How to Achieve Your Goals in 2018
SUMMARY
The secret to achieving your goals in 2018 (or any time) is following a 4-step proven process that simply works:
- Want it really bad. (Burning Desire)
- Believe you can have it. (Belief)
- Go for it. (Action)
- Grit it out. (Tenacity)
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Once you understand the process and then you’re willing to follow the process, it just works.
I love coming out here and I spend a lot of time just looking at stuff like this because this has been one of my dreams for many, many years, was to be able to live where I can look at the ocean every day.
I look back and I think about all the goals that I’ve had in my life, and all the goals that I’ve set, and all the goals that I didn’t achieve, which was most of them. Now, with a new year on us 2018 what are we going to do different this year to achieve your goals that maybe in the past you’ve not achieved? How is it that some people always seem to accomplish their goals and so many of us spend year, after year, after year frustrated because it seems like it’s the same old thing every year. I set goals and I don’t achieve them and I don’t seem any closer to my goals than I have been in the past. What gives? What’s the secret? What’s the magic that allows some people to achieve their goals while others don’t, while most people don’t achieve their goals?
I’ve just been breaking that down in my head and I realize achieving goals is really a process. It’s nothing more than a predictable, identifiable, duplicatable process that once you understand the process and then you’re willing to follow the process it just works. I want to just talk about the four things that are going to be required, four things you got to do this year in 2018 to be able to achieve your goals this year and beyond.
It starts with if you want to achieve you got to want it really, really bad. Nothing is going to make a goal become reality unless you really want it. That it is something that you want so badly that you think about it nonstop that you’re almost to the point of obsession.
Napoleon Hill, in his book Think and Grow Rich, he called it having a burning desire for something. In his conversations that he had with Andrew Carnegie what Andrew Carnegie would say was, that if you want to achieve a goal, if you want to achieve anything that that goal has to almost become to the point of an obsession. That it’s like you can’t stop thinking about it. When you think about it over, and over, and over there’s that desire, it just pulls you toward the goal and it pulls all of your resources, it pulls the powers of the universe, the people you know, all the things around you. All the resources in your universe come to bear toward that goal when you want it bad enough.
I think a lot of times we set a goal and we want it but we’re afraid to want it too bad. We’re afraid that if I want it too bad and then it doesn’t happen I’m going to be disappointed, I’m going to be let down. Then, I think it’s also what we do to our children when they set a goal or they have a dream and they say, “I want to do something,” and we like, “Okay honey, you can do anything you want but …,” and then we prepare them for the let down if it doesn’t happen because we don’t want their heart to get broken but that’s not how you achieve goals.
The way you achieve goals is you got to want it so bad that you can’t even entertain the possibility of anything else happening and you’re not willing to entertain the thought of it not happening, which leads to the second key to achieving goals. That is you got to believe it. You’ve really got to believe I can do this, that I’m capable of doing it.
One of the most famous statements of philosophies of achievement is if you can conceive it and you can believe it you can achieve it. If you can conceive it and believe you can achieve it. It starts with conceiving it, which means I’ve got to want it and then I’ve got to believe that I can have it. No matter how bad you want it if you believe, “Yeah, but that’s not realistic for me,” then your subconscious brain is going to shut you down at every turn.
That limit on your belief is going to get you and the reality is that if you want something bad enough, and you set your mind to it, and it’s the right thing for you to get, and you’re willing to go for it, then you know you can have it. You got to believe it and if don’t believe it, if you have a hard time believing it change some things in your environment. Change what you’re putting into your head that causing those limiting beliefs. Change the people you’re hanging out with, find somebody that can help sow that belief into you. Maybe a mentor, maybe a partner, maybe a coach, maybe a friend that will sow that belief into you and help you get to a point where you can believe that you can achieve it.
Then the third thing, real simple, you got to go for it. You got to be willing to go for it. You got to be willing to take the action. It doesn’t matter how much you want it and how much you believe it’s possible if you’re not willing to do the work obviously it’s not going to happen. Number three is you got to go for it, take the action.
Then number four, if you want to achieve your goals in 2018 and beyond is you have to be willing to grit it out. What I mean by grit it out is that there’s going to be adversity, there’s going to be setbacks, there’s going to be distractions, there’s going to be things that are going to come along. There’s going to be moments of discouragement or moments of doubt. There’s going to be moments where it’s like, “I don’t know, it’s harder than I thought,” or whatever. At those moments the difference between the people that achieve their goals and the people that don’t achieve their goals is the people that achieve their goals simply are willing to fight through that discouragement, that distraction, those setbacks with a grit and a determination that says, “I will not be denied.”
You got to own that in you. You got to dig deep and find that grit, that determination, that sheer force of will that says, “I’m not going to allow anything to stop me or knock me down.” When you take that process so simple, so duplicatable, not easy but knowing if I just be honest and honor the process and look at it and say, “Do I really want this? I want it. Awesome. Do I believe I can have it? I believe it.” You’re going to have to sow that belief, you’re going to protect that belief, you’re going to have to feed that belief. Then the work of just doing it, the action of over, and over. If it doesn’t seem to be working I’ve got to be relentless and say, “I know this is possible. I know this is possible.”
I set a goal years ago that I wanted to live at the beach, I wanted to live at the ocean. I loved Southern California, it was like everybody around me discouraged me, it was not realistic, you don’t want to go out to California, and it’s too expensive out there, and all of that. I really wanted it and I knew I could do it. I just set that intention and I was willing to do whatever it took and I gritted it out, and when I came out here it was not easy and everything, but for me being able to live in a place where this is the kind of place I can come any day I want is worth it all. It let’s me know anything is possible and if there’s one thing you need to know is anything is possible. That you just got to play to win and always expect yes to everything you want in your life.