10 Effective and Powerful Steps to Achieve Your Goals
Goals give you focus and direction. The process of goal-setting provides you with a benchmark to determine if you’re actually succeeding. The right goals will inspire and motivate you to get key results whether it’s in your personal or professional life.
A dream is just a wish without a plan and action backing it.
These 10 Effective and Powerful Steps to Achieve Your Goals are the key ingredients to helping you reach for success. If you skip any of them, it’s like leaving the baking powder out of the cookie recipe which results in a really bad product.
So why is this important? Why does it matter? Because, just like you need all the ingredients listed in a recipe to make a delicious cookie, you need all the ingredients to conquer your God-given goals.
Creating a plan is important because doing so enables you to take actionable tasks that help you work towards achieving your professional goals and personal goals tool.
10 Effective and Powerful Steps To Achieve Your Goals
It takes hard work to accomplish your goals and dreams. There’s no easy way or shortcut to go through.
Having a plan to achieve your goals gives you clarity and confidence. It encourages you to take consistent action and be creative about the different ways and strategies to crush your goals.
Developing a successful plan creates an opportunity for personal growth and to keep track of your progress. These are the 10 Powerful Steps to Achieve Your Goals to set you up for success.
1. Your specific goal or dream should be written down
Whether it’s big goals or smaller goals it should be written down and in front of you every day. Can you see it? If you are asking yourself how to achieve goals, the first step is to write it down and put it somewhere you will see it – often. Vague dreams are just that, dreams.
Setting goals and writing them down is the first thing you need to do. Specific goals that are written down and cemented in your mind enable you to take actionable steps to accomplish them. Confess it on paper and let’s make this happen!
Tips you need to keep in mind as you write your goals down:
- Set SMART goals
SMART is a goal-setting process that gives you an effective roadmap, especially toward your big goals. It’s an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
SMART goal setting may be a new skill for you but it’s so important for your personal development. It’s a powerful tool to enhance clarity and make your goals more achievable.
- Prioritize your goals
There are different types of goals you can have in life. These can be professional goals, business goals, or long-term goals.
You may have a few ambitious goals but which one do you want to accomplish first? It may be best to start with easy goals or short-term goals as they will give you momentum to chase after more complex goals.
- Break down your ultimate goal into smaller steps
Breaking goals into smaller steps makes them less daunting and more achievable. These manageable steps are inspiring and lead to steady progress to the finish line. Attainable goals are exciting and allow you to celebrate small wins and maintain motivation.
- Use the power of a vision board
Have you posted a picture of your dream life that you can look at every day? When you have life goals you want to accomplish, place them on a vision board and allow yourself time to dream. Placing pictures that symbolize your dream in front of you is an essential step in making them a focus in your daily life.
Visualization is a powerful technique to create a mental picture of success for each goal. The more you see them, the more apt you are to take action on them.
It’s also a great way to pray over them, seek God, and ask Him to direct your path. This is one of the daily reminders that keep your goals and dreams top of mind. When times are tough and you feel like quitting, these pictures will remind you of the bigger picture.
This reminds me of teens. They doodle the name of a boy they like, sketch their dream car, or scribble whatever is cool on their forearm with a pen.
Be expressive, allow yourself to dream, organize it in a way that makes you smile each time you look at it, confident that you are taking steps to achieve your goals.
Want some additional help with this?
The “My Game Plan Workbook” is a free resource that will walk you through creating that deep rooted why for a goal you may have and then creating a plan for stepping-stone goals and habits to bring that goal from the start to the finish in a stress-less, no hustle kind of way so that you can be present in your everyday life as well.
A bonus reflection journal is included that will help you reset each week and determine if there’s anything you need to start, stop, or keep doing so that you’re not just working hard and going around in circles.
You can download the workbook at redhotmindset.com/game-plan
2. Have a clear and meaningful WHY
When you set goals for yourself, they must motivate you. Set goals that relate to the high priorities in your life. What is your vision for your life? What are your core values? What is your biggest motivator really?
Knowing your why is an important step to achieving your goals. Your why is why you are doing the goal, the benefit or end result you hope to get out of it.
It’s something that will actually get you excited to get out of bed every day, something that keeps you awake at night because you’re too excited to sleep!
Why do you want to run your first marathon? Maybe it’s because it will help you lose the 10 pounds you want. Or maybe it’s so you can be an example for your kids. Maybe you used to be a hard-core athlete and you want to bring some competition back to your life.
Write down your why and understand how the end result will benefit you and those you love. Having a meaningful purpose will motivate you and push you forward in tough seasons.
3. Read God’s promises daily
The next step is trusting God with all your important goals. This is one of the effective ways to achieve them. God’s promises help us believe that it’s possible to achieve our dreams, stay focused on our goals, give us strength, and encourage us when we feel like giving up or the journey gets tough.
Prayer is the best way to connect with God and ask him for help during the goal-setting process and on your journey to crushing your goals.
Speaking God’s promises alone won’t get you to the finish line, but you better believe they will help you gain the confidence you need to take the action that will drive you to your goal! It will most certainly help you overcome your fear of failure.
Here are some of God’s promises to get you started, but I encourage you to find more in your quiet time:
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”
Isaiah 41:10 NIV
“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you”
Psalm 32:8 NIV
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go”
Joshua 1:9 NIV
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me”
2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV
Here are 7 more promises of God you can count on.
RELATED: Promises for peace
4. Have an Action Plan in place to work toward your goal
Time management is important to achieving your goals and dreams. Everything works well with a daily action plan.
Write down all the necessary steps you need to take. This can be a list, a series of pictures, or sticky notes arranged on a board. It will help you overcome procrastination by giving you specific tasks to focus on.
Instead of taking massive action, focus on a plan with consistent action. A plan provides direction and a starting ground. When you have a plan you have something to reflect on and make tweaks and adjustments to.
“The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.”
Proverbs 21:5 ESV)
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make straight your paths”
Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV
“A man’s mind plans his way [as he journeys through life], But the Lord directs his steps and establishes them.”
Proverbs 16:9 AMP
The last verse is a reminder to be flexible with your plan. Usually, our plans don’t turn out perfectly the way we want them to, but God knows what’s best, and, ultimately, we should want what His plan for our life is. Allow the Lord to direct you as you take action.
5. Invest in your personal development
In the world today, one way to grow is to invest in yourself and your education and knowledge. This could be through reading influential books or listening to an audio or podcast that focuses on personal growth. It could be taking a course or using any available resources to get to where you need to go.
Personal development also includes growing close to the Lord and your relationship with him. Did you know that when you go on a God-discovery journey, you ultimately go on a self-discovery journey as well?
As you grow close to God, you will have a clear understanding of who He created you to be, your true purpose, and the plans he has for you specifically.
6. Be intentional about your circle
Find a group of people who are trying to accomplish the same goal that you can work with to hold each other accountable and help motivate each other.
You are who you surround yourself with so it’s important to be intentional about this. The people around you can be potential obstacles to achieving your end goal. A strong and encouraging support system of people who are ambitious, organized, and supportive, will positively influence your own behaviors and attitudes.
I love this quote by Charles F Glassman.
“Some Say If You Want Success Surround Yourself With Successful People. I Say If You Want True And Lasting Success Surround Yourself With People Of Integrity.”
If you are looking for a positive online community, come hang out with us in the Red Hot Accountability Club!
Related: Do you know why association is vital to success?
7. Have an accountability partner
Do you have a personal accountability partner If you don’t have someone to answer to, you’ll likely quit or never start. You’ll cave to the excuses rather than overcome the circumstances that surround you.
An accountability partner supports you differently because you have something to strive for. You don’t want to let them down. They will make these Powerful Steps to Achieving Your Goals in life just a bit easier and a little more fun.
Particularly when you’re working on a major goal, this person can be a game changer. Have meaningful conversations to keep track of your goals. Tell them any specific task or action you need to complete to achieve your main goal.
This helps them to follow up on specific goals you have and not vague goals.
When others are aware of what you’d like to accomplish, there’s no doubt that they’re going to do what they can to help you get there. There’s no shame in dreaming and going after those dreams. Don’t be afraid of others and what they think. The only approval you need is your own!
Go after those big goals or smaller goals with all of your heart and shout them from the mountaintops! Once you speak them out loud and others hear them, it’s harder to give up on yourself because now you have something to prove.
This is an easy way to validate your goals and makes you accountable for achieving them in a certain time frame. It gives you a sense of urgency that you now need to act on what you said you’d do.
9. Be intentional about your daily routine
The specific action you take every minute, every hour, and every day is what will help you with your overall goal achievement. Try to do something toward your goal every day, if possible. If you’ve broken down your goal into smaller steps and tasks, try to do at least one small task a day.
Make your goal part of your daily routine. Over time, doing the same thing every day makes it routine and a habit, and it becomes easier to do it.
10. Hire a coach
A coach can speak into your life unlike anyone else. They can provide the tough love and push you out of your comfort zone so you need to get started and keep going until you get the job done.
A coach sees things about you that you can’t see and can guide you through the process because most likely she’s been through it.
I am a run coach, and I’ve helped multiple women either learn to run, run their first race, or qualify for the Boston Marathon. I’ve invested in a coach myself and he helped me push myself harder than I would alone, and I also knew that he would have a strategy to get me where I wanted to go.
After I qualified for the Boston Marathon for the first time, I didn’t think I had much more speed in me than what I put out on race day. Boy, was I wrong! My coach helped me smash my personal best time (PR) by 12 minutes!
Your coach will help you identify your blind spots, support you, and increase your confidence in your personal or professional growth.
These 10 Effective and Powerful Steps to Achieve Your Goals make up the formula for success! These habits are easy to do, but they are also easy not to do. It all comes down to choice. We need to take responsibility for our goals because, unless we take the necessary action, we’ll never see the results.
How many of these things can you check off the list? How many are you doing right now? Which ones do you need to add?
Get honest with yourself and figure out how to incorporate the disciplines in your life that you are not currently doing. This is the recipe for success. It’s the recipe for your dreams coming true.
You have your goals in front of you! You may even have a good strategic plan to follow to achieve them!, but you’re feeling a little lonely in the online space and sick of the hustle culture telling you to do more.
If so, then the Red Hot Accountability Club might be just what you need!
A safe space. A faith space. A friendly space. A forward momentum space.
Find community and coaching support inside the group coaching membership so you can lean on others and be inspired to continue working on your goals in the season you’re in with the capacity you have – ditching the stress and hustle altogether! (and ditching social media for business if you want to!)
You CAN work your goals into your lifestyle without sacrificing everything to achieve them.
If you are looking for a positive online community and group coaching experience, come hang out with us in the Red Hot Accountability Club!
