Goals set a direction to our actions and decisions. They make sure we don’t miss out on life chasing things that don’t truly hold much meaning in our life. And since achieving a goal, no matter how big or small, means we are that much closer to creating the life we want, we’ll be exploring some of the most effective ways to achieve your goals – ways suggested by experts and proven by science.
Effective ways to achieve your goals
1. Goals - set them right
The first one is to get the goals right… because if we set the direction wrong, we are very likely to end up in the wrong place.
Now, according to neuropsychologist Dr. Theo Tsaousides who wrote the book Brainblocks, we set either promotion goals or prevention goals.
Now, promotion goals are better because they have a specific end, we want something we don’t have yet… and so it leads to action.
Like, if we set the goal ‘get better sleep’, it would mean taking action to ensure better sleep hygiene and other lifestyle changes so that we wake up feeling rested.
Setting a SMART goal with specifics would be better, but this is also good.
But, if we set prevention goals, like ‘avoid taking up any more assignments’….there’s no clear action or a clear point of completion. And because it’s kind of ongoing, it becomes tricky to achieve such a goal.
How we word our goals makes a lot of difference because it makes the thing feel clear-cut & doable or something vague without a clear end-point.
And our motivation to keep showing up, see the thing through to the end, depends a lot on this.
2. You - uplevel the way you think
Now, one of the key ways to achieve your goals would be to keep going even through setbacks and failures. Because like Machine Intelligence Research Institute co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky said,
“If you never fail, you’re only trying things that are too easy and playing far below your level… If you can’t remember any time in the last six months when you failed, you aren’t trying to do difficult enough things.”
If we are trying to aim for something worth having, mistakes and failures will be a natural part of the process… because, if we are already good at it, the goal isn’t really a goal… it’s simply showcasing our skill or knowledge. And as Dr. Carol Dweck has so powerfully shown through her book Mindset, being able to see failures, mistakes, and shortcomings as pointers for where there’s opportunity for us to put in work and grow… is the kind of approach that makes sure we achieve our goals.
What makes sure that hurdles and failures do not stop us from reaching the end is the habit of taking responsibility of our results and of keeping our focus on finding solutions.
And we need to stay mindful of our habits because
- they reflect our approach to life, and
- they put our actions on autopilot making us less dependent on motivation to keep showing up.
3. Stay motivated and overcome procrastination
One of the main reasons some goals get left behind is either because
- other more urgent things crop up and it kept getting put on the backburner until we totally forgot about it. Or,
- because progress was too slow and we lost interest along the way.
Stay motivated –
An easy way to fix this, one of the simpler ways to achieve your goals, is creating milestones or mini goals along the way….break the goals down into smaller simpler chunks so that you can see the result of your actions faster, get the feeling of achievement, and so stay motivated to take more action.
Dopamine, one of the main neurochemicals responsible for feeling motivated is released when our brain realizes that something important is going to happen.
When we achieve one small goal, it feels good and we get charged up to keep taking more action….and so we reach the next goal and the next. It becomes a kind of chain reaction until we reach the end.
Overcome procrastination –
Breaking the goal up into smaller ones also helps us overcome procrastination because instead of trying to climb the infinity staircase in one jump, we are more focused on climbing the first few steps to the first landing… that feels easy and we start taking action. And to stop other urgent things from taking over our time and energy, we need to schedule time in our day for working on our goals.
Now, if we plan it right and are convinced of the value of that goal, however directly or indirectly, in our life…. the dopamine process takes over and step by step we achieve our goal.
Even short-haul goals work better with a plan because winging it, puzzling out what to do every day uses up a lot of energy, which our brain doesn’t like and we are sooner or later going to start coming up with reasons why it’s a good idea to quit working on that goal.
4. Handling things out of your control
Watch the video up top to know how to do this effectively and more.
