Unless you put the effort into carefully selecting and planning your goals, you won’t have a clear roadmap to achieving them. But even a clear roadmap won’t help you progress, unless you put in the effort each day, monitoring your progress and holding yourself accountable. If you couple that commitment with unwavering desire to succeed, you’ll be able to overcome any obstacle, achieve your goals, and live a full and enriching life.
And here’s some more Actionable advice:
Write a book to identify what you want to achieve.
It takes time, energy, and commitment to achieve goals. Which is why, before you begin working toward them, it makes sense to reflect properly on where you’re trying to get to. But what do you do if you’re not clear on what you want to achieve in life? If you face this predicament, give yourself the task of writing a book. Its title might be something like How to Live Your Best Life. Use the act of writing to explore what’s important to you and what you see as meaningful. Don’t write with the intention of publishing the book; instead, write to discover and articulate what matters to you.
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Thomas Edison was one of America’s most prolific inventors. But despite his genius, success didn’t come easily. Before he invented the light bulb, Edison conducted 10,000 failed experiments. He didn’t see these experiments as failures, though. He saw them as successfully discovering 10,000 ways incandescent light didn’t work.
There’s no such thing as overnight success. It takes time and commitment to achieve challenging goals. What often seems like a sudden breakthrough is almost always the result of effort and hard work that happens behind the scenes.
The key message is this: To reach your goals, you must play the long game.
According to former US president Calvin Coolidge, persistence is more important than talent when it comes to achieving goals. In fact, success looks much less glamorous than most people realize. In a study of company vice presidents who earned more than $200,000 a year, those with the highest income had been in the same job for more than 15 years. Over 80 percent were still married to their first spouses, and all of them said their success came about because of all the hard work they’d put in.
Often, people with ambitious goals forget that you need to put in the effort before you reap rewards. They’re convinced that if their boss would just give them that raise, they’d work harder and reach their next career goal. But that isn’t how success works. Just like a farmer who has to tend to the crops before harvesting, you have to put in the effort before you reap the rewards.
And if you think about which achievements you value most, you’ll probably agree that it’s those that demanded the most work – perhaps a promotion you’ve striven to earn, or an A grade in a subject you struggle with.
When the odds are stacked against you, what keeps you going is discipline. That’s why it’s so important to hold yourself accountable – remember the goal planner.
Like Edison, you may need to pursue thousands of potential solutions before you reach a breakthrough. Every attempt will bring you new knowledge and insight.
And there’s another thing you can learn from Edison: don’t give up too soon. Often, we don’t reach our goals because we stop trying. But you will never succeed unless you give it your all every single day.
It’s that persistence, combined with hard work and determination, that will bring you the success you seek.