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Goals, Are objectives, they are reached by taking a planned course of action, which in reality is a series of smaller goals or achievements.

These achievements are like the steps on a flight of stairs with your goal at the top. Each step you take is a little nearer to the top and nearer to your goal.

These steps are sometimes little easy bunny hops and sometimes they are great big steps that might need you to acquire particular skills or the help of others to overcome. Each step in itself is a smaller goal and part of the bigger goal of reaching the top. You can meet people and obstacles on the stairs; some are helpful, some will hinder and some will be down right obstructive. You could seek out people who have already climbed the stairs; they may be willing to tell you the best way to get up them. To have clear measurable objectives and a planned course of action in your life gives you a liberating sense of purpose and direction in all you do. It is a measure of your achievements, and adds worth to even the smallest of daily successes.

All goals are reached by a series of small achievements.

Take some positive worthwhile action towards your goals each day.

Ensure your goals are what you want and that they are realistic and achievable within your own abilities. That they are congruent with your beliefs and not what you feel others might expect from you or something that you think sounds good, impressive or trendy. For example if you are 47 years old with two left feet, it would be self defeating to have a goal of playing Premiership football, it is just not going to happen. But you could set a realistic goal of running in a Marathon Race. You could train your mind and body to accomplish this fantastic feat if you so desired.

A word of caution.

Be thoughtful of whom you share your goals with. Sceptical, negative and possibly resentful attitude from family members, friends and neighbours could destroy your motivation before you even start. It is critical to your success that despite what others may say, do or not do, your outlook remains positive and your commitment to attaining your goal remains steadfast and resolute.

A clear statements of intent

Write down your goals in detail, in a positive tense and as a clear statement of intent.

You can emphasize the detail by collecting pictures and articles about your goals. What is imperative here is that you make them measurable. This helps give you a clear picture of what you want to achieve and a definite signpost of when you have reached it. For example, let's say you have a financial goal of 'I want to become rich' that would be far too vague. It really needs to read, 'I
will have '100,000 by 2007. It is a clearly measurable target; you know exactly what you want and when you expect to attain it. 'I will' and 'I shall' are clear statements of intent.

Split your goals up into smaller manageable steps or actions.

This will highlight a series of task that you will need to complete to attain you goal. Place these tasks in the order they need to happen. Set yourself a time limit and add any dates you need to achieve them by. During this process you will need to identify:

Any obstacles and how you will overcome them.

Key people and organisations you will need to assist you.

The things you need to know and what skills you will need.

What order and timescales are needed to take the steps in?

Reviewing your goals regularly is a critical part of making it all work for you.

Set some time to one side to review your goals on a regular basis. Some advocate each morning when you wake and before you go to sleep read your goals out loud and visualise yourself as having already achieved them. For example, see yourself in the new dream car; imagine the smell, the sound of the engine, the colour and the beautiful lines of the bodywork.

Remind yourself why your goal is important to you and if it still continues to be important to you, things may well change as you progress.

Reviewing once a week is enough for me because of doing a little work on them each day, they are reviewed as I set the next task.

ACTION! ACTION! ACTION!

Take some positive worthwhile action towards your goals each day.

There may be just a few task or hundreds, maybe more.

It does not matter how many there are. To get closer to your goal just do the next task. If you begin today by putting these five points into daily practice you will become a goal achiever. However if you do nothing you will have wasted the time it has taken to read this far. It really is that simple. Take some action towards your goal everyday and you WILL succeed.

Take Action,
Set your goals today.