Embrace These 5 Steps To Bring Your Goals To Reality

By Doug Bennett, with special guest Aaron Solly

Do you have a proven track record of achieving your goals or is your process a bit “hit and miss” in terms of guaranteeing the results you want?

When it comes to turning up the motivation to pursue your dreams, the founder of Engage Coaching Group, Aaron Solly, has plenty to share. Over the past decade, he’s moved from an unfulfilling role in financial services to supporting men to combat stress and create healthier mindsets so that they can thrive in all areas of their lives.

You can hear my in-depth chat with Aaron on the Goals Do Come True podcast. In this blog, we’re going to explore the five steps you need to take to bring your goals to reality.

• Maximise self-belief

Aaron: “Even if you have only five per cent belief in your ability to achieve your goal, embrace that five per cent 100 per cent. Go all in on that five per cent and do everything you can to make it happen, because that’s when you will grow and expand and start to nudge your self-belief up to ten or 20 per cent and keep increasing your potential to make your goals happen.”

• Tune into your feelings

Aaron: “Sometimes I’d hit my goals and sometimes I wouldn’t; I realised that what I needed to do was really embrace the way it would feel to accomplish my dream. I needed to tune more into what I would see or hear that made me feel good. It’s good to start to think about what other people will say to you when you accomplish your goals, to think about whether you will be able to take a dream holiday and how grateful you will be. It took me a while to get to know what true happiness felt like when it comes to goals, but once I did, I realised that it always inspires and motivates me to do more!”

Aaron went on to explain that when we bring emotion into our goal-setting process, we help imprint a “future memory” onto our subconscious mind so that it sets about finding new ways for your goal to come to fruition.

He talks more about this in his book Engage Connect Grow: 52 lessons to guide individuals and corporate teams to the heart of what truly matters to them. It includes journal prompts to help you uncover goals that hold true meaning for you.

His book is divided into three sections, each of which he explores below as part of the key steps to help you realise your goals.

• Engage

Aaron: “This means actually deciding to be ‘open’. It’s about accepting that there could be a different way to do things that you haven’t already considered. I believe our past leaves clues that can help us move forward, and when we are open, we can bring those clues to our present awareness. If things are not working for you, it’s time to look at doing it differently and engaging with the possibility of being open, and doing something new is a great step forward.”

I love Aaron’s point about actively engaging with new possibilities. In 2018 I exceeded my goal of earning £250,000 (by £266!), but I then set my mind to £500,000 (I talk more about this in my books). However, the money didn’t come to me as “new business”, it came via a circuitous route and in two lump sums! Sometimes we just have to accept that what we want will materialise in a way that’s different to what we were expecting; and what’s more important, how it comes to you or that you achieved your goal?!

• Connect

Aaron: “We need to find true connection with ourselves and others. We need to know our non-negotiable values so that we don’t waver when other people come into our lives and try to steer us in a different direction. I’ve been in sales roles over the years where I did things because it enabled me to still be employed there, but it didn’t feel good and wasn’t always in alignment with my values around how to take care of clients and connect with them. When you have a healthy connection with yourself, you develop better connections with other people and that’s what it’s all about.”

There have been a few points in my life where I had to endure differing values, and it’s been a soul-sucking experience. One of my bosses had a philosophy that we had to “take a bite out of the other person before they take a bite out of you”. It was awful but I didn’t adopt his stance. I continued to have three-hour meetings with clients and I was always the person who had the most referrals and brought in the most repeat business, so that tells you everything you need to know (though you probably don’t need three-hour meetings now with so many other ways to stay in touch and deepen relationships!).

• Grow

Aaron: “This is all about taking action, but the growth piece has to come after you’re fully engaged and connected in who you are and how you want to be. When you know who you are, you can start to take the action that’s right for you and your goals, because now you’ll be drawn to the activities or exercises that align with your values and, when you do this, you’ll keep growing because you’ll be more motivated to do whatever it takes to reach your goals.”

Which of Aaron’s five steps is the most useful to you right now?  I know that when I was working towards other people’s goals that weren’t in alignment with my own, it was thoroughly demotivating and stressful.

Aaron is coaching men to remove the emotional discomfort of giving their energy away to causes that are meaningless to them and, in its place, build a depth of self-awareness and mental wellness. You can discover more about his services here.

In the meantime, if you’ve got a big juicy goal you’d love to get stuck into, why not book a complimentary discovery call with me and find out how I can support you to make it happen!

Wondering what a discovery call might be like? Here’s what one lady, Amanda, had to say:

“Doug quickly created a safe space where I felt comfortable to chat freely about my worries and concerns. This is not something that I find easy to do at all!  His kindness and openness about his own experiences made it very easy to feel at ease. His intuition and perception got to the heart of some of the issues, and he gave me strategies and practical actions I could take immediately to start making some positive changes. From a place of feeling extremely overwhelmed, anxious and desperate, I was excited about getting started.  Thank you, Doug.”

Click this link if you’d love to book your discovery call with me and kickstart your goals.