Want to Achieve Your Goals? You Can Start By Making These Changes

Making goals is easy … but keeping them is a different story. Many women have trouble maintaining a strong work ethic  when things get hard. Sometimes, we make up new goals that we think might be easier or more interesting, but the truth is, success requires hard, tedious work. What you need is not an easier goal – what you need is focus.

Focus is when your energy is centered on a specific task for a sustained amount of time. It’s easy to focus on a something that only require a short amount of time to complete, but it’s much harder to keep your energy centered on a long-term task while other priorities and goals distract you. In order to be successful, however, you’ve got to be able to maintain long-term focus. Here are steps you can take on your journey to success.

1 Identify your goals.

Identify a long-term goal that is meaningful to you. If it doesn’t really matter to you, you’ll never find the focus to see it through. Align these goals with your values and your dreams – they should excite you.

2 Write them down.

Write these goals down and why they are important to you. If you want to lose 10 pounds, write that down on a post-it note or stick a piece of paper to your fridge. That way, you will see your written objectives every single day, which will remind you to stay motivated.

3 Control your impulse to give up.

Self-regulation, the ability to control one’s emotions and impulses, is key to achieving long-term goals, according to researchers Thomas Bateman and Bruce Barry. Discipline yourself, even when you don’t feel like it and even when you want to give up. Remind yourself that you alone are responsible for your success.

4 Remind yourself that you can succeed.

When you feel like giving up, remain confident that you can do great things as long as you remain focused and in control of your mind.

5 Make friends with the same goals.

Befriend someone who shares the same goal as you and become goal buddies. This helps tremendously when you need some extra motivation on your journey.

6 Develop good habits.

Develop habits that help you reach your goal. If you know that you work better after eating a healthy meal, wake up early enough every day to make a nutritious breakfast before going to work.

7 Get rid of time wasters.

Kick bad habits that deter you from your goal – like wasting time scrolling through Facebook or spending another weekend in Vegas.

8 Keep a journal.

If you have the habit of always finding new goals when you’re old ones seem worn out – keep a journal of your new ideas, but remind yourself to remain focused on your original goal. Finding new things to focus on is just a distraction.

9 Celebrate your progress.

With long-term goals, the real reward seems far away. So treat yourself when you’ve reached small milestones. These small reminders that you’re slowly but surely reaching your goal will help you strive for the finish line.

10 Remember that hard work is key.

Remember that successful people didn’t achieve their goals because they were passionate about their work every day. That’s a myth. They achieved their success because they continued to work on their goals long after they got tired of doing so. Think about Olympic gold medal winners – of course they love their sport, but nobody loves training all day every day. They do it anyway so that at the end of four years, they walk out of the stadium with a medal hung around their neck. We are not all Olympians, but we should have the same motivation to succeed in our daily lives. Push yourself every day, even when you are tired, and one day you will succeed.