Critical Steps Towards Achieving Your Goals

“Keep working, Keep striving, Never give up. Fall down seven times, get up eight. Without any commitment, you’ll never start. But more importantly, without consistency, you’ll never finish.” Denzel Washington

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. Goals give you fighting power. Goals guide you towards your destiny. When you set big enough goals, they create enough enthusiasm and fire within that propels you towards your bigger and better future. When you have big enough goals, you become unstoppable. You become deaf to all the naysayers and blind to the obstacles in front of you. When your goals are big enough and you take that big bold step towards achieving them, magic happens and the universe sends you supporters, doors open up that wouldn’t have ordinarily opened had you not moved. This shows that there’s magic in starting. When you start and move forward, providence – that divine power, moves with you.  

As an Engineer by training, I always try to make things make sense by expressing them in a logical format, call it formula or recipe. Drawing from my own personal experiences as well as from others, I can confidently share the following four steps that can help you get started towards achieving your goals. Results = Your Story + Clarity + Strategy + Effort x Consistency. These four steps are as follows:

1.    Your Story.

Your story answers the question “Who Am I”. This means whatever you say about yourself gives an answer as well as an instruction to your subconscious mind which is your driver. The subconscious mind is so powerful that it carries out instructions based on what it has been made to believe. A belief is a feeling of certainty about something, which can either be right or wrong. Your belief may either support your desired goal or work against it. Many people never achieve their goals and dreams simply because of their belief system that works against them. So, your story, which is how you see yourself can either make you operate from a place of helplessness and weakness or strength and positivity. Here’s something to always remember, your belief changes with time. What I mean by this is that it may have served you well five years ago, but not now. So, your belief needs to be checked and questioned from time to time because some of them shouldn’t be fixed. 

When your conscious mind comes up with a great idea that would change your life for the better, your subconscious mind brings up your story that it has in its files which is either supportive of it or not. For an example, I wanted to be a professional speaker, that is, to make a living out of speaking, and my story was, “Come on Veli, your English is not good. Who would really want to listen to you, let alone pay you?” You see, this was my story, that I wasn’t good enough. Whatever story you tell yourself, you’ll always find evidence for it, good or bad. 

To change your story, you must firstly be conscious of it and start to be kind with yourself. Start to gradually move away from the fixed mindset and adopt the growth mindset which I have greatly written about in my previous articles. 

Your objective here is to move your story from limiting to empowering. Start becoming conscious and mindful of what you say after ‘I AM” because that’s what determines how you see yourself.

2.   Clarity

This is the second step of the equation that answers the ‘What’ part of this equation. Clarity comes from specificity. When you are specific about what you want in terms of what it looks like; how long it is; how short it is; what colour it is; how high it is; how low it is? This helps you to focus on what matters most. The brain is a goal seeking mechanism. It thrives when the goal is clear. It doesn’t work well in fuzzy and foggy conditions. In everything you do, always start by clarifying exactly what you want to do, don’t be generic about it like, “I want to lose weight – specify how much; I want to have a lot of money – specify how much.” Many goals are never achieved because they are built around fuzziness and the mind gets lost and give up. Your clarity is moving from fuzzy to specific.

3.   Strategy

This is the third step that answers the ‘How’ part of the equation. Now that your story is positive or supportive of your goal and you’ve cleared away fog around it, the ‘How’ you will achieve it comes in. This is when you list the ‘How’ you’ll carry out the ‘What’ that you have set. 

The objective here is to move away from setting wrong or complex strategy to the right or simple strategy. 

4.   Effort x Consistency.

Once the story is positive, the goal is clear and the how is clearly laid out, then, you start by putting effort and be consistent because you know it won’t happen overnight. 

The objective of this step is to remind yourself that good results are not achieved overnight, they require commitment and patience. 

To live a meaningful life and make a difference in the world, you must dream your biggest, work your hardest and be your greatest. 

Veli Ndaba is a Neuro-Conscious Leadership Speaker, Life & Business Coach, Motivational Speaker and Author of four books (You Are Born to Win, Your Dream is Calling You and SWITCH ON! And Set Your Soul On Fire!), Newspaper Columnist and Entrepreneur. To book him to speak at your next event or to help you and your team unleash your greatness, contact him on veli@velindaba.com, www.velindaba.com or +27 83 304 9773