7 Foolproof Ways To Achieve Your Goals in 2020

8/3/2020 7 Foolproof Ways to Achieve Your Goals in 2020 | by Liz Huber | Medium
You have 2 free stories left this month. Sign up and get an extra one for free.
7 Foolproof Ways to Achieve Your Goals in 2020

How to get the necessary Clarity, Commitment, Focus and Con dence to Succeed
Liz Huber Follow

Dec 29, 2019 · 15 min read
Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash
How did 2019 go for you? Are you proud of yourself?
Did you achieve the goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the year?
https://medium.com/@refinedliz/7-full-proof-ways-to-achieve-your-goals-in-2020-e38db4668ae5 1/13
If not, don’t feel bad — you are not alone: Research shows that 92% of people don’t
achieve their goals.
As a Mindset & Productivity Coach, that statistic doesn’t surprise me at all.
You see, my job is to help people achieve their goals and the end of the year is always a
time where I get the most inquiries about working together. People aren’t happy with the
past year and want to make the next year better. They want to make it the year they
finally achieve their goals and transform their lives.
Over the years, the first intake call with new clients has almost turned into a research
project that allowed me to find out exactly why only 8% of the population succeed at
sticking to their New Year’s resolutions.
I’ve learned that it usually comes down to one of 4 reasons why they weren’t successful:
1. Lack of Clarity: They didn’t set clear enough goals including a proper action plan
and an effective strategy to achieve them.
2. Lack of Commitment: They didn’t fully commit to doing whatever it takes to

achieve their goal and failed to hold themselves accountable.
3. Lack of Focus: They didn’t direct enough time, energy and mental focus to their
goals and got distracted by less important things.
4. Lack of Confidence: They failed to identify and overcome the self-limiting beliefs,
fears, and self-doubt that were holding them back mentally.
By now you probably know the reason why you weren’t able to achieve one or more of
your goals last year.
To make sure this doesn’t happen again, I have collected the most effective strategies I
share with my coaching clients to help them achieve their goals with the necessary
clarity, commitment, focus, and confidence.
Here are 7 foolproof ways to make 2020 your most successful year yet:
. . .
1. Get Clear on Your WHY

You’ve probably heard of the SMART goal-setting technique and know that the right way
to set your goals is to make them:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely
However, the SMART method has one major flaw: It only teaches you how to set your
goals the right way but not how to set the right goals in the first place.
You can come up with the perfect goal-achievement plan but if you pick goals that you
don’t really care about and are not truly motivated to achieve, you’ll set yourself up for
failure right from the start!
Thus, the most important question you need to ask yourself when setting goals is
not WHAT, WHEN or HOW but WHY?
How to Take Action NOW:

Take a few minutes to take each of your 2020 goals through the following questions:
Why is it so important for you to achieve this goal? Is this really what you want?
How will you feel when you get there? Is there a different way to achieve this
feeling?
These questions will make sure that you are setting goals that you are intrinsically
motivated to achieve and don’t pursue out of the wrong reasons (e.g. because all your
friends are doing it but you don’t really care about it).
Where to Learn More:

Book: Find Your Why by Simon Sinek
Podcast: Before You Set a Goal, Connect with Your Why from the Daily New Year’s
Podcast
. . .
2. Create Powerful Habits Around Your Goals

Whatever you want to achieve in life, the basis for success is almost always identifying,
integrating and sticking to powerful habits. I like to think of habits as powerful tools to
automate the goal achievement process: When you do something over and over again, you
are hardwiring a behavior in your brain and thus over time it becomes so natural to you
that you do it almost automatically. Ultimately, your habit is no longer something you
do, but it is part of who you are. As a result, achieving your goal will become effortless.
Here are the 3 keys to building habits that stick:
1. Stick to the same time: Your brain is a lot more likely to create a habit out of
something when you integrate it into your daily schedule. For example, if you want
to work out 3 times a week, pick exact timeslots like Tuesday mornings before work,
Thursdays after work and Saturday mornings. That way, your brain starts to
associate these times with going to the gym and it will be easier for you to follow-
through on your habit. To keep track of all your habits and priorities, I recommend
setting up a weekly default schedule with recurring time-blocks. You can check out
my own weekly schedule template to give you an idea of how that could look like.
2. Engineer a trigger: Your alarm clock, a notification on your phone or something

happening in your day (e.g. you are leaving work, coming back from your lunch
break) can act as a powerful reminder to kickstart your habit. These triggers will
help your brain remember that it’s time to do your habit and thus reinforce the
creation of new neural pathways in your brain. But what’s even more powerful than
artificial triggers are existing habits: In fact, one of the easiest ways to build a new
habit is to stack it on top of an existing one. For example: Meditate after you brush
your teeth in the morning and work out after your meditation. When you stack
multiple habits, they become a powerful routine that acts as a goal-achievement
machine.
3. Stick to it for at least 2 months: Research shows that it takes exactly 66 days to
form a new habit loop in your brain. Thus, it’s crucial to not take significant breaks
in the first 2 months. After that, it should feel almost natural to do your habit.

Find 2–3 daily or weekly habits for each of your goals. Here are a few examples:
Goal: Lose Weight

> Habits: daily workout, weekly grocery shopping & meal prep on Sundays, getting up
30 min earlier every day to have a healthy breakfast
Goal: Start your Own Business

> Habits: Block 4 hrs on Saturday Mornings and 2 hrs on Tuesday and Thursday
Evenings for working on business ideas
As you can see, even if you can’t define a super clear habit for your goal, you can always
just make it a habit to block certain times in your day to work on your goal.

Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Article: The Simple Art of Creating Long-Lasting Habits by Niklas Göke
. . .
3. Keep Your Mind Focused on Your Goals

Most people start out the new year with grand resolutions and plans, but a few weeks in
they lose motivation to keep going or simply forget about the goals they set.
That’s why it’s essential to keep your goals top of mind at all times. Writing them down
once won’t cut it. You need to remind yourself of your goals and WHY they are important
to you every single day. That way, you’ll stay mentally focused on what is important and
highly motivated and thus will find it easier to make day-to-day decisions in a way that
supports your goals.
Here are a few great ways to do that:

Goal Review: The simplest way to keep your goals top of mind is to look at them
every single day. Take a few conscious minutes in the morning to review your goals
and action plans and remind yourself why you are doing it and what needs to
happen to get there. This is a great exercise to combine with day planning because it
will help you prioritize the right things and gets you pumped for the day ahead.
Goal Journaling: Writing helps you reinforce your goals, connect with your vision
and even generate ideas to help you achieve your goals. Start by writing down your
goals in your journal. Then, do some freewriting about your goals — just write down
whatever comes to mind and let it flow for a couple of minutes. Finish up with
writing about your dream life and how it will feel when you achieve your goals (you
can write about your ideal day, the type of people you hang out, the clothes you
wear, where you live etc.).
Visualization Meditation: Close your eyes for 5–10 min and play a movie in your
head about your goals. Imagine achieving your goals and how it feels when you get
there. Visualize yourself showing up every day with clarity, confidence, and
determination. See yourself enjoying the process and loving the journey towards
achieving your goals.

Pick one of the strategies from above and make it part of your morning routine. You can
also come up with your own way of connecting to your goals. Just make sure that your
chosen ritual gives you the necessary clarity, motivation, and confidence to achieve your
goals.

Article: How To Write In Your Journal To Improve Yourself and Achieve Your Goals
by Benjamin Hardy, PhD
Article: Visualization Techniques to Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step

Guide by Jack Canfield
Article: 12 Empowering Morning Routine Habits To Prime Yourself For A Highly

Productive & Successful Day by Jari Roomer
. . .
4. Plan your Time & Energy According to Your Goals

A few weeks into the new year, life tends to get busy again and it can become a challenge
to find time for our goals.
Yes, life happens.
To everyone.
But the 8% of the population who actually achieve their goals don’t let less important
things distract them from what matters. They relentlessly focus their time and energy on
their goals.
Here is how you can do the same:
Plan your day the night before: When you don’t take control of your schedule, you
can easily fall victim to letting other people dictate your day — and before you know
it — the day is over and you didn’t get a chance to spend time on the things that
actually matter to you. But when you plan your day the night before and make sure
you have blocked out time for your most important habits, goals and priorities, you
don’t leave anything up to chance. Instead, you’ll start your day with clarity and
commitment.
Start your day with your most important thing: Want to work out daily? Do it
before work so nothing that happens later in the day will derail you from going to
the gym — it doesn’t matter if you need to stay late at work, get a last-minute
invitation for happy hour drinks or are simply tired after a long day — if you work
out in the morning, there are no excuses! Want to start a business? Get up an hour
earlier to work on it before going to the office. Want to make more money in your
business? Focus on the task with the highest impact in the morning — that way you
won’t procrastinate on the really important stuff!
Block your high-energy times for your goals: If you are an energetic morning
person, don’t schedule any meetings in the mornings — instead, use your energy
and focus in the morning to get ahead on your most important projects. If you are a
night owl, think about spending your evenings productively and taking some time
off during the day instead. I usually get pretty tired in the afternoons so I like to take
an afternoon nap and then work on tasks that require less energy and mental focus. I
am okay with having a less productive afternoon because I know that my mornings
are usually high-output and I’ll have a surge of energy around 7:00 pm, so I’ll spend
another hour before dinner knocking out some items on my to-do list. Whatever
your personal energy patterns are, don’t waste your high-energy times — take
advantage of them to further your goals!

Create a daily and weekly schedule based on your goals and priorities and the best times
for them. I am a huge fan of sticking to a weekly default schedule as it allows you to fully
optimize your time and energy for what is most important (without taking up a lot of
time to plan each week).

Article: Why my Schedule Looks the Same, Every Single Week
Download: Weekly Schedule Template
Article: 7 Ways to Identify your Most Important Task
. . .
5. Eliminate Distractions from your Environment

Your environment plays a big role in your chances of success when it comes to achieving
your goals. This is because we all have limited willpower each day and will eventually
give into external temptations when we keep being exposed to them.
For example, when you have cookies and ice cream at home, it is just a matter of time
until you will eat them, even though you want to lose weight. You might be fine for a few
hours or even days but eventually, you’ll have a bad day or are really tired and you’ll turn
to the ice cream to soothe you.
On the other hand, if your environment is completely free from temptations, you are a
lot less likely to eat that ice cream because you would need to go out of your way to get
it.
Another example: You really want to study for your exam and get a good grade — but
you are hanging out with friends who care more about having a good time than
excelling in school. As a result, they’ll constantly tempt you to leave the library early and
do something fun. However, if you hang out with highly competitive A-students instead,
they will drive you to study even harder and as a result, you’ll get a better grade.
I think you get the point.
Here are a few effective ways to optimize your environment for success:
Prepare your environment for your habits: Set up a meditation corner in your
bedroom, store your running shoes at work, stock up on Tupperware to take your
prepped meals to work, get noise-canceling headphones so you can focus on your
most important tasks — make your environment support your goals.
Remove any temptations and triggers: Don’t keep chocolate and ice cream in your
apartment, don’t hang out with people that make you drink and smoke and avoid
skipping meals that cause you to binge later on — identify your nemesis and remove
them from your environment.
Surround yourself with people that are in line with the goals you want to
achieve: Make friends with the healthy lunch group at work, join a mastermind
group and flood your brain with content from great minds through books, podcasts,
and videos.
Remove distractions: Leave your phone in the locker when you are studying in the
library, go to an empty meeting room when you work on an important project, close
email and Slack and turn off notifications for a few hours —figure out what distracts
you most and remove it from your environment.

Evaluate your environment based on your goals: Does your apartment, place of work
and the people you hang out with support or derail your goals? Come up with a few
strategies to optimize your environment to make achieving your goals inevitable.

Book: Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success by Benjamin
Hardy
Article: Motivation isn’t Enough. Environment Literally Shapes Your Life by Mayo
Oshin
. . .
6. Hold Yourself Accountable

Most people never fully commit to their goals and thus fail to achieve them. Creating
true commitment requires two things:
1. Making a decision that you will do whatever it takes to achieve your goal. Setting
goals is very different from making a decision. A decision makes achieving your goal
inevitable.
2. Creating measures to hold yourself accountable. No matter how motivated you

are at the beginning of the year, you will soon encounter days where you don’t feel
like working on your goals. Life will get busy. Other things will seem more important
(even though you know deep down that they are not). Routine will kick in and your
habit will start to get boring. In short, it will get really f*cking hard to stick to your
goals. That’s where accountability comes in: you need to find a way to make sure
you are holding the promises you made to yourself.
Here are a few great ways to create accountability for your goals:
Hire a coach: Working with a personal life or business coach is the ultimate way to
hold yourself accountable. Most coaches work in 3 to 6 months programs that start
with a goal-setting session and include weekly coaching calls to check-in on your
progress. A good coach can help you improve your time management, overcome
your fear, release your limiting beliefs and refine your goal-achievement strategy. As
a coach myself, I know that half the reason my clients achieve their goals is that they
have weekly calls with me and they put a lot of money down. That brings me to the
next point…
Invest in your goals: Nobody likes to lose money. In fact, research shows that we
are more afraid to lose what we have than to gain something. This is because of the
sunk-cost effect. When we invest in something, we feel we need to make it worth our
investment. Although this effect can work against you in other situations, it
absolutely works in your favor when it comes to achieving your goals: If you make a
big investment like hiring a coach, joining a very expensive gym or signing up for a
class, you are much more likely to stick to your goals.
Create social pressure: Nobody likes to look stupid in front of other people. Thus,
involving your friends in your goal achievement process is a fantastic way to make
sure you’ll stick to your goals. Here are a few ideas: post your goals publicly on social
media, get an accountability partner who works on the same goal, join a group or
class with regular meet-ups (like a 12-week boot camp) or create a contract (my
friend Matt Sandrini wrote more about how he uses the personal contract strategy
here).
Track yourself: Measuring your goal-achievement progress and tracking your habits
is a great way to hold yourself accountable because it requires you to check-in with
yourself daily and report what you’ve done. I recommend getting a mobile app like
Streaks or Productive to track habits like working out, not smoking and meditating,
as well as set up a simple Google sheet to keep track of any KPI’s you are measuring
(e.g. weight loss, articles published, sales).
Habit Tracking App Streaks

Pick your personal accountability strategy and set it up.

Book: QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability
at Work and in Life by John Miller
Podcast: Why Accountability is the Real “Secret to Success” and How to Create it by
Hal Elrod
. . .
7. Eliminate all Limiting Beliefs and Fears

When you follow everything from points 1 to 6 in this article but still struggle to achieve
your goals, chances are you are mentally blocked! In fact, most of my clients have one
big mental block that holds them back from taking action and getting the results they
desire.
This is because our brain is designed to keep us safe and thus doesn’t like unfamiliar
things. Its job is to keep you away from the things that scare you. As a result, you
procrastinate or self-sabotage.
But here are two important things you can do to overcome your fear, self-doubt and
limiting beliefs:
Overcome Fear of Failure by Making Peace with the Worst-Case Scenario: Ask
yourself: “What am I actually afraid of? What is the worst thing that could happen?”
Then go even deeper and ask yourself: “Why am I so afraid of this?”. Then, make a
plan to deal with the worst-case scenario. When you realize that it’s actually not that
bad and you’d be prepared to deal with it, you signal your brain that it is safe to take
the leap.
Release Limiting Beliefs by Reprogramming your Brain: Journal on the following

question: “Why is it not possible for me to achieve my dreams?” Let your thoughts
flow on paper to come up with all the reasons that are limiting your success. It can
also help to go through the most common limiting beliefs and see if they apply to
you. Once you know your superficial reasons (e.g. “I can’t start my own business
because I don’t have enough experience”), go deeper by asking yourself “WHY?”
over and over again. This simple method helps you get to the root belief that is
holding you back. Then, rephrase your limiting belief into an empowering belief and
use it as an affirmation every day to reprogram your brain. You can also use tapping
or energy editing to release limiting beliefs from your energy system.

Take a few moments to journal about what you think might be holding you back
mentally from achieving your goals and create an action plan to deal with your blocks.

Free Ebook: 6 Mental Blocks Holding You Back in Life
TED Talk: Fear-Setting by Tim Ferriss
Productivity Self Work Lifestyle Psychology
About Help Legal
Get the Medium app

7 Foolproof Ways To Achieve Your Goals in 2020 - by Liz Huber - Medium

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

7 Foolproof Ways To Achieve Your Goals in 2020 - by Liz Huber - Medium

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

8/3/2020 7 Foolproof Ways to Achieve Your Goals in 2020 | by Liz Huber | Medium

Liz Huber Follow

Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

How did 2019 go for you? Are you proud of yourself?

As a Mindset & Productivity Coach, that statistic doesn’t surprise me at all.

2. Lack of Commitment: They didn’t fully commit to doing whatever it takes to

1. Get Clear on Your WHY

How to Take Action NOW:

Where to Learn More:

2. Create Powerful Habits Around Your Goals

Here are the 3 keys to building habits that stick:

2. Engineer a trigger: Your alarm clock, a notification on your phone or something

How to Take Action NOW:

Goal: Lose Weight

Goal: Start your Own Business

Where to Learn More:

Article: The Simple Art of Creating Long-Lasting Habits by Niklas Göke

3. Keep Your Mind Focused on Your Goals

Here are a few great ways to do that:

How to Take Action NOW:

Where to Learn More:

Article: Visualization Techniques to Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step

Article: 12 Empowering Morning Routine Habits To Prime Yourself For A Highly

4. Plan your Time & Energy According to Your Goals

Yes, life happens.

Here is how you can do the same:

How to Take Action NOW:

Where to Learn More:

Download: Weekly Schedule Template

Article: 7 Ways to Identify your Most Important Task

5. Eliminate Distractions from your Environment

I think you get the point.

How to Take Action NOW:

strategies to optimize your environment to make achieving your goals inevitable.

Where to Learn More:

6. Hold Yourself Accountable

2. Creating measures to hold yourself accountable. No matter how motivated you

Habit Tracking App Streaks

How to Take Action NOW:

Where to Learn More:

7. Eliminate all Limiting Beliefs and Fears

Release Limiting Beliefs by Reprogramming your Brain: Journal on the following

How to Take Action NOW:

Where to Learn More:

TED Talk: Fear-Setting by Tim Ferriss

Productivity Self Work Lifestyle Psychology

About Help Legal

Get the Medium app

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen