How to Get Better at Achieving Your Goals by Dr. Ranjana Kanungo , Department of Commerce, SICA College, Indore

How to Get Better at Achieving Your Goals

 Intentions are never enough. Even full-blown goal-setting isn’t worth much if you don’t do it right.

You should always start first with stating the big goal.What would you like to accomplish in the next three months or so?

We tend to focus on the end goals rather than the small and significant steps we take to get us there.One thing I’ve learned is that you should always celebrate small success.You must take a small success over an ambitious failure any day. Acknowledging small wins gives a feeling of pride and happiness making us want to go further towards our next achievement. Small successes show us that we really can change our behavior in a lasting way.

Next, you can break this larger idea down into long-term goals. Long term goals may take up to three months to accomplish.

Break it down again into short-term goals which takes one to three weeks to accomplish.Now, break down your goal into very specific little steps. What can you do today? Tomorrow? Try to break your little steps down until they are so easy you feel no resistance to them.

Set up your environment to make things easier. Our environment dramatically influences our behavior.We like to think our behaviour is all our personality and preferences, or that it’s the strength of our iron-clad will that determines our success, but, actually, we are hugely influenced by the people, places, and technology that happen to be in close physical proximity to us.

This means that to be successful in reaching our goals, it’s very helpful to set up our environment to make things easier, to create structural solutions. This usually means removing temptations—if your goal is to stop checking your phone while you drive, keep the phone in the trunk.

The utmost important thing is Identify why your goal is important to you.Think less about what you want to achieve and focus in on how you want to feel. Identify a “why” for your goal that will motivate you over the long haul. We do better when we let go of our logical reasons for why we want to do something.

Make the behavior more enticing.We human beings pursue rewards. When our brains identify a potential reward, they release dopamine, a feel-good chemical messenger.

At last, Make the behavior more habitual.Can you make your behaviours related to accomplishing your goal habitual in any way? Do this by anchoring behaviour in existing habits or routines, or even a schedule, using a When/Then statement: “When I do X, then I will Y.” In this way we can get better at achieving goals.