Strategies for Achieving Goals and Adopting New Habits

Why do you need strategies to achieve your goals or adopt new habits? Well that isn’t a difficult question. Obviously you are having trouble with it or you wouldn’t be reading this article! The following strategies should fulfill these core needs:

1. Give you motivation to do them.
2. Help to Overcome your fears.
3. Remind you to do them in the first place.
4. Give you greater leverage on yourself.
5. Help you to discover ways to actually get them done.

Why do I talk about habits and goals in the same post? It is important that they are linked together. When our habits change, our lives change. Our goals are nothing more than what we would like for our lives to be. Habits are things which we do on auto-pilot. In order to achieve goals, there are many steps to be taken. By integrating habits into your life which align with the goals which you wish to achieve, you are able to put the process on auto-pilot.

Let’s talk about 3 areas which will give you a big boost in completing habit change and achieving goals. The first is actually becoming clear on what changes you would like to make, the purpose of them, and why it is important to you.

Create Clear, Concise Goals and Positive Habits

1. Begin by doing some deep reflection. You must find what motivates you and makes you happy. What is important to you? Begin writing out everything that you would like to accomplish, and any habits you wish to change. Choose the 3 best goals and 1 habit.

2. Once you feel that you have discovered them, the next thing to do is to decide when you will achieve it. The time frame should be fairly short. 1 month for any habit, and no more than a year for any goals. If it will require more than 1 year to reach a goal, you must break it down into parts that are attainable within that time. Once you do that, you should go even further and break it down into parts that can be achieved monthly, weekly, and even daily.

3. Create a plan to achieve your goals, and to make your habit change. You will not always know every detail and step to reach the final step of your goal. That is okay. Write down everything that you do know, and as time goes on you will discover the remaining parts. The idea is to become clear on what you can do, and begin immediately. What can you do today? If possible, create a plan which allows you to do something every day to reach your goal.

The new habits that you develop each month should also put you closer to achieving your goal. What habits are holding you back? Are there routines in your day that you can replace with new more productive ones? One big habit loop for me, and a lot of other people that I know is the internet loop. I can spend hours surfing the web looking at various websites and information without realizing it. I start out looking at e-mail, or researching a particular topic. A link here or there leads off into several other directions, and an hour later I am back to square one, checking my e-mail. It starts over again from there.

That is just one example, however we all do this in many areas. The idea is to identify and eliminate these loops by replacing them with something useful to us. One way I eliminate this loop is by using a technique called timeboxing. I will designate between 60-120 minutes to focus on one task uninterupted. I am not allowed to do anything else within this space of time, nor am I allowed to go beyond that amount of time allotted. I set a timer on my phone, and once the time is up I can take a 15-30 minute break to do whatever else.

This is a great way to really focus and get a lot of work done. I am still developing a schedule and time zone that works best for me. Experiment with this, and discover for yourself what works.

4. The final step is to recite your goals back to yourself no less than twice daily. In order for the goals to become clear and real in your life, it is best to say it out loud. Even better would be to re-write the goal each morning. When you do, you are able to gain more detail and clarity each time. You will find that as time goes on your goal will alter slightly based on what you have learned and how your interests have shifted.

Each time you do this you are reinforcing to your subconscious mind that the goal is important to you, and that you wish to obtain it.

Setting Yourself Up For Success

Once you have your goals and habits clearly defined, and you are continually refining and detailing them, it is time to begin setting yourself up for success and making it even easier to achieve those goals.

1. Put something in your way so that you will fall into completing it. For instance, if one of the habits you would like to add is drinking a glass of water each morning, then each night put a glass of water next to your bed so that as soon as you wake up you will see it and know to drink. Another idea which I use, is to set an alarm on your phone to remind you when certain things should be started. This could be anything ranging from meditating for 5 minutes, excercising, making a phone call, journaling, or anything else that you are currently trying to change in your life.

2. Publicize your goals. Tell other people about it. It is much too easy to let yourself down than it is to let someone else down. This is why it is ‘almost’ always a good idea to tell other people about your goals and habits which you wish to change. There are some exceptions to this, however for the most part this is a good idea. Several ways to do so are to post a message about it on your Facebook, Myspace, or even create a Youtube video. Tell your mom, spouse, aunt, cousin, best friend, or whoever you know will keep you accountable. An even better idea is to be a part of a mastermind group, or a group of people who share the common interest of personal development who can all check in once a week and discuss each other’s goals and keep one another accountable.

3. Write down your goals and habits on an index card, and put them in one of your pockets. A good place would be the pocket that you keep your cell phone, or even where you keep your cash. It should be in a place that you will pull out several times during the day to remind you of them so that you are always thinking about it. Another fun idea is to keep a “reminder stone.” This can be a small rock, or any other object which has a special meaning only to you. Each time you pick it up out of your pocket, you will know to think of your dreams, goals, and habits which you wish to change.

4. Get leverage on yourself. It is important that you make it more painful to not take daily action towards your goal than to actually do it. It is very easy to say, “Well I’ll do it next time,” because we tend to not look at the big picture and realize that every little bit counts. The way you get leverage on yourself is by placing a scenario in place that forces you to do something you do not want to do if you don’t complete the necessary action to reach your goal, or if you do a habit which is not beneficial to you. For example, if you are trying to give up drinking, one good way to leverage the habit would be: Every time you want a drink, you must walk to the liquor store in order to do so. After a while, you will get tired of having to walk all the way to the store just to get a drink and the habit will fade away.

What about taking action though? Well give yourself a choice. Let’s say each day you would like to exercise each morning but are having trouble getting yourself to do it. A great leverage would be to tell your friends that if you do not exercise that morning you will clean their bathroom. You can keep yourself accountable by calling and checking in with them each day or once a week.

Future Pacing

The last strategy for achieving your goals and changing habits is something called future pacing. This is an NLP strategy that is used to train your mind to believe it is achieving the goal. This is a great technique to use when there is something holding you back, such as fear of failure, anxiety, or any other number of reasons that we do not end up taking action on our goals.

To begin this technique, you will want to be somewhere relaxed and quiet so that you can concentrate. Sit down and get comfortable, and then close your eyes. Think of a time when you were calm and relaxed. Breath slowly in and out, and really try to imagine what it felt like in that time you were very calm and relaxed. How were you breathing? Were you smiling? Go to that place, and really remember it. As you visualize this, you should become more and more relaxed.

Now, move yourself into the future and see yourself doing the things that you have set out for yourself. See yourself as having already developed the habit. Watch how it just comes naturally and you don’t even have to think about it. Now see yourself living here in this future and having acquired and achieved your goal. For instance, you may have decided that you wish to become a public speaker. See yourself on stage in front of hundreds of people. Hear the sounds of the crowd as you talk. Feel the texture of the microphone in your hand as you speak into it. Smell the smells of the air. Really go into every detail of the moment, and FEEL the emotions that you have now that you are doing what it is that you love, and now that you have achieved your goals.

Do this 2 or 3 times at various points in the future, each time hearing, smelling, and feeling what it is like to be in that moment.

As always, keep in mind that you must always continue growing. Keep refining your goals and aligning yourself on the path to achievement. Have you tried any of these techniques before? What has your experience been? What habits are you currently working to improve? Leave a comment and join the discussion!

Tagged as: Future Pacing, Goals, Habits, Leverage, Motivation, NLP, Reminder Stone, Strategies