We all have different goals that we want to achieve in our lives. And yet sometimes we find that months or even years go by and we seem to have made little progress on actually achieving them. What kinds of goals are actually achievable?
For example, you can probably think of something in your house or apartment that you have been meaning to fix or clean up or paint or whatever it is… possibly for quite a long time. I just got around to painting a few areas of our apartment the other day after years of procrastinating! And it always surprises me how much less time it actually takes to complete a goal compared with the long years that I think about completing it 😉
In general, I follow the maxim, “it’s quicker to do something than to worry about it.” So what happened in this case? Why did I put off a fairly simple goal for many years?
The simple answer is that I didn’t think about the goal in the right way. In NLP, we believe that goals are much more easily achievable when they fulfil certain conditions. Here are three of those conditions or tips that can help you to achieve many of your big goals.
1. Decide the time and date when you want your goal completed
There is an old saying that “a goal without a date is just a dream.” If you are serious about your goal, create a date and time by when you plan to finish it. Write the date into your calendar or schedule or wherever you keep track of future events.
2. Make the outcome real in your mind
Most people don’t really have a clear idea of how things will be different when they have completed their goal. For example, I had a vague plan of painting . However, every time I thought of it, I simply imagined the work involved in buying the paint, cleaning the old paint brushes, spreading the sheets on the floor, and all the other little messy jobs. What I didn’t have was a clear image of how good the area would look when I painted, or how I would feel when it was complete. Or what I would say to myself. What eventually helped me to carry out the task was to make the outcome real for myself.
- I want to see (and other people to see) our apartment looking its best.
- I will feel so good about having finished this job.
- I will say to myself, “well done, that’s a job well done.”
Think about your goal. What is your desired outcome? And what will you see, hear, and feel when you have successfully completed it?
3. Identify your first step
It doesn’t really matter how small the first step is. You probably know the children’s joke: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So, go ahead and take the first bite out of your elephant (or perhaps your vegetarian equivalent!). You might find that it is so much easier than you imagined, and that you find yourself going on to the second step and the third and …
What goals would you achieve if you knew that you could follow these simple NLP steps and move towards them?
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On April 27, 2014, Standing in Spirit will be holding a mini-training NLP workshop called Achieving Your Goals (目標達成）in Nagoya. The workshop will be held in Japanese with English language support.