5 Tactics To Help You Set Achievable Goals And Reap The Rewards
By Doug Bennett, with special guest Charlie Moon
Setting a big juicy goal and achieving it is one of the best feelings in the world – and it’s natural for the mind to throw up doubts and to question if what you’ve set your mind on is even doable!
I recently chatted with fellow author, speaker and coach Charlie Moon. He helps professional service people (for example architects, bankers, accountants) to embrace business development and sales.
You can hear our full conversation on the Goals Do Come True podcast (click here to listen). Charlie, based in America, is full of wit and wisdom and even shared a nifty card trick in the podcast, so it’s well worth a listen!
In this blog, I’m sharing five of his top tactics to help drive your goals forward so that you can reap the rewards.
1) Focus on what you do want
Charlie: “If you focus on the problem you want to solve, you create anxiety which creates a reaction, and that reaction creates another problem. The new problem creates more anxiety which creates another reaction, and you get stuck in an endless loop where you can’t stop focusing on the problem, or the other problem that’s arisen from focusing on the problem! Keep your focus on the outcome that you want.”
2) Make sure the goal is true to you
Charlie: “Once you know what you want, you have to have a strategy to get there and consciously decide to pursue your goal. Before you start that pursuit, you need to be able to answer ‘Yes’ when you ask, ‘Is this my goal?’ Too often we are running after a goal that our spouse wants for us, or one that’s outdated. People do things they really want to do, so if it’s not your goal, you’re unlikely to take the necessary actions and will become frustrated.”
3) Look at the big picture
Charlie: “I encourage my clients to look ten years ahead and focus on what they want to have happened by then; they need to use that vision as their North Star to lead them to their intended outcome. Then you can work backwards and decide what you need to do in the next 30, 60 or 90 days to get there. If you’re not focused on smaller chunks of time, your trajectory will be off (and you won’t get what you want).”
4) EMBRACE where you want to go
Charlie: “I use the acronym EMBRACE, which stands for: education, mentorship, birth, routines, accountability, consistency and execution. In simple terms, educate yourself, get the right mentor, be patient and recognise that there’s a process that has to happen before your idea is birthed into the world, develop the routines you need to make your goal happen, hold yourself accountable for your actions, be consistent, and execute your plan.”
5) Be passionate
Charlie: “You’ve got to throw both arms round what you’re doing. Think of it like a Venn diagram: in the first circle, you have your skills; in the second circle, you have the skills a market will pay for; and in the third circle is your passion. If those three circles overlap, your business will work – but what happens is a lot of people have skills, and skills that people will pay for, but they lack the passion.
Without passion you get caught in a trap because you’ll have to work so much harder. Passion will turbocharge everything that you do.”
Moving forward
Which of these five tactics do you relate to the most? I like the first one: Focus on what you do want. This is an easy one to keep in mind but an obvious one where people slip up. How often do you say what you don’t want rather than what you do want? Every time you do that, you’re sending your mind chasing after the wrong thing. For example, “I don’t want to be late”, simply needs to become, “I want to arrive on time.” Pay attention to your language and the instructions that you are giving your mind.
What stage are you at with goal setting? Are you a goal-setting pro who’s clocked up plenty of accomplishments, or do you find yourself way off track and feeling a bit deflated? Either way, you’ll enjoy reading one of my books (click here to see what’s available). In both books I share the story of how I moved from the brink of bankruptcy to generating more than a million in my business. It took a major mindset shift and a lot of work, but I’ve learnt so much along the way.
And, if you’d like my professional support as a coach and mentor, please click here to book a complimentary discovery session with me to find out more about how I can help you (people often have breakthroughs in this call alone!).
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