How to stay motivated to your goal?

Its last day of 2013 and I am still seriously concerned to help you set goals and achieve them. Goal setting is the only key to your success. When you set clear and most specific goals you are likely to achieve them provided that you stick to your plan and keep evaluating your progress every day. I have already done review of my 2013 and also set goals for 2014. I love to start New Year powerful and want you to do the same as well. Someone nicely said that good beginning is half done; if you start your year in high note you are likely to stay motivated all year long. If you achieve goal set for a single day you will get motivated to achieve more the next day, similarly, if you achieve goal set for a week you will be excited to achieve your month’s goal and at the end you will be elated to see that you have already accomplished goal for a year. Superb! It’s magic of getting bigger things done by breaking them into several smaller fragments.

Click here: What is importance of goal setting?

Breaking bigger goals set for 1 year or 2 year or even for 5 years to smaller goals for months, weeks or day will help you keep in track. We always tend to escape from the job that appears to be too difficult or too hectic. Bigger goals might seem too cool on paper but when it comes to take action we might get demotivated or frustrated or tend to procrastinate. But if we break them to smaller fragments the task appears to be easy and you are less prone to procrastination and chance of achievement increase dramatically. Hence, break your bigger goal to smaller slices of tasks for every week or days. I want to express it more clearly by giving example of my own goal; I have set a goal to run half marathon in December 2014. This goal seems to be too big for me if I don’t plan it properly. I will never be able to build such a huge stamina to run 21 kilo-meters at one go if I prefer not to break it to smaller weekly goals. I have got almost 12 months of time to work on it. I can run 3 kilo-meters currently so I gradually have to build stamina to reach my finish line. I broke it to monthly goal to boost my running distance by 2.5 kilo-meters per month and still broke to boost by 600 meters every week. Finally, I have to increase my running distance by about 80 meters a day. Does it sound easy now? Oh yes! It looks like that I can achieve it as increasing 80 meters of running distance every single day doesn’t sound as  tough as achieving stamina to run 210000 meters in a year. Eventually, at the end of year I will be able to cross my finish line as I broke it to very small daily task. Similarly, you can break your bigger goal to small daily goal before you give up on your goals.

Activity:         

1.      Carry a piece of small paper inked with tasks for a particular day in your pocket (which I usually do), it will remind you of your goal all day long. And yes you can’t even imagine how irresistible you will be until you get all those works mentioned in that small paper piece completely done. Isn’t it powerful tool to achieve your daily goal?

2.      When you wake up in the morning, the very first task you have to do is to plan your day. Once you plan our day, list down the tasks that are to be accomplished on that particular day and promise to yourself that you will get them all accomplished before you go to bed.

Click here: Learn how to set goals.

Set award and punishment for every goal

While setting my goals for 2014 a smart idea of declaring award and punishment trickled down my nerve. We tend to stay in our comfort zone until we are pressurized by deadline or punishment. We are habituated to this behaviour from our childhood so it’s too hard to change at once. So why not use same pressure to get ourselves out of that couch. Declaring award for your goal will help you stay motivated and you will feel tempted to your goal. Not necessarily, your award should be too big it could be as simple as walking to your favourite food palace for dinner. I want to cite example of my own goal; if I complete my goal to run half marathon I will get myself a pair of best sport shoes from my favourite brand.

In the similar manner, having punishment for not being able to achieve targeted goal will create a kind of fear in your inner heart that eventually will force you to take actions that help you achieve your goal. As Robin Sharma explained in his book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari that, The monks in Himalayas used to bath in ice-cold water until their body goes numb if they fail to achieve their goal or slip off the task they were supposed to complete. You can also decide punishment for yourself if you fail to achieve your weekly, monthly or yearly goal. The punishment could me cutting off your luxury like T.V, internet or even your cell phone. One of my friends is getting married on first week of February and I am really very excited to attend his wedding ceremony. But before being eligible to attend his wedding I should have to accomplish all the goals I’ve set for January. Now you can imagine how much effort I will put on to get all my tasks done by end of January. My goals for January are:

1.      To complete 5kms of race by 28^th of January.

2.      To remember 200 GRE words.

3.      To prepare complete handwritten notes of all subjects I read.

4.      To post 4 blog posts on bjaygtm.blogspot.com.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 to you and your family. I send you all the best wishes for your success.

Thank you very much for reading this post. Please like blog on Facebook and keep sending your feedbacks at bjaygtm@gmail.com. 

Your friend,

Bijay