Accomplish Your Goals and Realize Your Dreams, The Process (Part 1)

Coach, how can I lose 10 pounds, pay off my debt, exercise, get a new job, get a promotion, be happier, learn a new language, write a book, grow spiritually, stop procrastinating, and live a balanced life? Have you wished for these dreams..., perhaps all at once? There is nothing that prevents us from turning these dreams into reality. In this multi-part series we will explore what we need to put in place to do just that. Today, we will do a quick overview.

When you think about it, there is no reason why we can't accomplish dreams like those listed above. Most are within our control or at least influence. Please notice that I'm only calling them dreams and not goals. Only 33% of Americans ever set goals to accomplish their dreams. You may be one or know of people that set New Year's resolutions like exercise more or lose weight. How many people do you know that actually write these goals down? Not many, 3%. Only 1% of the people actually monitor themselves against their goals daily. Later on we will talk about the importance of monitoring.

Over the years I have read many books and tried different things until landing in a process that works for me and those I coach. There was one thing that was not working for me, time management, but I'm now making significant improvement in this area. In the next several days, I'll be writing about how to accomplish your goals and realize your dreams through a seven step process. All the steps of the process are interconnected, but are not necessarily sequential.

1. Live on Purpose. Discover the "whys" in your life, the things that drive you. We shouldn't be making ourselves busy like ants, unless we know that what we are engaging is going to further those things that matter the most to us. We need to understand our values and principles; our natural strengths; and our life purpose.
2. Visualize the future. Discover the "whats" in your life. What is your vision about your life, given those things listed in #1 above, that cover the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of you?
3. Commit. I recently wrote a post about commitment. So far we are just having an interesting intellectual exercise. We are discovering things, dreaming, visualizing, etc. all fun, but nothing happens until we make an act of commitment and set a limited number of intentions for our life.
4. Set Goals. Define how you will accomplish your intentions. What are the goals and actionable tasks that are needed? What are the new skills that need to be developed?
5. Maximize character. Focus on improving two important character strengths: self-regulation and perseverance. Without these we are fried.
6. Manage priorities.Put in place a time management system that works for you so that you can schedule your priorities and not prioritize your schedule.
7. Finally, this being St. Blogs, we need God's grace...

I hope you can use some of these ideas and can share ways to make them even better. Peace!

Technorati Tags: Accomplish Goals, balance, pay debt, Spirituality, stop procastination, Success, Weight, write book

Comments

[Celia]

I have tapped into this site as I am trying to help my daughter with optimism. She has a slight hearing loss and is desperate to get her foot on a career. She is now 28. She is educated to degree level in the UK so is no fool and has always been interested in radiography. She is now on a course and is doing the clinical side, but as always seems to be the case she thinks she is going to fail on the hearing side yet her patient care is empathatic. How can one persuade someone to have optimism and hope that they will succeed if they don't worry about the periphery. Any advice gratfully received!

[Hector]

Celia, it is definitely possible to boost one's optimism. I can't tonight, but I will write about it soon. Yes, there's hope!