4 Ways to Start Achieving Your Goals
SET GOALS FOR YOURSELF
There is no greater feeling in life than accomplishing something you’ve set out to do. Once you get a taste of this satisfaction, it begins to become an adrenaline rush and you find ways to make that feeling happen more often. Most likely this feeling has been generated because you set a goal for yourself. You’ve envisioned something you wanted to do and focused on making that happen.
SETTING GOALS HAVE BEEN THE DIRECT RESULT OF ANY SUCCESS I'VE HAD IN MY LIFE.
Nothing has been handed to me, everything was earned because I intrinsically desired something and always found a way to make it happen. This is what fuels my ambition. Goals have given me direction in life and something to work towards. They drive my thoughts which begin driving my actions. I want to discuss 4 ways that I approach setting goals and share my current and future aspirations that follow these guidelines.
1. MAKE A PLAN
The key to setting up realistic goals is by having a plan of action. This should be comprised of short term goals as well as long term goals. You have to start by knowing something you want. For example, you want to start drawing and make a massive improvement within a year. Where do you even begin? You have set deadline of 1 year to work towards so the first step should be taking small actions of drawing everyday. There is the popular 365 day challenge on Instagram where you draw and record your work for 365 days. It’s crazy what this can lead to. My friend Bob Ewing started this campaign and it led to him drawing a word for 534 days in a row! They were just simple hand lettering designs but the amount of improvement from his beginning posts to his late posts were phenomenal. He made a commitment to get better all by setting up a small term goals which yielded to a much bigger result. If you're thinking 365 is a lot and are scared of the commitment, try breaking that down into 100 days to give yourself the confidence to start today.
The power of these less intimidating, short term goals is that they help you build momentum and confidence towards reaching the final result. They allow you to measure your progress along the way.
MAKING PROGRESS BECOMES AN ADDICTION AS YOU SEE YOUR SELF GROWTH EVOLVE WITH EACH MILESTONE.
I’m sure Bob saw the growth of his hand lettering within a 100 days and that kept his motivation at a peak.
2. WRITE YOUR GOALS DOWN
Hands down, the number one reason I’ve accomplished so many goals in the past year and a half is because I began writing them down. I found that when I write them down where I see them everyday, I hold myself to a higher accountability. I have a white board in my office that I list goals I want to achieve in 2015 as well as larger goals 3-5 years from now. There is also that one large goal that I am striving to obtain within 10 years. Granted, sometimes the goals change as I keep growing and realize my vision of what I want to accomplish has shifted. I stay creative and keep them flexible as I gain more experience from learning what works and what doesn't. I purposely try to not have restrictions and limitations on my goals.
One of the most powerful feelings is crushing a goal and getting to erase it from my white board. I told myself for years I wanted to have an awesome, unique website to showcase my illustrative lettering along with business cards and my LLC. I kept putting these off because I didn’t have them written down nor did I set a deadline to make myself accountable. I wrote all 3 down as my top goals going into 2015 and to have completed by April. I finally accomplished all 3 tasks in March after a ton of daily hard work and help from my friend who was a developer to get the site launched. Wiping all 3 off my white board within a week was such an exhilarating feeling that has instilled a whole new world of confidence in me to keep pushing my brand.
Writing them down in my office was working so well that I started to write goals down on our kitchen chalkboard as well as placing them on sticky notes on my computer screen at work. Regardless if they were all related to art or not, I wanted to see them constantly. I even keep them written down in my Notes application on my iPhone where I have all my deadlines / time lines set. That way I see them and have them with me everywhere I go. They serve as daily reminders to stay on task and to avoid distractions that may take me off the course.
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3. FOCUS
You will never achieve any goal without focusing your effort. Many people feel lost and live life by going through the motions. They have nothing they want to accomplish and no target to aim at. Zig Ziglar stated “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” Generally these people are the same individuals 10 years later and most of them feel sorry for themselves due to their circumstances. Most people neglect the fact that they can change their personal state of affairs.
YOU CONTROL YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES BY HOW HARD YOU WORK.
When you have a laser focus with your goals, nothing will derail you from achieving them. It comes down to how bad do you want it? With this focus comes sacrifice. YOU WILL lose contact with friends because you won’t be going out during weekdays or weekends. I’ve experienced this first hand as weeknights and weekends are my prime time for getting personal work done such as blogging, setting up my feature image, updating my website, or tackling the list of goals I have set for myself in a given week or month.
The true friends are the ones that support your goals and understand where you are coming from. They are the ones that you don’t see for a month or longer but you can still pick right back up like you were with them yesterday. You have to surround yourself with like minded, encouraging individuals who won’t hold you back and be prepared to part ways with those who will bring you down, even if they are your family.
With focus comes finding ways to make more time and we all know that time is the most valuable asset we have. I've trained myself to cut out video games and to stop watching TV and this has opened up a whole new World of time. Believe me, I was a pretty hardcore gamer and I love me some Netflix so this wasn't easy to do. We don't even have cable and that was the best decision ever. I create even more time to create by getting up early in the mornings as well as using my hour lunch break to tackle loose ends that I didn’t finish in the morning. The power of telling people no has also been key.
Having this laser focus squashes any excuses I could come up with on why I may not be able to accomplish something. You may say that I am a workaholic and maybe I am, but getting to where I want to be in life is so fulfilling that I would never revert back to the old me.
4. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
After showing up everyday and being dedicated to playing the small game, I’ve gained a lot of confidence in my abilities as an artist. I’m to the point now in my life that when I write a new goal down for myself, I believe that I have already achieved it. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is going to get accomplished because I’ve trained that muscle in my brain to know that I’ve already acquired that end result.
IN MY EYES, I'M JUST WAITING FOR REALITY TO ALIGN WITH MY MINDSET.
It's all a head game. It's easy to say I wish vs. I will. After you start hitting those smaller goals and start revving up your tenacity, it’s time to set a goal that scares you. I’m talking about embarking on a mission to achieve something that is so massive on a success scale that it will keep you up at night thinking about it. These are the goals that keep the fuel on the fire burning and give you something to keep working towards. They will keep you hungry and driven and no one will be able to stop you from accomplishing them. I'd rather fear success than failure any day.
MY FUTURE GOALS
Life is short and to get the most out of it you have to know what you want. I demand to get the most out of life by demolishing goals. My goals have evolved and changed dramatically over the last year and a half as I begin to narrow my focus and niche down by following a specific path.
Today, my top objective is to consistently produce content from an authentic place that can help inspire others to take action in their own lives. I WILL ACCOMPLISH THIS through drawing and blogging as it prepares me to become a speaker for conferences and events. More specifically I want to speak at Creative South as it’s the place that planted this seed of direction in my life and I feel it’s my duty to give back to Mike Jones and company. I truly believe that this will happen and I’m just taking the necessary steps in order to see this through.
There is still that one goal that scares me that I constantly lose sleep over. My dream is to be a self sufficient Illustrative Lettering Artist in which I can build Perspective-Collective from my home office. I also want to be able to make it that my soon to be wife can quit her job and work for me. That way we can be together everyday and I can stop working so many hours after work slaving away to make this a reality. We can take on the World and that will free her up to start pursuing her passions on the side as she is so incredibly talented.
I’m currently at a great job with an incredible team around me and it’s a safe place to work. Seriously, it’s a blessing to be surrounded by these people who make me enjoy my job. The pay is terrific along with benefits and my 401K. You would think I’m living the life right now but this is the prime definition of golden handcuffs. I know I’m destined for something much larger than myself and I have faith that this is God's plan. When that day comes, it will be hard to leave the team and it terrifies me because I’ve never been on my own before. The thought of my art supporting me financially is the scariest thing that can come to mind right now and I love that challenge.
Setting goals allows me to constantly keep working towards that final objective. It's refreshing to think about the day I get to cross that large goal off my white board and have to set my sights on an even bigger target. In the end, my thoughts are what is driving my actions and the way that I think and act reflects the kind of goals I set for myself. My mindset is always I CAN over I WISH. You have to believe in yourself and take small steps with the long game in mind. If I can do this, I am convinced you can too.
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