The Only Thing That Can Keep You From Reaching a Goal 

Source: Anete Lusina / Pexels

Welcome to the third in our series on how to actually achieve your New Year’s resolutions.

In our last two blogs, we’ve been laying out some surefire strategies that outsmart the habit of reneging on our goals:

1. “Do the opposite” of the defense of too much discipline (pushing oneself too hard).

2. Set goals that are highly concrete and specific.

In this blog, we discuss a third strategy to ensure success with our resolutions, and we’ll finish up with a final strategy in next week’s post.

But before we jump in, have you taken me up on the invitation to follow these steps as we meet this challenge together? It’s not too late to start—the only need is that we actually do start! (See previous posts.)

Set your goal on a timeline.

Our third tip for meeting a goal is to set that goal on a timeline.

Pick an end date by which the entire goal will be fulfilled. Then, move backward, step-by-step, to the present, setting sub-goals and the dates by which you’ll reach them.

These are the sub-goals that will lead you to the realization of your complete goal by the end date.

Ideally, you’ll want to fill in one sub-goal for each day of the coming week. At the end of the week, set more sub-goals for each day of the following week, etc.

This way, you’ll know your action step for every day (but no need to become obsessive about it—that can be a defense in itself! A relaxed and even excited attitude tends to work best).

Make your goal concrete and specific.

Once again, as we saw with the “movie screen” device from the last blog, setting our goals on a timeline helps us get concrete and specific so that we can actually see ourselves taking steps to achieve the goal by the chosen date.

Imagine, by contrast, if you simply say, “My goal is to join a volunteer organization.” It’s impossible to see yourself in that scenario in any effective way without specifying the type of volunteer organization, when you’re going to join it, and all the steps involved in figuring out how to join and actually arriving there on the pre-determined date.

But the greatest value of setting goals on a timeline is that if (or perhaps we should say “when”) something comes along to thwart your plans, you have a clear structure in place to renegotiate the timeline so you’re still sure to arrive at the final destination by the desired date.

The only thing that can keep you from reaching a goal

And remember, as we always say in the Deconstructing Anxiety program, the only thing that can keep you from reaching a goal is some form of defense.

So when you find yourself knocked off course, you know what to do: “Do the opposite” of the defense*, face the fear it was hiding, and discover it doesn’t have the power to stop you after all.

Until next week...

For a FREE e-book on "What To Do In an Anxiety Emergency", visit www.deconstructinganxiety.com and scroll to near the bottom of the page.