Plan to Achieve Your Goal

Once you have identified what your goal is, it's time to plan how you will achieve it.



My goals were,
Personal: To buy a house
Public: To get a permanent job
Fun: To go to England and Europe on vacation

To create your plan, you will need to determine which of your three goals needs to come first. Write it at the top of a page, then list everything that needs to be done in order to achieve that goal.

Next to each item, set a target date. You may find that your end date for your goal may need to be adjusted once you see all the steps involved.

The good news is - with every mini-goal achieved, you are one step closer to making that big goal a reality.

Now you've set your goal and made a list of what needs to be done to achieve it. The next step is simple - just follow the plan and cross off your mini-goals one by one as you achieve them.

When I sat down and thought about it, it was obvious that I would need a permanent job in order to get a loan for a house.

So my goal of obtaining permanent employment had to come first. After that, the house. And after that, the holiday to celebrate my achievements.

There's no sugar-coating the truth: achieving a goal is just plain hard work. Your plan already gives you an advantage that many people do not have. There are also a number of trusty little tricks to keep you motivated and on track. In 2005 and 2006 I went through a two-year period where I was unable to get a permanent job. My job at the time was temporary but I really needed something secure so that I could achieve my other goals.

I went to countless interviews and waited patiently (crossing everything) and it just seemed that my fate was to receive an endless stream of rejection letters.

I went through a stage of blaming others, and then I turned my anger on myself. I was telling myself things such as "you're a failure" and "nobody wants to employ you on a permanent basis".

There was no epiphany that dragged me out of this downward spiral. I just knew that my internal dialogue was unhealthy.

So I sat down one day with paper and pen and wrote "I am a failure and I have no permanent job."

Then I thought, what is the opposite of this?

So I wrote, "I am a success and I have a permanent job."

Still, this didn't quite sit right with me. To me, the word "success" is very broad and seems quite judgmental. So I scratched the word "success" from my statement.

The term "permanent job" also bugged me. I was 26 and the word "permanent" scared the pants off me.

I realized that I'd been repelling a permanent job because I didn't want to be stuck in the same job permanently. Instead, what I wanted was a secure job with flexibility.

Thus, over the course of a few weeks, my mantra was born. "I am in my perfect, secure, well-paying job."

I repeated it when I got up in the morning, I repeated it while driving to work. I'd repeat it in my only workplace haven - the restroom. I'd repeat it again on my way home from work.

I detached from all of my job applications and concentrated on only my "perfect, secure, well-paying job".

It took another 12 months, with a few bumps along the way, for me to get that job. But once I had it, it fitted my circumstances perfectly.

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