The Goal Setting Guide: Five Tricks to Achieve Goal Setting Nirvana

If you haven’t seen my first article in this series you can read it here, it’s a more gentle introduction!

I can’t tell you how to achieve overall nirvana but I can lend a hand to achieve enlightenment in the goal setting world. As Buddhism teaches there are no shortcuts to nirvana. There is no way to jump the queue or to get a priority boarding pass for the nirvana express but I have discovered five ways to fast track the journey to goal setting superiority.

1) Write Down Your Goals

Ok many of you already know how important it is to write your goals down but because it’s so important I think it’s important to reiterate it. The simple mechanical act of writing makes your goal visible and tangible, it’s no longer just a thought it’s a commitment.

The mistake that most people make here is they just write they’re goal down, unfortunately thats not enough. Best results are seen when you describe your goal in specific detail. For example compare:

“I want to be rich and successful”

With

“I want to be making £10,000 per month from my business from 1st July 2010″

The first is a dream the second is an actionable goal. Write it everywhere and anywhere to remind you as many times a day as possible what your trying to achieve. I know my desk is littered with post it notes containing my goals.

2) Ask the Question

When I was younger I used to ask this question all the time and it drove my parents mad. I still do ask it probably more than most. Failure to ask this question of yourself when setting your goals will certainly result in a lack of motivation and direction.

WHY?

Make a list of all the reasons why you have this goal and try to imagine the benefits of each. The truth is the more reasons in your list the stronger your motivation will be and the more likely you’ll follow your plan to the bitter end!

3) Trick Your Brain Out of Procrastination

So you have your huge goal but every-time you have the time to start on achieving it you realise you have no where near enough time really, so you think, I’ll do it tomorrow.

Remember, Tomorrow Never Comes

Set yourself a small goal that you can use to achieve your overall for tomorrow and you’ll never again waste today.

Another way to stop you putting off and important task is to write down the following every-time you catch yourself avoiding something.

1) Where are you?
2) What do you want to do?
3) How will this make you feel?

As you write these down imagine yourself doing the task and it won’t be to difficult for you to just get up and do it. This is such a simple technique but it works like magic.

4) Keeping Up The Momentum

This is often the point people skip, but I feel it is most important. Upon asking why they didn’t do it they normally say they thought it would be too timing consuming or they don’t have time for it. However I do do this and it takes me less than 10 minutes a day, you can spare 10 minutes.

Start a personal success journal to remind yourself of all the success you’ve had and how they make you feel. Make sure you write something everyday even if they were only small achievements and look back at them when you’re feeling unmotivated or are procrastinating. It’s amazing how motivating past achievements can be. On a personal note I often look back at pictures of me when I was racing for Great Britain to motivate me as it reminds me of these achievements and shows that I have it in me to do great things. If I can do it so can you.

The journal also eliminates temptation. You’re less likely to not achieve your goals if you know you’ll have nothing to write down in the journal for the day.

5) Have Fun

When teaching children new things the best way is to make a game of it. The same goes for your goal setting. For example if you have to fill 5 litre bottles from a 1000 litre container (I used to do this) time yourself and see how many you can do in 3 minutes. Then challenge yourself to beat your last score.

The good thing is you can never lose this game!

It may sound silly or childish but this is probably the most important trick, most athletes use this when training to reduce the monotony of training and continue to be efficient and effective. On top of this it is also proven that this simple trick can increase productivity by more than 125%.

Hopefully you can apply these tricks to help you reach goal setting nirvana. But it’s a difficult path and sometimes we all need a little help along the way, don’t give up you can always contact me with any questions on how anything in this article can help you or if you just want to say hi thats cool too. Send me an email – oli@oligibson.com