The Simple Mindset Secret to Achieving All Goals

Do you feel overwhelmed by even considering establishing longer-term health, financial, career, or relationship goals like two, three, five, or ten years from now? If so, how good are you at setting and fulfilling short-term goals, such as a month, a quarter, or a year from now? What about your daily goals?

You see, short-term and long-term goals go hand in hand, but the most successful people tend to establish their long-term priorities first and then work out the details, which are all about the short-term goals in the meantime. Think of a gorgeous painting or a breathtaking sculpture, if you prefer, that catches your eye from the other end of a beautiful art gallery. It is so powerful that it draws you closer like a magnet. As you approach, eager to explore it more in depth, you begin to notice finer and finer details. It’s as if each move or “step” the artist or sculptor has made reveals itself right in front of your eyes, down to the finest element. 

Setting your goals involves a similar process. It’s like walking, painting, or carving, you know. One step, one stroke, one chisel, then the next. I bet you fell a couple of times while you were first learning to walk, but chances are you don’t even remember those moments, nor did they stop you from achieving the goal of learning to walk. How easy or hard is it for you to envision yourself as being the painter or sculptor of your own life? Or both?

This analogy is important, because even the most ambitious long-term goals work the exact same way. One action step at a time, every day, is all you need to get there, provided that you never stop taking the first step and then the next and the next. Determination keeps you going, while perseverance helps you overcome the harder steps or tasks along the way. In addition, resilience is what comes in handy when surprises that are unrelated to the goal-acquisition process show up yet you must face and deal with these, too, timely and effectively.

If you imagine your big goal or dream as a spectacular building, then the smaller goals are your building blocks, each of which has to be perfectly placed and maintained, so that your entire structure starts out on a solid, healthy foundation and then grows taller and stronger until it is finally built. If you are medically or otherwise health-inclined, this idea is so close to the notion of your body working at its best when each and every cell is in perfect health in order to perform its vitally important functions at its best! Or, if you are more mathematically or numbers-driven, consider just as simple an idea that every dollar is made out of a hundred pennies, so the way you take care of the various small monetary amounts crossing your path will ultimately determine when you would secure possession of sums that you consider substantial, how long you’d be able to keep them, and how well you would grow them into reliable cash-flowing assets.  

Do you focus on how hard or how beautiful your goal is? Needless to say, it can be both, and I truly hope it is beautiful and challenging because, how would you ever get inspired to work towards reaching your full potential if it were otherwise? But I want you to visualize the hard part in relation to the benefits you’ll get from overcoming it, such as becoming a stronger and more self-reliant version of yourself, for example. And, I want you to hold the vision of how beautiful your dream is close to your heart at all times, because that vision is what gives you strength right now, at this very moment, and what will keep your desire to achieve irrepressible in the future! Here is where the goal-setting mindset circle comes to a closure — by reevaluating how truly valuable and desirable your goals and dreams are to you.

Are they really yours? If so, you’d do everything to get to where you want and need to be. How strong is your enthusiasm as you awaken every day and how compelling does it remain throughout your day? The stronger and more elated you feel while thinking about your goals, the higher the likelihood that they are truly yours and yours only. It can be sad to constantly try and live primarily for the fulfillment of other people’s goals, sometimes without knowing it. Quite a few people spend years submerged under the ambitions of parents or other influential figures who have “helped” them form a wrong perception as to whose goals they are to pursue in order to thrive and enjoy fulfilling lives.

Use every little success on your way to acquiring your dream as a reference point in moments of self-doubt. Bring these successes to your emotional memory as vividly as possible and re-experience them as fully as you can. Nobody could calculate the true value of your dreams but you, and nothing speaks more clearly of the value of your efforts than the results they bring to your personal growth and your perception of a meaningful life.