You want to write a book.
You want to speak on stage.
You want to make six figures this year.
All beautiful goals and outcomes, right? Yet once the dopamine wears off after the ambitious declaration, we’re faced with figuring out how we’re going to make it all happen.
That’s the moment we get stuck, time passes, and what once was an inspiring goal has now become a forgotten memory.
Until now. In this post, I’ll share the four ways you can fall in love with the process of creating audacious goals and how to ensure you dominate them faster than you ever imagined possible.
#1 Pick an Audacious Target
Everything starts with an audacious target—and too often, we let ourselves off the hook. The problem with giving us a year to launch a product, business or service is simple:
Work expands to fill the time available, made famous by Parkinson’s Law. We’ve all experienced the power of cramming for a final exam and somehow passing.
While not a strategy for long-term sanity or success, we can use the Parkinson’s principle to set audacious targets and manufacture a sense of urgency.
Action: With your bold goal, set an audacious completion and a target date. Yes, pick an exact date on the calendar.
#2 Reverse Engineer Your Target with a Daily Focus
You have your audacious target, and you’re already nervous. You’re wondering not only if it’s possible to pull it off, but how you’re going to do it.
Take a moment. Inhale and exhale. After the first step, we are going to reverse engineer your target to a daily action step you can take right now.
If you’re writing a book, this means choosing a daily word target, such as 500 or 1,000 words.
If you’re looking to speak on stage, this means a certain number of weekly reachouts to potential places to speak, say five.
This isn’t rocket science, but here’s the kicker:
You don’t do anything else before achieving your daily focus.
No email, no social, nothing—until it’s done and you’ve knocked down the domino.
Action: Define your daily process action—what must be done today will move you towards your audacious goal? It must be non-negotiable.
#3 Bulletproof Your Environment
You’ve got your audacious goal, now you have a daily process. Welcome to the world of simplicity.
The truth for most people is they are scared straight of simplicity because there’s nowhere to hide.
Yet it’s not enough to simply do the above in a world of endless distraction, stimulus, and noise.
Now it’s time to bulletproof your environment to ensure your success. For me, I break down environment with my clients into the following:
• People. The people, conversations, social connections and relationships you’re engaged in.
• Places. The environments, the workspace, home life and other places you’re spending time in.
• Spaces. Similar to places, but think your immediate surrounding. Your desk. Your living room.
Now that we’ve identified these, we ask a simple question:
Is the above serving the audacious goal and the daily process targets I’ve created?
If it’s a yes, keep engaging and spending time in it.
If it’s a no, you have to make a decision, and be ruthless about it.
If you’re inspired by your audacious goal, but the people around you are naysayers, time vampires and your office is a mess of endless distraction—well, we know how it’s going to turn out.
Action: Ensure the above is directly in alignment with your audacious goal.
#4 Have Resources on the Line
The last piece of the puzzle is simple: have resources on the line.
Urgency is rare in life and must be manufactured. If we’re the only ones who know about our audacious goal, it’s easy to back out when we don’t feel like pushing on.
When I was writing my latest book, The 1% Rule, I had resources on the line. I’d invested thousands in my publisher and they were waiting for me to get it done.
Or, when I recently took on learning the guitar, hiring an instructor and having to show up every week ensured I did what makes people really great at instruments: practice.
For you, this can look like anything, such as investing in a program, or a mastermind or mentor that holds you accountable and on point during the process.
To quote Sterling Griffin, “People don’t pay if they don’t pay attention.” How true it is.
Action: Find a way to put yourself on the line financially to ensure the above comes to life and you are required to report back to others.
It’s time for you to put this into action and commit to your audacious goal. Notice the word choice—commitment.
It means you’re all in, and you realize you will have days where you’re not as inspired by the goal as when you set it, and that’s okay too.
What I detailed in this post is exactly what I wrote about in my latest book, The 1% Rule: How to Fall in Love with the Process and Achieve Your Wildest Dreams, where you’ll learn the power of the process and why most people stay stuck in the land of hoping, praying and wishing.
If you’re reading this, I know that’s not you.
Now, it’s time to create.
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