For most people, goal achievement doesn’t come over night. Many people have goals but don’t know how to succeed. Or, they keep procrastinating and feel stuck, unable to move forward and enjoy personal success. If this is you, these actionable tips keep you moving forward, helping you get closer to your dreams and eventually reach your goal.
Importance of Action
It’s great having intentions, plans and ideas. Important, in fact. But until you actually do something, until you take some form of action, you’ll never move any closer to your goals. Goal achievement relies on action. Inertia has the opposite effect — it keeps you stuck, and can contribute towards feelings of apathy, depression, worthlessness and powerlessness. Essentially, action is vital for reaching any goal and achieving personal success.
How to Take Action
Taking action is essential for moving forward. Even small actions help you get closer toward your goal. And no action is wasted; even actions that ultimately don’t seem to contribute to reaching your goal add to your knowledge and experience. Use these pointers when you’re wondering how to take action to move you forward and closer to achieving personal success:
Understand Your Objectives
It’s important you know what goals you are striving for. While you may be tempted to think that you simply feel dissatisfied and want to change your life, break it down and consider how? What changes do you want to make? Whether it’s related to your career, finances, personal relationships, fitness, weight or something else entirely, knowing what your goals actually are can make you feel more motivated. It’s also often easier to take action.
Consider What You Need to Do
Think of things you need to do to achieve your goal. For example, do you need to invest in a training course, set up a savings plan, hit the gym …? It might be, for example, that you want to progress in your career. To do this, you may need more qualifications. To pay for courses, you may need to save money and arrange childcare for while you’re studying. To save money you might need to make some lifestyle changes … consider all the steps needed to bring you closer to your goal, in this example, enhancing your career opportunities. Think outside the box too when brainstorming ways to reach your goal. You might consider this stage as planning to take action. When you know what action, or actions, you need to take, it’s easier to move forward and actually do something.
When you’ve worked out what steps to take, create an action plan. List the order to do things and note any time requirements or limits. It can help to set yourself reasonable deadlines, to keep you on track. Where possible, have ways to measure your milestones. Not only does this make you more accountable to yourself and keep you on track, but it can also be a great motivator to see how you are actually moving closer to your goals.
Take the First Step!
Many people set their goals, work out an action plan and then become stuck. You need to now take action! Whatever your first step in your action plan is, do it. If you wait for the perfect moment to start, you’ll end up waiting forever. There really is no time like the present. You want to move forward? So, take action!
For more motivation, guidance, accountability and dedication to help you on your path to goal achievement, book a free coaching session with Joe White. It might well be the first action you need to properly set your wheels in motion and help you move forward.
