If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a GOAL, not to People or Things – Albert Einstein

The difference between average people and achieving people is having a goal to achieve their best. We all set goals to achieve what matters the most in our life. Everyone has goals. But very few have the efficient system to achieve their goals.

Have you ever closely examined what process you are following to set your goal and to achieve them?
What is your mindset when you think about your goal?
How do you feel after making a list of your goals?
When you are working on your goals, how do you know if you are on the track or deviated from the path?
How to measure progress for your work?

Yes we need proper goal system that answers all these questions and guide us on our path to achieve our goals.

Just knowing what we want is not enough, we also need to carve our path to reach there. To accomplish our goal requires not only a proper attitude but also actions, because results come from actions only. It is also not uncommon to see our enthusiasm going south once we start working on our goals, isn’t it?

It is interesting to see how we all know what exactly we want, but don’t know how to get that.

I will share my Action-Approach with you today; hopefully it will give you a new insight to look at the goal achievement process. Once you finish reading this post you will know how to make an effective and efficient action plan to achieve your goal.

I always follow 3Cs model of my action approach.

• Clarity
• Confidence
• Centered actions

Let’s see how this 3Cs affects our goal achievement process.

CLARITY

Peace of mind comes through the clarity of thoughts. Before you set your goal make sure you have crystal clear clarity in your mind for these four thoughts.

Acceptance of Current Situation:

Present moment is inevitable, so let the acceptance of the present moment be our starting point. Your current situation is your reality. If you cannot accept it, you cannot change it either. Look at your health, wealth, career and personality and accept the current shapes and sizes of it. We also have our hopes and dreams in life, embrace them as well.

Goal Is Not a Problem Solving Tool:

How often have you noticed people saying that they have set this goal to go to the gym to reduce weight? I am sure quite often. We see our goals in our problems. Now that we have gained those extra pounds, we can set it as a goal to hit the gym and reduce weight. Even if we succeed to get back into our previous physical shape, it is not a new progress or true achievement. We are just going back to square one. Here we are treating goal as if it is some problem solving tool. This tendency often results in stress, frustration and eventually leads us to become indifferent towards the whole goal setting process. We lose interest in setting goals and working for them.

We need to change this perspective.

Goal is not a problem solving tool. It won’t always work that way.

Few Are Better Than More:

We can have as many goals as we want; however, the fact is we cannot achieve everything in our life. Although, the great thing is that we can do something about all our goals for sure. And a little progress is always better than no progress at all! After living our daily routine we are practically left with very less amount of time to focus on multiple goals. If there are few things to focus, we can intensify our efforts in available time. Intense efforts, in turn, will have galvanic force and effect on the outcome.

Goal Is Not There to Take Smiles Away:

Goals are not a short cut to success. Nothing happens overnight. Persistence, patience and smiles are required ingredients to keep you going.

A football coach told his team on training ground: “It is important to have strong thighs to make goals. And your thighs gets stronger only if you practice playing football every day.”

One young boy has just started taking the coaching. He always wanted to have strong physic with strong thighs. He was happy to hear his coach’s words.

And they started playing; that young boy would run a little and then stop and examine his thighs, then again would start running, kicking football and again would stop and examine his thighs. He does this every day.

One day, his coach asked “hey man! What’re you doing?”
“I was checking on my thighs if they got stronger or not, yet!” – The young boy replied.
Coach had a hearty laugh, and said with smile – “Don’t worry about thighs, my dear! Just enjoy running, kicking, and making goals on the field, you will eventually get there!”

Goal should add fun in your life not the stress. You will eventually get there, until then enjoy the process, without worrying about end results.

CONFIDENCE

Real and undaunted confidence comes from clarity. Instead of setting your goals set yourself with the right understanding, reasonable expectations and crystal clear clarity on what you want, why you want and how you can get there. Clear and confusion free mind is the most confident mind and exerts a great force into our actions.

CENTERED ACTIONS

This is where the real game starts. Always use journal or excel sheet to develop these step by step action plans.

Have Mission Impossible Goals:

Set your goals too bold to achieve. Let our goals be bigger than ourselves, thus we clearly know that they are impossible to achieve and yet we have placed them on our goal list. The reason for this is to set our minds stress free for those goals and yet to remain committed to work for them as diligently. No focus on results at all.

For example, if we want one million dollar in our saving account for a peaceful retirement. Let’s have our target set for 5 million dollars and then work for that target till we reach to the retirement age. This will help us to reach near to our goal or may be sometime exceed the goal.

Separate Your NEED Based Goals From Your WANT Based Goals:

Your needs are your responsibility and your wants are your lifestyle. Your responsibility goals are always there right from the beginning, you don’t have to set them, you just have to be aware of them. For example, retirement saving, children education, your fitness etc. are your responsibility goals, which are always there.

Your hopes, dreams and desires are your life style related goal. For example, if you want to be a writer, or want to go to Switzerland for a dream vacation etc. are your lifestyle related goal.

Always have two separate lists for your need based goals and want based goals. And never let a want based goal consumes your resources and efforts at the cost of your need based goal. Nor let these two cross-over each other.

This step will help us prioritizing our focus and actions. You will have clear direction now.

Make RESULT Goals & ACTION Goals:

Ok so now you are ready with your bold goals set for your needs and wants. Now let’s take it to the next level by adding two more categories below your need and want based goal and give the title RESULT GOAL and ACTION GOAL.

There is no free lunch in this world. No pain, no gain. ACTION GOALS is the price that you are willing to pay for your RESULT GOALS. It helps you decide what you are willing to give away to achieve your goals.

In RESULT GOAL column write the result you want for your need goal or want goal. And in ACTION GOAL column write your actions that you are going to take to achieve your RESULT GOAL.

For example: My goal is to reduce 20 pounds weight in next 6 months.

Now everything is ready for you to be on your mark get, set and go!

I personally prefer to work silently on my goals, but if you think announcing your goals to your friends, relatives, spouse or peers will help you remain motivated. Sure go ahead and do that, but only announce your ACTION GOALS and not the RESULT GOALS. The reason is, we don’t want any watchdog set on us. People sometime bring our morale down by their negative comment and remarks. The best practice is to let them know about your actions only and not your expectations. When result will come, it will speak for itself. This will give you much needed freedom, peace and space to work on your goals without any extra burden from people’s expectations for you.

Live Your Action Plan Truly:

What do I mean by living your action plan truly? It’s certainly different than a boring style of executing your listed activities one by one daily, and doing it for coming weeks and months.

Is there any way we can make this execution phase thoroughly exciting? The answer is yes, and you can even make it more than exciting!

To truly live your action plan, develop your lifestyle and new hobbies around your goal to explore your full potential. This way you will never feel that you are working for your goal. It will seem more like an exploring a whole new habit. Your interests will sustain throughout the execution phase of your action goals.

Find and meet new people, who have similar interests. Or discuss your goal related activities with your existing friends and make it more interesting and motivating for them that they also love to join this run with you.

I have one friend who is a technical person and didn’t know anything about personal finance field before two years. One day he read that famous “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” book and started taking his personal financial matters on his hands. Thanks to the blogging world, he could find few great financial blogs and he subscribed to them. He started educating himself. He read few good books, subscribed one monthly magazine on personal finance, and attended few seminars and workshop and kept engaging himself to explore his interests for this new hobby.

In less than a year, he became an expert in his understanding and application of various concepts of personal finance, financial independence, and passive income. He started using various analytical formulae to select a good insurance policies and shares to maximize his coverage and wealth. He didn’t only start using this knowledge to make his investment decisions more informed, but eventually this education also helped him to obtain license to work as a financial advisor. Currently he enjoys working as a financial advisor on part time basis helping others to secure their financial world. He enjoys his new role much more than his daily 9 to 5 job.

In nutshell, he truly lived his action plan and ended up with a pleasant surprise (he consciously didn’t set a goal to be a financial advisor) of getting an additional income out of it.

Once you achieve your goal, there is no motivation left for you to remain active. However, living your plans truly like above, not only helps sustain your interests after your accomplishment, but also now gives you an opportunity to take these new hobbies and knowledge to the next level, if you wish.

The person whose hobby is his profession is the happiest in this world :)

Turn your goal achievement process into an opportunity by living your action plans truly.

Slow down and Apply Your Breaks:

Your goals should not be your burden. Never let your goal takes your smiles away. Always take a break from what you have been doing. If you are putting your bonus money into saving account for last couple years regularly, next time take a break from that cycle and spend bonus money on a family vacation. Here if you have SMART goal set, it will only force you to kill your wishes and stick to your saving plan. However, life is also about enjoyment and money is also about spending. You should know when to slow down and apply your breaks. This will keep you going a long way with smile and enthusiasm.

Develop Your Feedback System:

This is very important action. Always keep a record in journal or in excel sheet which serves as a feedback system. Write down all your actions, numbers, figures, observations, progress etc. while living your action plans. Let it be as convenient and as meaningful for you to understand your progress.

After a certain period, you will be happy and amazed to see how much distance you have covered so far. This will also give you a signal to make changes and adjustments in your action plans.

Develop Your Challenge and Reward System:

Again by having a challenge and reward system I do not mean setting higher goals or celebrate success.

If you know your system is perfect and can work for your goal achievement, care to share it with others and train them. The real challenge now you can give yourself is not in setting higher goals to achieve, but to train other people to enable them to achieve what you have accomplished. Help others who are in the similar situation today where you were one day!

Your reward in this challenge is not only in terms of happiness and fulfillment. You never know it might open up a whole new dimension of passive or side income that might surpass your main income exponentially.

Enjoy Your Life Fully:

Don’t get trapped by living your life in routines and processes. To enjoy this life fully make sure you live, love and laugh every single day no matter what. Find some quiet moments for yourself daily and just be with yourself. If you know meditation, do it. If not, just find your favorite corner and play some soft music and be with your company for at least 15 minutes. This is like stopping for fueling gas in the car, which is very much necessary to keep you running for a longer time

Let me end with a quote from Shreemad Bhagwad Geeta, my favourite book, where Sri Krishna says to Arjuna:

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥ (२-४७)

Karmanye vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana,
Ma Karmaphalaheturbhurma Te Sangostvakarmani (2- 47)

The meaning of the verse is—

You have the right to work only but never to its fruits.
Let not the fruits of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.

If we occupy our half mind in actions and half mind in expectations, we cannot expect 100% outcomes from our 50% actions. 100% result requires 100% focus on actions. Let this paradigm shift take place in our understanding to change our focus from results to actions.

Yes, and don’t wait for your birthday or new year to make a new goal. Today is the best day and NOW is the perfect moment for any new beginning!

Have fun!
Bharat

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