
The Key to Achieving Every Goal You Set
I was going to take hiatus from posting, but then I got sent this post that I thought was ideal for this time of year bearing in mind how many people are focusing on making next year a great one.
I hope you enjoy it and hopefully you will make Michael welcome in my absence by leaving a comment and even sharing on social media. After all, it is the season for sharing ;)
Before I let you read the post, I just want to say thanks!
There are a gazillion blogs you could read and I’m very grateful that you are reading mine.
As I sit here in a very snowy and cold UK waiting to welcome 2015 in with family and praying my hounds aren’t terrorizing the house sitter, I’d like to take the opportunity to wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year!
The Key to Achieving Every Goal You Set
The most common goal of many overweight people is to lose weight.
But we are starting to realize that the majority of these people aren’t getting closer to achieving this goal.
“The survey of 188 countries shows that nearly 30 percent of the global population, or 2.1 billion people, are either overweight or obese. Not a single country has lowered its obesity rate since 1980.
In fact, more than 160 million Americans are either obese or overweight. That is over 50% of the total population.
The truth is, it’s not only the overweight people that are finding it difficult to achieve their goals, even top companies constantly fails to reach their goals.
In the early 2000s, for example, General Motors set a goal to capture 29% of the U.S. auto market.
They even produced corporate pins for people to wear with No. 29 printed on them.
Needless to say they never achieved that goal, and without a government bailout, may not have survived.
To those who believe there’s some kind of research that supports goal setting, the truth is no such study exist.
So what really works when trying to achieve your goals and how can you achieve your biggest dreams without actually doing goal-setting?
The answers lies on this page, so stay with me until the end of this article. Make sure you do not skip any paragraph.
The Drive to Achieve
What’s does it mean?
Drive to Achieve is the desire within an individual to excel against any odds and to reach designated goals.
Having the “drive to achieve” isn’t the real key to reaching your goals but its the first step.
Backed by every burning desire is a drive and that’s the drive I’m talking about here.
If your goals lacks the required drive, it will still be difficult to realize them even when you have the key that will be handed over to you below.
Now that we’ve talked about having a desire, let’s discuss about the key to unlocking the door to success.
The Power of Repetition
Repetition is the key to achieving any goal you’ve set for yourself. It’s little known but it works like magic.
Now is the time to recognize that one task which if done on a consistent basis will help you realize your goals.
For example, Stephen King is one of the prolific writers in the United States.
In his book, ‘On Writing’, he said he has a goal to write 2000 words per day. It doesn’t matter how long it takes him, he just make sure he hit that goal for each day.
Stephen success has been widely claimed to be due to the repetition of this one simple task. Within three months, he was able to write the draft of a 180,000 word novel.
The same magic is available to you too.
If your goal is to become a popular blogger in the next few years, then you should commit to writing at least one post per day.
If you want to become a successful web designer, then you should commit certain hours per day to learning all the resources available online.
If your goal is to earn a university degree, make sure that you’re always enrolled in at least one university course. Taking time away from your schooling makes it much more difficult to get back into it, so don’t allow yourself to stop.
Once you have finished your first degree, go back to school and earn an advanced degree, if your chosen occupation calls for it.
For example, earning a Master of Social Work degree would put you on an excellent career trajectory and you can complete this degree one course at a time.
After you’ve acquired enough skills to get you started, you should further commit to putting your knowledge into use.
If your goal is to become great photographer, then you should commit to taking at least one photo per day or going on a daily adventure and taking 50 photos per day.
At first, you won’t have the perfect shot, but with time, every thing will begin to fall into place.
If your goal is to be physically fit, then you should commit some hours into participating in exercises that helps you achieve that goal almost every single day.
It doesn’t matter if you’re not making any progress, you’ll certainly learn from your mistakes and with time, you’ll improve yourself in this one activity that participating it would become almost automatic.
It’s not goal-setting that will help you achieve your goals.
The Key To Success
The key to success in any area of life is in actively doing, making consistent effort in that one skill.
When you rely too much on goal-setting, you’ll continue to focus on the outcomes and fantasizing instead of putting huge volume of work required to help you achieve your goals.
You want to see progress in your life?
The only way to get that is in putting in consistent effort in that activity that moves you forward.
If you focus too much on the goal and ignore repetitive actions that will make it happen, you won’t achieve your goal.
But if you ignore the goal and instead focus on the repetitive actions that will make it happen, you’ll still achieve your goal.
It’s time to forget everything about goal setting.
Instead, challenge yourself to put in enough and consistent daily efforts… That is what would make your dream come true.
Now that we know how effective repetitions can help us realize our biggest dreams, let’s quickly talk about the three ways you should begin applying it starting from today.
Mastery Comes Through Repetition
One of the major problems attached with most new goals is, they often demand the need to learn a new skill.
Before you can achieve a goal, you may need to develop mastery in the skill connected with that goal. The fastest way to do that is through repetition.
If realizing a goal is really important to you, make it a daily commitment to repeat the skill that’ll achieve your goal.
After you’ve hit your goal, you’ll not only be happy for achieving your dream, you’ll also have a new invaluable skill.
Repetition Makes Big and Boring Tasks Easy
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
—Mark Twain
If your goal is to write a 360,000 word book, you may feel intimidated and never get started.
We often think of what can be achieved within a short period of time and frequently disregard what can be accomplished over a long period of time.
I think this is the reason why so many people are still living a miserable life today.
If you really want to achieve something worthwhile in life, you’ve got to learn how to break tasks or goals down into tiny pieces.
Going back to the book example, you can commit to writing 2,000 words per day.
Six months later, you’ll have achieved your goal of writing a 360,000 word book.
Getting started helps you move forward, and through the wonders of repetition, you’ll begin to feel less intimidated by big and boring tasks.
We Create Habits Through Repetition
The more you get in contact with something, the more you like and embrace it.
Repetition can either make or break you. It depends on what you choose to do with it.
For example, if you constantly eat unhealthy foods or indulge yourself in any unhealthy habits, you’ll become ingrained in it and it will become very difficult to quit.
You’ll be slowly killing your body as a result of this.
But if you repeatedly choose to eat healthy foods, you’ll have less sick days and your body will be in good balance.
With repetition, you can quickly form any new habits.
Watch anything you’re repeatedly doing, is it helping or hurting you?
If any habits you repeatedly do have negative consequences, it’s time you use the power of repetition to turn it into reverse.
With repetition, you can start living the life you want to live by creating the right habits.
Conclusion
Repetition can transform your entire world and start moving you towards actualizing your biggest dreams.
What’s the goal you’ll like to reach in the next few years?
And what one skill, if repeated daily will continue to move you toward this goal?
Tell in comments. I’ll like to read from you too.
Thanks for reading. Please don’t forget to share this with your friends.
Bio
Michael Akinlabi wants to help you gain financial independence. You can check out PluckMyFeet to see how he’s doing that.
Image Courtesy of laffy4k
Thanks a lot to Michael for writing this post and I apologize for being offline when it posted and not doing a very good job of promoting it!
I’m glad you find this post very insightful Michael. I noted you said handwriting analysis is a hobby you enjoy very much but don’t believe you can make living from. I understand this and respect your views but I think you can do it. You just have to find a way. Get creative.
I see some people are offering the service online. Google keyword planner shows that they’re are 27,100 global searches for the keyword “handwriting analysis” last month. This shows many people are interested in it.
You can ask your friends for suggestions. And maybe you can combine this valuable skill with other valuable skills you’ve got and see what can come out of it. It’s all about doing a new great thing that’s never been done before.
I hope this helps.
Repetition certainly leads to mastery: Many years ago I invested in learning Graphology (Handwriting Analysis) – eventually using it professionally for recruitment in a corporate environment, also using it for compatibility analysis in interpersonal relationships and even in some fraud cases. Having started as a skeptic, repeated analysis over months and years made out of me a sought after Handwriting Analysis Consultant at the time. I also found that repetition of the process made me fairly intuitive when making an analysis, leading me at times to investigate seemingly quite innocuous handwriting traits that later proved to be important determinants in a given personality profile. But also in my current job as a Human Resources Practitioner involved in Employment Law and Conflict Resolution cases, repetition in exercising investigative faculties made me an expert – or as close to – in my given field. Of course, repetition should go hand in hand with further reading and upskilling on a continuous basis.
I also had a quick look at PluckMyFeet and thus can say that Handwriting Analysis was one hobby I had that I could do for hours and not get bored. I even made some money from it, but one couldn’t make a living from it, if you had a family to support and a mortgage to pay. It is very labor intensive and I wouldn’t use relevant analysis software, because it misses too many individual traits in a handwriting. And thanks to Michael from Michael for a good guest post for Tim.
Am I right in saying that the Police will often use hand-writing experts in kidnapping cases and the like? Or have I just seen too many bad movies? ;)
Hi Tim, Police use forensic handwriting analysis, which is a different form of handwriting analysis, i.e. it also includes magnification (up to 30,000 x) to establish the kind of paper or ink used, which could provide clues to manufacturers , distributors etc, which in turn could lead Police to establish where a kidnapper buys his materials or when a note was written. All this is added to the personality profile to provide Police with valuable insights they can pursue to solve a case. This is still being done on a regular basis – so, no…not bad movie material but real, professional and proven stuff.
Good question! To achieve any worthwhile success in life, you may need all those things you mentioned (positive thinking, hard work, goal setting etc), but only repetitive action is the key to making them work. You may do without them and instead focus on the actions that move you closer to your dreams.
You should that positive thinking, hard work and goal setting won’t contribute any significant changes when occasionally done.
Strange. First (long time ago), it was hard work and struggle, and (sic!!!) repetition, what was advised to a man, if he want to achieve a success. Then, everything has changed. There came: positive thinking, setting goals, low of attraction, power of intention, sedona method, and almost hundreds experts that teached this new knowledge. And after a time of discovering that whole new paradigm, we now conclude, that effort and repetition is what drive you to your goals. Oh man… :o) Are you trying to demistify all this new science?
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sorry for possible language mistakes
“Are you trying to demistify all this new science?
Nothing you mentioned is science.
I thought that the mockery I have used was obvious. It seems not :)
Brilliant, well played sir!