Announce it to friends, family, on Facebook and Twitter. When you go public with your intentions, it immediately strengthens your resolve. A public commitment shifts your own thinking about your seriousness. No one wants to be embarrassed in front of others.

5. Set up regular accountability. Create a system of accountability so that you can report your actions, successes and failures, every day. This may be a friend or it could be on Facebook or in a forum of some kind. Don’t just announce it once and then disappear. Let the world know about your progress.

6. Expect difficulties. There will be life situations that might try to get in the way of your efforts. And it is so easy to allow them to undermine your work. Think in advance of possible problems that might arise and decide how you will deal with these situations. Decide in advance what you will allow to interrupt your work and stick to the plan.

7. Use positive self-talk. When you want to quit, your mind starts reaching for excuses and reasons to give you an exit ramp from the work you are doing. Be aware of your mind’s efforts to sabotage you, and intentionally begin saying supportive and positive things to yourself the minute you feel mental resistance.

8. Visualize the outcome. Visualization has an incredibly powerful effect on the brain. It can actually rewire neural pathways in your brain to support the physical efforts you are making. Take a few minutes prior to taking action on your habit or goal to visualize yourself accomplishing it.

9. Move past failure. It takes practice to strengthen resolve and follow through on just about any endeavor. And if you tackle something hard, like diet or exercise, chances are good you will fail a few times before you are successful. Failure doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It might mean you started too big or didn’t plan ahead. Learn from the failure and start again, correcting what you think caused you to give up. Be kind to yourself and know that building resolve is a work in progress.

10. Attempt one at a time. You may have many goals and many things you want to accomplish, but until you strengthen your resolve with one effort, don’t attempt to tackle several at a time. Begin the process of strengthening your resolve with something easy. When you accomplish that, move on to another, slightly harder effort. Build up to difficult goals or tasks so that you know what to expect and how to cope with interferences or problems.

11. Practice resolve in small ways daily. Without judging your success or failure, attempt to resist small temptations during your day (ie: snacking, surfing the internet too long, gossiping). Prove to yourself that you are capable of small acts of self-discipline. These little successes will support your larger efforts at strengthening resolve.

12. Accept full responsibility for your actions. Most of what happens to us in life is a result of our own choices. Yes, there are some things that are out of our control, but even then, we can choose how to react to them. We are not victims. We have an endless array of choices that can change the quality of our lives. There is tremendous power in that.

You have the gift of a powerful brain, but it sometimes has a mind of its own! Fortunately, you also have the ability to harness that power and apply it to a fixed purpose that can enhance your life, your health, and your happiness. If you exercise your mental muscle of resolve, over time, you will develop the mental strength and confidence to accomplish whatever you set out to do.

Barrie Davenport is a personal and career coach and founder of Live Bold and Bloom, a blog about bold and fearless living. She is also the creator of Discover Your Passion: A Step-by-Step Course for Creating the Life of Your Dreams.

“A Spirited Debate Will Strengthen Your Resolve” Art by: Daryl Vocat

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“Goals” are like “New Year’s resolutions”…frequently made but rarely accomplished.

If you struggle to achieve your goals, my good friend Bill Bartmann, the author of “Bailout Riches” and once named by Inc. magazine as “The Billionaire Nobody Knows” gave me an awesome tip to trick your mind into accomplishing exactly what you want to, every single time.

“Don’t think of your goals as goals.”

Are you scratching your head right now? I know I sure was. Until I saw the white elephant sitting in the room…

In our society most people describe a goal as “a lofty ambition,” something to “shoot for,” something to “strive for,” or something to “work towards”…

Nothing wrong with with any of that is there?

As long as you don’t care about your goal that much, it’s perfectly fine…

You see the descriptions we give the the word “goal” implies your objective will be difficult to achieve. There is a subtle undertone crafted by the implicit meaning of your words telling you it’s just as likely you won’t achieve your ultimate goal, as it is that you will make it happen.

Too often this gives you an excuse making it okay (or at least forgivable) if you fail meaning the word “goal” by popular definition actually conditions you for failure.

Here’s how it works.

You start out “shooting for a goal,” wanting to hit it, but you also know by the sheer definition of the word it probably isn’t going to happen. Unfortunately opening this door to the possibility it might not be achieved, works against you, weakening your power to manifest the “impossible”.

But that’s not the worst part…

Even if you hit your goals 90 percent or more of the time (which would be incredible), you’d still be failing 10% of the time, right?

(By the way if you said a number anywhere near this high, you are one extraordinary human being, and you shouldn’t be reading this blog post, you should write a best selling book with me).

Even if you gave a more realistic reply, you’d only probably say you hit your goals 60-70% of the time, which means you’re failing 30-40% of the time!

How confident of success or how much momentum do you think you can give when you’re “trying” to do something you’ve previously failed at a rate of 30 – 40% of the time?

Not very.

But what is the success rate for keeping a promise when you “promise” to do something?

I bet it’s a higher percentage than the “goals” you’ve set to achieve because promises are protected by your morals, beliefs and overall value system. Even at a subconscious level, this system to honor promises makes them much more important in our minds than a goal for three basic reasons.

Three very distinct reasons why a promise means more to YOU than a goal:

#1 A Promise Has Emotional Attachment

A promise carries a much deeper sense of responsibility to the person to whom it is made—whether to yourself or someone else. With these feelings, a promise also carries a higher emotional attachment.

When you make a promise, your emotions are involved. Because of the emotional attachment, the file clerk in our mind will now give this promise an immediate priority filing in the filing cabinet.

2. A Promise Has A History Of Success

Our mind recognizes that you have a history of success when it comes to making promises. It knows you’ve historically achieved an exceptionally high success rate of nearly 100 percent in many cases and strives to maintain this momentum.

Based on this history your subconscious assumes you can and will keep this promise. Rather than being preconditioned for failure based on past performance, your mind is preconditioned for success because it knows it’s more than capable of keeping a promise.

These prior successes carry a positive emotional attachment from how it felt when you did what you promised you were going to do. Your file clerk recorded this data in your file cabinet as a positive emotional reaction, working hard to keep your promises so you can feel “good”.

3. A Promise Triggers Your Subconscious Mind To Set You Up For Success

By limiting your level of achievement to just Goal setting you are turning your subconscious into an “overprotective parent”. A parent who is contstantly attempting to talk you out of taking any risk, for fear you might fail.

It actually works against your goals convincing you that you don’t have time for lofty dreams, quietly making it ok to “forget” about them.

But when you set a promise, the opposite happens.

Your subconscious mind switches from the role of “overprotective parent”, attempting to talk you out of your goal to the role of “helpful parent” who is going to clear the path and make it easy to achieve success!

Think of the difference between setting a “goal” to quit smoking and “promising” someone you love you’ll quit smoking.

If you’ve set a “goal” to quit smoking, it’s of little consequence to anyone but yourself you failed to achieve this “goal.” However, if you have “promised” someone you love you were going to quit and then later resumed smoking, you’d be afraid or embarrassed to admit you failed to keep your promise to your loved one, wouldn’t you?

Why?

Failing to keep a promise leads to an emotional reaction of shame, embarrassment, or disappointment. Your subconscious mind avoids these feelings of failure or suffering at all costs because its job is to keep you from suffering any of those things.

In fact, its sole purpose is self-preservation.

This subconscious need for “self-survival” is exactly what forces it to helps you keep your promise like a “helpful parent”. The part of you feeling almost as if you’ll die if you don’t keep your word is comforted as you move towards keeping your promise.

By changing the way you think about the process, you’ve just increased your likelihood of success by a huge margin. You’ll still have some work to do, but now you’re positioned for success. And most importantly we now you have an easy way get your subconscious work for you, not against you.

If you are ready to change your goals into promises, take the first step by leaving a comment and making a public commitment to yourself – TODAY, first list a goal you have now and then change it into a promise. How did that feel?

Goal:___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Promise:_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Greg S. Reid is a #1 best-selling author, entrepreneur, and the CEO of several successful corporations, who has dedicated his life to helping others achieve the ultimate fulfillment of finding and living a life of purpose. Greg will personally share with you everything he knows about how to have a life of Sustained Abundance and Financial Freedom by discovering Your Personal Success Equation as you’ll learn in his program The Pathways To Greatness.