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The ability to set and achieve goals is one trait that separates highly successful individuals from the unsuccessful in life.

According to a study done on New Year resolutions by the University of Scranton published in the Clinical Journal of Psychology:

Only 45 percent of people set New Year’s resolutions. Only 8 percent of people who set New Year resolutions achieve them

Why do people fail miserably in achieving goals? Most people fail to achieve objectives because they fail to act on them.

Many people are good at writing down their goals but lack the discipline to accomplish them.

The danger signs to watch out for when you set goals is when you start feeling overwhelmed or frustrated about your goals.

The greatest mistake you can ever make is misjudging the extent of the effort you need to accomplish what you set out to achieve

The secret to achieving goals is to make them doable. You develop a process to make your goals easy to do.

To make your goals reachable, you need to break them down into bite-size chunks.

Bestselling author and personal development expert Brian Tracy often uses the metaphor of eating an elephant to explain achieving goals.

Brian says just like the way to eat an elephant is in small chunks…you should break down your goals into small, manageable tasks.

For example, if your goal is to lose weight, you should break the goal down into smaller steps that will build up to your achieving it

Let me explain the process further with the weight loss goal I decided to set a few years back…(I am looking at the goal list directly in front of me)

My Goal: I want to lose 25 kg

This was how I wrote it out…

Weight as of 1^st January: 100 kg (220 pounds.)

Target weight loss: 25 kg   (55 pounds.)

Small steps:

• Reduce calorie intake
• Exercise more
• Monitor weight loss
• Weigh weekly

Monthly weight loss goal: 2 kg (4 stones)

Small steps:

• Jog and walk briskly for at least 30 minutes 3 times weekly
• Eat a balance of healthy organic food weekly
• Drink more water, no fizzy or processed foods
• Weigh in weekly
• Measure calorie intake (use my fitness pal app)

You can see that by breaking down my goals into small size steps, it’s easier to lose weight.

If you want to become very focused on achieving your goal, you must make it your top priority.

Here’s how you make a goal your number one priority…

You must make sure that you spend most of your time working on the goal

This means any time you plan your daily activities, you must make sure that most of your effort is directed towards achieving your number one goal daily

That’s the secret of achieving goals: you write them down, and then you break them down into small, doable tasks.

Here’s how you do this:

I want you to take out a journal or create a Word document on your laptop or tablet that you’ll write your goals for the next 12 months as I have written

Goal: ____________________

Small steps:

1. _______________________
2. _______________________
3. ______________________
4. ________________________

I will leave you with this quote by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu:” The journey of a thousand miles starts with taking baby steps.”