Ten Intentional Choices To Achieve Your Goals

Here are ten intentional choices you can make to overcome inertia and keep momentum for the goals you made in January. Choose to:

1. Re-evaluate your goals. Are they still taking you where you want to go?
2. Assess your purpose. Author Wayne Dyer shares insight on purpose with this statement: “When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived in to my life, then I was prosperous.” Do you know your purpose? Are your goals in Q2 helping you accomplish your purpose?
3. Visualize, imagine, envision, and “picturize” your future. If you do, you can predict the future with this clear image of achievement in your mind.
4. Ink — the missing link? As you start the greatness process, you may wonder why you are not quite on target, as you had imagined in your visualization process. You may have omitted the “inking” part of the thinking process. Every true purpose and mission generates objectives and goals. By taking the time to sit down and document the steps, the time frames, and the estimated completion dates, magic happens. The more clearly goals and objectives are articulated, the more focused your activities become. When your eyes see your goals written down, it becomes a new permanent picture in your subconscious mind which is congruent with your visualization process.
5. Believe in your abilities. Anne Frank, a German-born Jew who wrote a diary while in hiding with her family and four friends in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, said, “Everyone has inside of him/her a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!” Anne Frank’s life was cut short when she died of typhus in a concentration camp, but you have a lifetime ahead of you and this process can make this the greatest year of the rest of your life.
6. Work, toil, exert, and perspire. I remember a statement from days gone by that might sound trite, but still has meaning: Hard work will win when wishy-washy thinking won’t. “What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing and knowing that a flair is not enough. You have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.” This quote is from Margaret Thatcher, first and only woman to hold the post of Prime Minister for the United Kingdom. Notice that her remarks tie together a sense of purpose and hard work. When you work hard at tasks that don’t support your purpose, you are wasting time and decreasing your effectiveness. But combine purpose, hard work, and passion, or as Thatcher calls it, “flair” miracles will happen.
7. Attention to Detail. “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” Daily completing small tasks that lead to your goal is the secret of achieving that goal.
8. Resolve. As you work through the year, your personal resolve is more important than your new year’s resolutions. Resolve is the personal power to make choices, to set goals and to act upon them despite opposition or resistance.
9. Determination. Vince Lombardi was one of the most successful coaches in the history of American football. He was the head coach of the Green Bay Packers from 1959 to 1967, winning five NFL championships during this 8- year tenure. This great motivator said: The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” As Lombardi’s record shows, with determination and hard work, you have more wins than losses. Determination is related to the firmness of your purpose and the emotional attachment and energy devoted to your goals.
10. Do It Daily! As  teenager I remember reading that the key to self-mastery was doing something you didn’t want to do every day. If you counted going to bed at night, then I could check this off regularly. Why Do It Daily is an important principle is because the tasks on our list that bring us closer to our goals conceived and visualized at the beginning of our greatness quest, are difficult. We may look at them and think, “I can’t do that now.” “I’m not sure where to start.” Taking action every day means you can break down your BIG goals into small manageable-sized pieces. You wouldn’t try to eat a whole week’s groceries in one meal. So why bite off more than you can chew in one day?