Read on, or watch the video!
We all want to achieve things. Success in a career. A relationship. A nice car or an apartment, something like that. But often we’re afraid to set those kind of goals because we’re scared of failure. If we don’t have a goal, we can’t fail to reach it.
But how do we overcome those fears and reach those goals?
I’m going to give you some tips and afterwards I want you to leave a comment and tell me what you want and how you’re going to go about getting it.
So we all want to achieve things, reach certain goals. But we can be pretty vague about what those goals are. People might say they want more money or a better job, things like that, but those things aren’t specific enough.
If we want to achieve, think of it as a journey. We don’t often leave the house without knowing where we’re going, right? Right. It’s like that.
We need an identifiable destination and the waypoints to get there. So for example, my personal goal is to be an independent creative professional.
Sounds good. But what’s my journey?
You’ve got to enjoy this journey, because it’s really about process not product. Get the process, enjoy the process, and the product will follow.
It’s also important to appreciate the journey while you’re on it.
I saw a psychotherapist for a while. A few times I’ve seen this person. When I explained my work ethic one time, I said it was like riding a bike up a hill: once you get off and start walking, you don’t tend to get back on again. So I didn’t tend to get off the bike because that would feel like giving up.
But she pointed out that sometimes it’s okay to get off and enjoy the view when you reach the top of the hill. And that was something I wasn’t doing.
I’d get to the top of the hill and just rush straight down the other side and start pedalling up another hill again. Pedalling like mad I was!
So set yourself a destination, then plan the route.
Be consistent.
Take small steps.
Don’t think about how far away the end goal is, just aim to get to each waypoint.
Think of it like stepping stones across a river.
So our goal is to get to the bank on the other side. We don’t want to get our feet wet. So to do that we just have to focus on getting from one stone to the next. We’re not looking at the bank in the distance, just the steps in front of us.
And eventually we get from one step to another, and we’re going to get where we want to be.
So we’ve learned that it’s important to identify where we want to go and how to get there. That we should ask questions to crystallise things in our mind, and that it’s important to reflect on how things are going as we proceed.
But there are other important considerations too.
Everything’s a learning process and everything changes. It’s also important to remember that it’s okay to change your mind.
As your journey continues and you reflect and gain experience and your life situation changes, which it will, what you want is likely to change too.
It’s okay to decide you’d like to go in another direction, head for another destination.
And expect all this to take a while.
Expect things to evolve.
Even this piece has evolved.
I originally started making notes about struggling to keep track of my notes and look what we’ve ended up with!
It’s also important to recognise that nobody gets it right straight out of the box.
Nobody.
And you’ve got to want this goal.
You’ve got to believe that you can do it.
It has to be achievable and realistic, which means you’ve got to be honest with yourself.
Be prepared to keep learning.
Now is only now.
It’s not the way things are always going to be.
Where do you want to be?
Be persistent.
Be consistent.
And as I write to myself in my journals every week:
JUST
KEEP
GOING!
Check out my YouTube Community
Visit my shop for products I use and recommend
Get my newsletter
I’m a published novelist, writer, editor and Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow with 30 years’ experience across business, fiction, other non-fiction, scriptwriting and education. If you’d like me to produce a video like this for you, get in touch.
Martin Sketchley 