Achieving your goals can sometimes feel like an uphill battle, can’t it?
The noise and challenges of day to day life often seem to get in the way. Obstacles and setbacks feel like mountains to climb. With all of this to contend with, it is easy to end up off track with your goals and feel stuck, frustrated and overwhelmed.
But the good news is that there are some very simple and effective steps you can take to increase your chances of achieving your goals despite setbacks, obstacles, challenges and the noise of day-to-day life.
How to Stay on Track and Achieve Your Goals
Create a structure and framework to set yourself up to succeed
Imagine your body without your skeleton to support it and give it structure and a framework to work properly. You wouldn’t be able to function effectively would you? Well, the same is true for achieving your goals.
Your goals need a structure and framework too. Without it, you may well have exciting goals to shoot for, but your chances of achieving them are greatly reduced. So, the first step is to give your goals a structure and framework that will help keep them on track.
And that means, on a regular and consistent cycle, carrying out progress reviews and forward action planning sessions. And by regular I mean a consistent weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual cycle.
Additional tip: do your progress review and forward action planning on the same day and time cycle to make it gradually become part of your habits and routines.
Ask yourself smart questions that will lead you to smart actions
So, you have got your structure and framework in place to keep you on track. Now what? What should you do with it?
Well, at each of the regular review session you have set up, get into the habit of asking yourself questions. Questions that will help you work out the next steps to move forward. Questions that will help you keep momentum going and deal quickly and effectively with challenges.
For example, questions like:
- What went well? How can I build on that?
- What didn’t go well? What do I need to do about that?
- What potential problems could arise? What will I put in place to manage that?
- What do I need to learn? What support do I need?
- What is the next most appropriate action I need to take? When will I take it?
- What do I need to start doing? What do I need to stop doing?
By implementing these two steps and actioning them consistently, regularly and persistently you will be creating a system that will not only help you stay on track to achieve your goals, but also will help you avoid and minimize problems, identify new opportunities and possibilities, speed up progress, get better results and reduce overwhelm.
Have fun playing with this and if you have any questions or comments about it, please share them in the comments section below. Or maybe you have some tips that have worked for you to keep you on track with your goals. Please share those in the comments below too so that we can all learn from each other.
