Goal Setting

How to Effectively Set and Achieve Your Personal Goals

Pick up any success book, read posts from success blogs like this one, or talk to anyone that has become successful in anything, and a common theme that you will read and hear is that you need to set goals! You should set short term, medium, and long term goals to help you achieve the success that you want. There are essential pieces of the goal-setting puzzle that many people miss. I will explain what these pieces of the puzzle are and they can help you to set and achieve your personal goals. In addition, I will explain how a critical question or self observation can direct you on whether or not your goal is a solid one.

The goals that you set for yourself to achieve any level of success should comprise of at least three types: A short term, medium, and long term goal. Short term goals are the daily goals that you set for yourself. These are the goals that you should be thinking of when you first wake up in the morning and as your head hits the pillow at night. These goals are the daily habits that you do in your life on a consistent, everyday basis. Each day that you go out into the world, you should be expecting to achieve that one daily goal.

Medium sized goals are those goals that you have where you can track them on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. They are the goals that you will accomplish by continuing to meet your short term or daily goals. The daily goals will lead to your weekly, monthly or quarterly goal.

Finally, long term goals are those goals that you can evaluate yearly. Again, the short term and medium goals consistently attained will lead to your overall long term goal for your life. For example, perhaps you are looking to retire early; within the next 1-2 years. You have a business vehicle that will allow you to accomplish that with the right amount of work and effort. Your daily goals may be to network with people on a daily basis and ask or show them how they can be a part of your business team. Maybe it is selling some products on a daily basis. By being consistent and networking or selling a product everyday, you will then be able to meet your medium goal which may be to have a certain amount of people in your business network or a particular monthly sales goal. If you are consistently hitting your medium goals, then over a period of a year or two, you will achieve your long term goal of retiring early! Do you see how this all falls into place? That is why goal setting is crucial to your success. Setting goals helps to steer all of your thoughts and activities into productivity. It is like having GPS for your life. You can follow your daily, weekly/monthly, and yearly goals to direct you where you want to be.

One of the pieces of the puzzle that most people miss are setting proper goals. When I say proper goals, I am not saying that one goal is better than the other, you have to decide that for yourself. What I am saying is that the goals that you set for yourself (short, medium, long) should be attainable with some good effort. There is nothing that will throw you off track quicker in goal setting than to set goals that are just too unrealistic. From the previous example, if you have never networked or sold a product for your business, but you set your goal to meet 10 people per day, you will probably become very frustrated a couple of days into the pursuit of your goal. If you don’t hit your daily goal for 3-4 days, you end up not even trying anymore because it just is not realistic for you to meet that many people right away. So make sure that your goals are far enough out that you need to put in some good, honest work to hit them, but that they are attainable. If you find that the goals that you set are too easy or too hard, you can always go back and adjust them. Just set the goals!!

The second piece of the puzzle is a question or observation that you should make about yourself, and that is: Are your goals forcing you to change? A goal is effective only if it forces you to change. Goals should cause you to stretch and get out of your comfort zones. It will be difficult for you to hit goals without some kind of change on your end. Let the goals help you to become more than you thought that you could be and change for the better! Setting goals and changing can both be scary. However, both are necessary for you to move forward in your life and achieve your personal goals.

Set your goals now! Develop short, medium and long term goals for your life and begin to consistently work toward achieving each of them. You may not hit your goals the first time you set them, but that is okay. For me personally, there are many goals in which I did not accomplish on my first attempt. However, I simply re-set them again and worked hard and consistently until I achieved them. In fact, there are still some goals that I am working on as I write this, but isn’t that what makes life exciting?

Let me know what you did to set and work towards achieving your goals…

To Your Goal Setting!

Ken Cloutier

 

 

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Feed Your Dream, Not Your Fears

The choice is yours; you can either feed your dream and take action or feed your fears and remain where you are. I see many people who want more out of life, whether it be to start a business, go back to school, or pursue a hobby that they have always wanted to do.
Fear is one of the main hindrances for people in our society today. They don’t know how to cope, and therefore overcome their fears. Some people have a fear of speaking to other people, some have a fear of the unknown; not willing to take a risk, and, as crazy as it sounds, some people have fear of success! 

There are many ways to cope with fear that I have written about in other posts on my blog. For this particular entry, I am focusing on your dreams and desires rather than the fear that is preventing you from achieving your dreams. When you focus on your goals and dreams, you are able to flood positive thoughts to you mind. When you mind is focused on the positive, good results will follow. You will begin to take action towards your goals and dreams which is where everything starts. Ways to focus on your dream can include associating with others who have similar goals and dreams, taking pictures or hanging pictures of your goals, actually seeing your goals; test drive a car, take a tour of a multimillion dollar home, etc. The key here is to be so consumed with your goals and dreams that it becomes emotional and you can already see yourself as having what you desire. It really is as simple as that, you either acknowledge your fears or acknowledge your dreams. I pray that you choose the latter!

If you are looking for a vehicle that can help you to achieve your dreams, or just create some extra cash to help you on your way, watch this video of my wife and I and you can see how we have been able to pursue our dreams!

We will see you on the other side!

To Your Success!

Ken Cloutier

 

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Action Is The Key!

Every goal, every dream, and every success that we achieve comes about by action. Most people want success and have a plan on how to achieve that success.They think about everything that they have to do and write down an action plan but fail to do the one thing that will help them get where they want to and that is take action.

The fact is, the very action that brings about success or goal achievement is usually the action that moves people out of their comfort zone. The reason why most people don’t take action is that they do not want to get out of their comfort zone. It is easier to stay put than to put themselves in a position to fail and look bad. The people who are willing to step out of their comfort zone are generally the same people who go on to achieve great success.

So how do you take action if you are somebody who likes to think and ponder before moving forward? I like to describe this as paralysis by analysis. These individuals think about the positives and negatives of their decision but never take any action to make their goals happen. If you fall into this category, here is a way that you can begin to take action but make your thoughts more productive: Have your thoughts always lean toward taking action. In other words, your thoughts should be on how can I achieve these goals rather than all of the obstacles that are in the way of achieving the goals. Take the “how can I?” approach and not the “I can’t!” attitude. 

For those of you that fall into the take action category but don’t really think too far ahead (that is me), make sure that you are not just busy trying to achieve your goals, etc, but that you are productive. We all have 24 hours in a day. Why is it that some people become so successful while others barely get by? It is not just that they are busy taking action to become successful, but they are productive. They are getting results. If your schedule is filled with all sorts of appointments but you are no further along today than you were a month ago, chances are you have just been busy and not productive. Keep this in mind as you are taking action, is your action taking you closer to accomplishing your goals or moving you further away. That is how you can tell if you are just being busy or being productive.

I hope that you are taking action and are willing to move out of your comfort zone. There is so much more outside of your comfort zone than what lies in it, and your success is so much closer to you than you think. Action is the key to making that happen. If you would like some more tips on how you can take action and what kind of actions that you can take to move closer to the success you want, then click here and I will see you on the other side.

To your successful actions!

Ken Cloutier

 

 

3 Characteristics of Ambitious People

Ambition can be defined as a strong desire for success of any goal through hard work and determination. The great achievers of our time have all had it. Individuals with this quality trait stand out as people who constantly drive towards their goals and dreams .

So what qualities make a person ambitious?

1. Ambitious individuals are always striving towards a goal: Show me a person who is always doing something to achieve their goals and dreams and I will show you an ambitious person. People with this quality are not the type of person to stagnate and sit still. They have an inner clock that is always ticking and signifying that they have to be doing something to move ahead. The goals of the ambitious are like most other people’s; Business goals, family goals, higher education goals, and career goals just to name a few.  The difference with ambitious people is that they will not sit around and wait or expect to achieve these goals. They get up and go after them!

2. They continue to work through setbacks: The ambitious individual will continue to fight towards their goals amid any adversity or setbacks (everyone goes through these). Their goals are that important to them. They persevere; nothing is going to stop them from achieving. The average person would quit and say that it just got too hard or contemplate that they are not worthy or good enough to attain their original goal(s) and therefore settle for something lower that does not take as much effort. Ambitious people don’t have the “settle-for” mentality in their make-up, they only win.

3. Ambitious people always set another goal: Whenever these people hit their goals, they set another one right away. Many ambitious people actually prefer the thrill of the journey of chasing and working towards their goal rather than actually achieving it! They always have to be working towards another level. It is as if they feel empty if they are not striving after another goal. Some people actually look at ambition as a negative! Like they are immoral for having a goal or a dream and call them “materialistic.” The challenge is that they don’t understand the underlying internal satisfaction that the ambitious person has to be in the fight of chasing their goal or dream.

Being ambitious is not just something that you are born with. You can become ambitious at anytime- you must have a goal or find a dream that causes you to take action and you will see the ambition rise within you!

If you are ambitious or have been looking for a way to pursue your goals and dreams, I would like to personally work with you. Just click here and watch a free video.

To your success!

Ken Cloutier

 

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