If you are like many people who had initially got excited about your New Year resolutions and quit mid-way, the following steps may be helpful to you:
Goals setting - Instead of saying: "I do not want to be poor", substitute it positively with "I want to make USD10, 000 per month". Our mind is unable to distinguish between positive and negative, so trick the brain to zoom into a positive one. All goals, however small or big must be framed in a positive manner.
Context - Who is involved in this goal? Is it only you or someone else involved as well? It must be clear. Where would the changes take place? At home, at work, outside the country? Be specific. When will it commence and end? A timeline is necessary to track the changes.
Evidence - How does one know if he has achieved the goal? Does it come in the form of receiving a paycheck stating the amount? Or will it come in the form of a Purchase order? In the interim, it is also important to have progressive evidence like receiving confirmation of order by phone call, email and fax to sending out the invoice to the client by mail.
Control - Are you fully in control of making this USD10,000 goal? Are you solely responsible or require your partner, colleagues, etc to be involved? If yes, what is their level of involvement? Having full empowerment of your own goal is half the battle won.
Prevention - What are the challenges preventing you from achieving this goal? Fear, self-doubt, envy, lack of faith, etc? List all these negative and self-limiting thoughts down in writing. Clear identification is essential as it puts the goal attainment in perspective and could assist in laying out the different possibilities of resolving the challenges. For example, fear of not able to achieve this goal builds a mental block in the mind and creates a psychological barrier before any execution. Techniques like visualizations, behavior modeling, and awareness of own strength/blind spots are very useful.
Resources - What are the existing resources that one already possesses? For example, successful projects won in previous quarter substantiate reasons for pay increment, good communication skills with senior level executives will help to open more doors for the salesperson to get more appointments. More appointments translate to higher probability of converting sales. Once existing resources are identified, it is clearer to understand what new resources are required to fill in the gap to fulfill the goal. Another example: will attending a new course help? Maybe, joining an industry networking group may help to network with right target audience? Or taking up freelance positions to build branding and increase confidence before taking up actual work assignments.
Ecology - It is important to pursue one's goal not at the expense of others. Will studying for the course takes up so much of your time that you will have little time left for the family? Does reaching the USD10,000/month income require you to relocate for a few years? What are the pros and cons, short and mid-term?
Worthwhile - Is achieving this goal a worthy thing you wanted to do? What does it mean to achieve this goal? What are the consequences for not achieving?
Action - What specific action steps must be taken to achieve this goal? The clearer the actionable steps are listed out, the more motivated is the person to pursue it. Breaking up the goal into smaller ones help the person to reach his objective in a concise and systematic manner.
Thinking about the goal and not having clear actionable steps to achieve it is like gambling. The above nine steps serve as a holistic framework for goal attainment as it takes into consideration different perspectives, challenges and resources that one will encounter in the course of pursuing their goal.
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal - Henry Ford
About the Author
Desmond Chua is a Regional Sales Director of a global consulting firm and has been using the Enneagram, NLP and other transformational tools effectively in his sales, training and recruitment. He also coaches people to resolve their problems in career, relationship, communication, health and fitness. For a free trial of email coaching, please write "
I am READY to change" in the subject to
dessiechua@yahoo.com
