People have a damn hard time sticking to goals. Most New Year’s goals fade away for 80% of people after two to three weeks! Creating and sticking to your goals isn’t an easy thing to do.
Of course, I will be a little tough on you and use words like ‘discipline,’ which isn’t a word on your most-used vocabulary list. However, our focus is on achieving goals, which means you’ll need the discipline to get what you want! However, you don’t have to see discipline as a straight-laced authoritarian definition. I’ll show you how to think about this concept differently and more invitingly.
First Step Toward Achieving What You Want: Set a Growth Goal
Step number one is to set a growth goal, which, stating the obvious, will make you grow. When I ask this question from my mastermind group, a typical response is to achieve a consistent six-figure income. However, if you’ve already achieved a six-figure income, then you want to shoot higher – go for a goal you haven’t achieved in your business or career life.
Because if you don’t have a challenge, then where is the fun? When you achieve a goal for the first time, you celebrate. After you’ve done it once, the sparkles and unicorns aren’t the same, which is why you want to shoot for a goal you haven’t accomplished up until this point.
You’ll also be less likely to keep pushing yourself when a situation gets a little bit more difficult because you’ve already checked it off your list. Most likely, you’ll go back to being complacent and bored.
The focus in creating your goal is to devise your goal so that you’ll have to push yourself to grow. Additionally, you don’t want your goal to be so out there; it’s almost impossible to reach. When you have a realistic goal that fits these criteria, you can expect breakthroughs to happen!
Make a Decision and Act on Your Decision Today
Step number two is to make a decision. My definition of making a decision is that I come hell or high water; you are going for your goal. Cut off the bullshit and decide the price you are going after today.
Take away your bullshit stories, the bullshit beliefs you make up about yourself, negative bullshit behaviors that may keep you from reaching that goal because you have now created a decisive moment and made a decision.
When I make a decision, I feel it in my whole body. I’ve really embodied that this is what I’m going to do, and very quickly, things start to shift. At this point, you’ll most likely start getting DMs from people who want to work with you, and your engagement rate climbs on social media.
Forge a Single, Focused Goal
Once you’ve made your goal, your singular focus should stay on that goal. Your goal could be monetary or sales related. Now, most of your time needs to be spent on income-generating activities. Period. And this is where the word discipline comes in.
This is not to say you won’t want to give up at some point, and you may have several days in a row where you are questioning your judgment or reasons as to why you should stay the course. Let me tell you. There are days that I don’t want to prospect, get on the phone, and talk with people. Yes, sometimes, I don’t want to deal with social media. Even with all my successes, there are days that I wake up, and I don’t want to do shit because I am human. It’s what we do. However, because I am human, I can decide not to fall into the trap of comfort and laziness.
Now I have to do something, take a step forward. I call this thought process ‘planting seeds.’ My personal goal is to plant a hundred seeds a week. For me, this involves reaching out to a hundred new people a week. Do I have to do this to make these sales? Nope. We run ads, and my brand is well-known.
I go through this seed planting process every week because I want to make sure I have the discipline to complete this exercise. I don’t want to get lazy and comfortable because that’s where shit starts to go awry.
Implement a Reward System for Yourself
While busting my ass, building my business, I rewarded myself by going out to get my nails done and take myself out to lunch every couple of weeks. Once a month, I was going to get a massage.
I implemented that reward system in 2020. Although it looks different now, I still have a reward system to reward myself for working hard and achieving my goals.
Put into practice a reward system to motivate you to keep going. Track your progress to see how close you are to your goal. Tracking your progress helps you stay focused, stay disciplined. This process has statistically shown to help you to achieve your goal. You can also create your rewards when you reach certain sub-goals along the way, which lets you know when to celebrate!