What if achieving what you want in life can be summarized into a step-by-step system that you can actually follow and act on? When you study success from a bigger picture, you will understand that success can be splintered into five easy-to-follow steps that as long as you follow the steps, you can produce the results you want.
And this is exactly what you are going to discover in this article. You will learn the five simple steps that every successful person uses to achieve the amazing results in their lives. And the best part is that you can replicate and do the same with what you want in life. So here are the five steps you need to take.
#1. Envision the Future You Want
The first and the most important steps of all is to envision the future that you want. There is no way you can reach your destination without finding out where you want to go.
You don’t have to be crystal clear about the future that you want at this point. You can project yourself ten or twenty years into the future and then imagine about all the things that you want to be, do or have. More importantly, remember to ask the question, “Who I want to be?”
This is just like what Stephen Covey, the best-selling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People wrote in his book, “Begin with the end in mind”. You have to know what you want in order to get there.
The problem with most people is that they don’t have a clue about what they want to achieve or accomplish in their lives. They are just following the crowd going wherever life has happened to them. They are being reactive instead of being proactive.
And when you identify the future that you want, you will become proactive and are able to do something to move there rather than letting others take charge of your life. Hence, envision the future that you want and write them down on a piece of paper right now.
#2. Setting Your Goals
The second step you need to do is to turn your dreams into goals. There are differences between dreams and goals. A dream is merely a wish that you hope to happen. However, a goal is different. A goal is a commitment that you have decided to achieve.
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” – Tony Robbins
The key is to make sure that you write down your goals. And your goals must have the elements such as specificity, measurable, and come with a deadline. If you choose not to write down your goals and just keep them in your head, you will soon forget them due to the distraction that you face in your daily life. In other words, you are not being serious about achieving your goals that is why you do not even bother writing them down.
When you write down your goals, you are telling yourself that these are the important things that you want them to happen in your life, and thus, you make the effort to write them down because you are committed to them. Remember that your goals must be specific, measurable and with a deadline too.
#3. Designing Your Strategy
This is another crucial step in making your goals a reality. Most people never thought about this but this is extremely important. You must plan and design the strategy to achieve your goals. Your goals will determine your strategy.
For example, the strategy to earn $10,000 a month and $1 million a month is completely different. To earn $10,000 a month, you can start a small business such as running a retail store. However, to earn $1 million a month, you will need to do things differently. For instance, you must have a solid business plan, raise capital through investments, invest in R&D, hire talents because there is no way you can accomplish it all by yourself, sell franchises, and even consider taking your company public.
As you can see, different goals require a different strategy. And you must ask yourself if your strategy is viable. A lot of people want to make a million dollar a year, but the problem is that they are implementing the wrong strategy. All they do is to work harder and hope that they can someday reach the million dollar mark.
While there are jobs that can make you a millionaire, but they are very rare. You need to come up with a different strategy if you truly want to achieve the million-dollar goal.
The easiest way is to find out how others have done it and then model their strategy and system. This is why design your strategy to achieve your goal is extremely important. Without a proper plan, there is no way you can reach your goal. Following a wrong plan will give you the wrong result.
#4. Execution
Once you have created your strategy, all you need to do then is simple, just take action. Unfortunately, simple does not mean easy. And this is where most people fail in their journey to achieving success in life.
You have to understand that success is not going to happen to you overnight. And highly likely, you are going to spend years on building the success you want before you can taste the reward.
And for a lot of people, they are all fired up in the beginning stage when they first set their goals. They are so motivated and took so much action to produce the result they want. However, this does not last long. After a few days, weeks or months down the road, most people will lose steam and their motivation started to fade.
This is when they choose to give up and quit on their goals. Never let this happen to you. Take consistent action since day one and continue to do so until you produce the result that you desire.
Success is not easy. If it is, everyone will be successful then. It requires a lot of your determination and commitment to take action before you can see the result. Therefore, have the commitment to execute your plan, consistently.
#5. Review and Improve
The final step is to review and improve your result. As you can see, once you have taken some form of action, you will be getting results. It is either you fail, or you succeed in producing the outcomes that you desire.
When you fail, turn the failure into a feedback and learn from it. You can then improve your strategy to create better results. For example, if you set your goal to lose 5kg within 2 months, you create the plan and take action, but if you fail to achieve the goal, you must review the results you get and ask yourself what went wrong.
This is just like how a baby learns to walk. The baby will fall down many times before she can manage to stand steadily and then walk properly. When the baby falls, would you stop the baby from trying to walk again? Not at all; in fact, you will encourage the baby to walk properly and even teach her how to do it correctly.
And this is exactly what you need to do with your goals as well. When you fall, just stand up, dust it off, and then try again. Of course, improve your strategy so that you can get better results. There is no such thing as a failure as long as you keep trying. Failure will only happen when you decide to quit and give up.
And these are the five proven steps to achieve whatever you want in your life. When you study the stories of all the highly successful people, you will notice that they all follow these five steps to achieve the extraordinary results in their lives. They started with a big dream, and then they turn it into a goal that they are committed to. And next, they find out the strategy of how they can get there, they take a lot of action, they fail many times, but they never give up. They continue to learn and improve themselves each day. And this is what you need to do too.
Finally, if you want more success and goal-achieving tips, check out Shawn Lim, founder of StunningMotivation.com. You can download his free eBook and get exclusive tips on success, productivity and motivation from his website. Learn more about him on StunningMotivation.com or follow him on Facebook.
