5 Things You Can Do Today to Achieve Your Goals 

There’s a lot more to achieving your goals than just having the goals. You may wonder how some people seem so great at achieving their goals while other people aren’t so great at it. If you want to start meeting your goals, try doing these five things starting today.

Set Clear, Specific, Doable Goals

For any goal to be achievable. it must first be clear and specific. It also needs to actually be possible. You want to challenge yourself a bit, and set the goal high, but you want to ensure that any goal you set is actually achievable.

For example, let’s say your ultimate goal is to lose 50 pounds. It’s totally possible to lose 50 pounds, but you can’t and shouldn’t do it in one month. So an unreasonable goal is, “I want to lose 50 pounds in a month.” Instead, a more reasonable and doable goal is to state “I want to lose 50 pounds in 30 weeks.” This is in line with health recommendations not to lose more than 2 pounds per week and gives you a little cushion for plateaus and other issues.

Each Goal Needs Actionable Tasks

Additionally, any goal you want to meet needs to have the “why” and the “how” included with the “what” of the goal. Creating a set of actionable tasks or “to-do’s” will keep you on track to reach your goal. In the example above you want to lose 50 pounds in 30 weeks, which will be a little less than 2 pounds per week. You’ll need to look at your diet, and compute the number of calories you should consume and the amount of exercise you need to see those results.

Thankfully, today there are online calculators to help you determine this easily, but let’s say you determine that if you consumed 1,800 calories a day, and walked for 20 minutes each day, you would achieve the goal that you set within the time limit. So, now you need to include planning your meals and fitting in the exercise necessary to reach your goal. But because of the research you did, you know exactly what is needed to be successful with the goal you set. You can see a clear path to success just by going further and adding these actionable tasks:

* Eat 1800 calories a day
* Walk fast for 20 minutes per day

With those steps now in black and white, you can see that it’s very doable and achievable. But there are a few more steps necessary to achieve your goals.

Schedule Everything

Do not leave anything to chance. Instead, schedule in the work necessary to reach your goals into your calendar. Writing a list isn’t good enough — you need to schedule in everything so you don’t miss a single day due to losing track of your schedule. You’ll need time to eat healthier, which requires more prep and cooking, and you’ll need time to fit in the exercise, which is going to take more than 20 minutes due to prep time and recovery time. You need to be realistic about how long each thing will take and schedule them into your day properly.

Take Action

No goal will ever be achieved if regular action isn’t taken each day. Each morning, look at your calendar and follow through on the plans you’ve made and the steps you’ve set for yourself to get things done. All you have to do is at least the minimum necessary each day to reach your goal. When you get through each day having done the minimum, you’re a success — each and every single day. If you get more done, awesome! There is nothing else that can be the result of daily action other than success when you think of it this way.

Repeat

Finally, you’ll need to repeat these steps every day. When you make very specific, clear goals with specific steps to achieving the goal, based on reality, you will soon discover the secret to success that seems to escape so many people. The real secret is in the doing. It’s like going on a long hike — if you take one step at a time, moving in the direction of the map that you’ve planned out for yourself, you will get to the end, and you will be a success.

Reaching your goals is really just a matter of setting reasonable and realistic goals, and then setting up a schedule of actionable tasks and steps that bring about the end result you want. You can start today to achieve your goals.

What goals are you going to start working on today?