Ok so you’ve set your goals, now you might be wondering how to I achieve them?

It’s easy to set goals, but a lot harder to achieve and maintain them.

There are specific requirements you’ll need to put in place to ensure your setting goals that align with your vision for the ideal life you’d like to live.

In this video, you'll learn:

What are SMART goals, how to create them, and why they matter?

Find a resource or guide that gives you an understanding of what steps are required from you.

Create a blueprint which is essentially your working to-do list, so you know what task and activities you’ll want to focus on

Rest, reflect and always be refining your steps.

You don’t always need to know every single detail, as to what action steps you need to take to achieve your goals, you need to make a draft outline and get started, start before you’re ready. No doubt you’ll figure it out along the way.

 

Grab out The Key planner to take notes and join me on How To Plan Your Ideal Year of video

  

If you’d like to read The Full Transcription, it’s available HERE 

Firstly if you haven’t already, you might want to check out my previous video on How to Design a Life That is Meaningful to You. I suggest you watch it first before continuing.

Download a PDF Sample of The Key Planner

 

Here’s a summary of this video training: 

So now that you have envisioned your best life three years from now and you've created a compelling vision for your life got clear on what you want and why. 

I would like you to remove all the current learnings you know about SMART goals, as I would like to share with you a similar version but an upgraded approach.

 

Step 1: Create SMART Goals, ok, so I know what you’re thinking, what's a SMART goal?

It needs to meet the following 5 criteria’s. Let's go through these.

S: Specific

It's specific. Your goals must be specific.

Why? Because it allows you to focus your efforts with clarity, and clarity is powerful. Being vague doesn't inspire action. However, being clear ignites that fire in your belly. Now let me give you an example of a specific goal and a vague goal. A vague goal, I want to be debt-free. A specific goal, finish paying down my student loan debt.

M: Measurable

It needs to be measurable so you can track your progress and know when you've achieved your goal. Again, a vague goal. I want to be debt-free. The specific and measurable goal, finish paying down my student loan debt of 10,000.

A: Actionable

It's got to be actionable. What's the action you need to take while pursuing towards achieving your goals? The vague goal, I want to be debt-free. Specific, measurable, and actionable goal. Finish paying down my student loan debt of 10K by allocating 5% of my monthly income towards payments each month until paid.

So under the SMART goal setting formula, the R stands for realistic.

I just like that word realistic. Sure, you don't want to set yourself up for a fail. But at the same time, if you're setting realistic goals, you're not necessarily creating goals that push you outside of your comfort zone.

They don't excite you, nor do they require you to grow into a better version of you.

R: Real & Relevant to your season of life. 

Therefore, I prefer that R represent real. It's emotional. It inspires your hopes and dreams. Goals that emotionally connect to your soul will be the major difference in you overcoming those mundane tasks you might have to do.

It sparks the imagination to create innovative ways of pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, but not so much that's a fairy tale fantasy goal. Still, it does inspire your imagination to demand your creativity and liberate your energy.

It's Real To You by Defining your Why.

Because if something is truly important to you, you'll make time for it.

On another note, when your goals are aligned to your core values, your purpose, and your why, you'll be able, to be honest with yourself and ask,

What are you willing to consistently work for?

Why is it so important for you to achieve your goal?

Quite often, we self-sabotage the effort as they aren't in alignment to our authentic core values of who we are, hence why I started with discovering your why first before creating goals.

In The Key Planner, the goal-achieving system prompts you first to discover yourself, define your vision, your values, and get a sense of purpose of meaning by your key statement.

T: Time-Bound: 

It's got to be time-bound.

Now, there are two ways to measure time, as there are two types of goals you can create within the criteria of time.

So firstly, you have key milestone goals which have a deadline of an estimated time of arrival. It focuses on a one-time accomplishment, like paying off your student loan debt.

Then you have habit goals which are reoccurring practices to work towards on a consistent, normally daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Here's an example. Creating the habit so every time you get paid you allocate 5% of your monthly or weekly income towards paying down your student loan debt.

Here's another example of a key milestone and habit goals.

If your key milestone goal is to lose five kilos, your habit goal would be to work out at the gym four times a week.

 

So habit goals, they have a start date but not necessarily an end date until you've either achieved your key milestone goal or the habit has become an automated response habit.

In summary, placing a deadline on your goals by having it time-bound also creates a sense of urgency.

 

And finally, criteria 6 you need to review your goals by rest, reflect, and refining your steps.

No doubt life will throw curveballs at you sometimes, so ensure your goals match the season of your life.

For this reason, this is why I do not like creating year-long goals because it allows me to procrastinate, put things off like, "You know, I've got a whole year to do that," or worse, life throws you a curveball and you take a detour.

For some, it's a few days.

For others, it could be a few years.

 

Step 2: Find a resource.

When you're looking to create goals that you have never achieved before, the shortest way to achieving them is by finding a resource.

As the saying goes, you don't know what you don't know.

 

To find a resource or a person who has achieved what you're seeking to achieve and stalk them, just not in a creepy way.

Have they written an autobiography or book, blog, YouTube channel detailing these steps to success?

Have they created an online course or training you could invest in?

Are they local to you?

Could you invite them for lunch and pick their brains?

 

Your homework for this step is to find a source or internet research a step-by-step guide to jot down in your key planner. This step is essential because it'll help you to create a blueprint using the keymap. And this is the best way to figure out what your action steps will be, is to find someone who has achieved what you're seeking and find what steps they took.

Another way is to purchase a book or an online course that outlines the steps. And if you're unable to do all that, guess what?

Your imagination is powerful and free. You can imagine yourself in the future already achieving your goals and work backwards. What was the last thing you did? 

And the last thing before that and so on. 

Until you arrive at the very first action step that you started with.

So once you know these steps, create a mind map using the keymap to chunk it down into actionable steps and tasks.

 

Step 3: Design your blueprint using the keymap.

Now that you've brainstormed or researched your action steps, essentially what you've done is you've created a working to-do list.

And now is the time for you to refine your goals to meet the SMART goal criteria, to set deadlines, and start breaking down your activities then assigning each task to a specific date and time, committing to a completion date for each one task.

You've got a lot to do, so get started.