Part of the drive to maintaining unwavering faith and conquering the fear of failure is to understand the why motivating your dream. Keep asking yourself “Why? Why? Why?” until you get to the bottom, deeply motivating meaning of your dream. Also, think about what you would feel like if you didn’t try and saw others achieving your goal. This is the feeling you are avoiding by getting out there, learning, and putting forth the effort to achieve your dream.
Look at where you want to be—not through the lens of discouragement, but the lens of hopeful reality. There is a lot to do to get where you want to be and that can be overwhelming. The secret to success is to break it down into smaller and smaller pieces until you get to actionable items you can put into your life now and get scheduled into your life. They won’t be major things! Think of what one small thing can get you just a tad closer to your goal today. Take practical, imperfect action. It may not seem like much, but consistent small steps will add up exponentially!
My favorite technique is to backwards mind map. I get a blank piece of paper and put my goal in the middle in a circle. Then I draw lines out to other circles showing what I need to be successful. Then I break that down into what makes up that item and then break that down until I get into specific action items that I can implement now (or soon). For example, I could start in the middle with “ride bareback walk/trot/canter” and the next circle would be “build flexibility” which would branch out into “stretch daily” and “yoga 1-2 times a week”. You may have more (or fewer) levels to get from a broader concept to actionable items. Another example is that I start with “do anything I want confidently with horses” to “improve horsemanship/equitation” to “lessons and clinics” to “Centered riding lessons” to “Monthly lesson with Zeke at Brenda’s”.
Once there are action items these need to get into my monthly and weekly schedules so that I make sure I commit to what I need to be doing now that will bring me closer to my goal. Getting dreams scheduled is such an important aspect. It is hard, but I have to make sure I keep these plans like I would an important meeting or plans with others. As I mentioned in the previous post, one of the techniques (credit to Ruth Soukup) I like best is to come up with about 3-5 “A” tasks that will get me closer to my goals and are the absolute priority for the week. Anything else can fall into the next tier of “should do” or the tier after of “would like to do”. I make sure that those A tasks get done before the other lists since I can’t cross everything off and I have to make sacrifices somewhere.
It is so essential to keep goals at top of mind! There are many ways to do this including backgrounds, sticky notes, posters, and more. I do multiple methods that I review daily, but this is different for each person. First, I have my year’s mission goals on the inside cover of my planner. I also have a vision board and a list of all of my major milestone goals. Other than this daily review I am also choosing from these goals to determine my monthly and weekly goals.
Ok, I mentioned them, so what exactly are these “mission goals” and “major milestone goals”? My mission goals are the 2-5 only big, defined goals for the year. The big kicker: these are my ONLY goal umbrellas for the year and all other goals are smaller and underneath one of these mission goal umbrellas. This keeps me focused on the goals that if I achieve JUST those few goals, I know this year was great. Major milestone goals are sub-goals to the mission goals. There could be many major milestone goals or very few. These mark out significant progress points on my journey to achieving my mission goal. Major milestone goals are more actionable than mission goals and are fitting as monthly goals. These can be broken down further into minor goals that would be fitting for weekly goals. I do not write out or review minor goals other than my current week’s minor goals.
The “Goal Crushing Worksheet” is my favorite resource for breaking down my major milestone goal for the month. I do it for a major milestone for each of my top four mission goals (we’ll go over this more in the next blog post!) It goes though the acronym “CRUSH IT” which stands for Claim your target, Refine your objective, Understand your motivation, Step it out, Handle obstacles, Implement your plan, Treat yourself. This worksheet encompasses the essential processes for achieving goals.
Both of my favorite goal tools focus on obstacles. It is important to recognize what obstacles may be faced and to proactively determine how they can be overcome. This can be tricky, but honestly listing obstacles without blaming myself has really helped me understand the situation I am in without fooling myself.
Last year I started rewarding myself! This was so helpful! I couldn’t believe something so simple would be so motivating. When you hit a goal celebrate your success! Some goals for me were a simple of a reward as a gold start that I put in my planner. However, the bigger goals warranted bigger rewards, so this is where the fun begins! I made a list of recurring rewards and one-time rewards. Recurring rewards for me are things that I enjoy but are special and out of the ordinary. These include coffee, sushi, pickled asparagus, pedicures, and massages. I would determine bigger one-time rewards for bigger goals. One-time rewards would be things that I wanted but couldn’t justify spending the money on just to have them. Earning these was not only fun, but every time I see the item it reminds me of the goal I achieved and inspires me to keep crossing off more goals. As an added aspect of fun I would wrap my one-time rewards and label them with the goal I needed to achieve to be able to unwrap them (not required!). My advice is to let loose, have fun and come up with a list of ways to treat yo’ self for accomplishing your goals! Be sure to recognize progress, even if it is small and even if the recognition is simply a gold star or a celebratory Facebook post.
Remember that not only is your dream important, but who you become on the journey to getting there is a true treasure. Who do you need to become to live your dream? What do you need to do more of? What do you need to do less of? What habits do you need to develop? What skills do you need to learn?
Also, even if it feels like it, you are not alone! One of the benefits of committing to your goal and making it known is that others are usually willing to help how they can. The more passionate and outspoken you are about your goals the more opportunities you will see others presenting to you. One of the principles I learned from The Buried Life (a group of guys determined to cross off all the items on their bucket list) was to ask for help from others and to help others accomplish what they dream of. How could someone help you? Who could help you? Who could mentor you? Who can give you good advice? I try to think about who is successfully doing what I would like to do and how I can connect with them. Be bold and ask! No is the answer you already have if you don’t ask, but if you DO ask there is a chance the answer is YES! Also, be looking for how you can help others.
This post has covered a lot! I absolutely love breaking down goals and making smaller goals, but it took me awhile to figure out a lot of these concepts that have helped so much. If you have any questions or anything that works well for you, please comment!