Your Success Map

Create a Map

A successful journey involves determining where you are now, deciding where you want to go, and figuring out how to get there. Creating a plan and plotting a course allows you to stay on track, recognize and avoid detours and distractions, measure progress, and move effectively toward goals. Without a plan, you can’t know where you are, and cannot strategize to get to where you want to go. If you don’t know where you want to go (a goal), you can’t figure out how to get there.

11 Steps to Ignite Success

The following steps will guide success when coupled with the blueprint of how to establish specific, attainable goals:

• Have your needs and values in sharp focus.
• Know what you do uniquely well.
• Assess specific strengths, passions, and weaknesses
• Establish SMART goals: 
  1. Specific
  2. Measurable
  3. Achievable
  4. Relevant
  5. Time-Bound
• Determine 3 Key Initiatives to take for each goal (timetable: 1-2 weeks)
• Decide on the Next Best Action for each initiative (timetable: 2-3 days)
• Structure a strategy to reach and stretch each goal
• Increase tolerance of planned risk with associated fear
• Focus on specific results, action, and momentum regarding goals
• Continue assessment of disciplined activity with refinement of goals
• Endorse your progress

The time frame for each objective must be specified so that the sense of mastery can occur. A goal may have a several month timeframe. Each goal should have an initiative that can occur within the next several days, and each initiative should have a next best action, to begin within the next day or do.

Apply SMART Goals to a Personal Mission Statement

Five key questions apply SMART goals to a personal mission statement:
Who?
Who should accomplish the objective? In conjunction with others? Should certain aspects be delegated?
What?
What must happen focuses on specific outcomes within a particular time frame to achieve a goal? Each outcome should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
How?
How to accomplish the goal may be a co-created exploration and discussion of possible approaches and alternatives, but the choice of direction must come from you, because the outcome must belong to you. A commitment needs to result.
Why?
This exploration clarifies a pathway is and precisely determines the goal. If it is unclear or uncertain, the best intention would be a promise you never keep.
When?
The time frame for each objective must be specified so that the sense of mastery can occur. A goal may have a several month timeframe. Each goal should have an initiative that can occur within the next several days, and each initiative should have a next best action, to begin within the next day or do.

6 Signposts for a Successful Journey

In each successful journey, there are identifiable markers.

1. Precisely specify the goal and agenda.
   Clarify your agenda so that it is clear, specific, and simple. If the goal is not clear, the agenda and strategy cannot be precise. Be very specific about a goal—e.g., “getting fit” is not a goal but an outcome. Maintain focus on a specific issue until you have clarity. If there is no focus on an agenda, there can be no effectiveness or success.
2. Determine what needs to happen.
   Identify what you need to do to further the goal of your agenda. This clarity will catalyze an approach to the needed steps. For example, if you feel overwhelmed at work with the amount of tasks, clarify one issue that can be dealt with effectively within the next day. This focus on a specific action exercises effectiveness and initiates a model of mastery for the next step.
3. Convert obstacles into intentions.
   Internal obstacles such as fear or doubt that may seem to “stop” you are personal creations. Convert a fear or obstacle into an intention, with a commitment to a next best action. For example, if you are afraid of public speaking, an intention might be to join Toastmasters.
4. Highlight the solutions.
   When you form a plan and immerse yourself in the process, problems dissolve into the possibilities.
5. Highlight the solutions.
   When you form a plan and immerse yourself in the process, problems dissolve into the possibilities.
6. Facilitate internal change and external change.
   With a new experience, anxiety and trepidation are expectable. You are in new territory, without familiar landmarks. When you are in your integrity in this new experience, feeling anxious or uncertainty is a signpost of progress, as opposed to a signal of danger as in the old story.
7. Follow-up.
   Continue to focus on your goals and strategies. What works and what doesn’t are both important. Writing your next chapter is about looking at what happens next, and considering what happens after what happens next.

Why people give up on goals

Goal setting, especially the proper tools to structure, is crucial for long-term achievement. The usual problem, however, is not setting goals but completing them.

While a vision involves creativity and foresight, goals require strategy and dedication.

An extensive study on goal setting by Marshall Goldsmith and Laurence Lyons helps us understand an essential component: Why people give up on goals. Six of the most important reasons people give up on goals;

• Ownership. Someone must “buy in” to their goals and take ownership. This shifts the ownership and initiative to an internal point of reference. Then effectiveness and mastery can result.
• Time. Goal setters tend to underestimate the time it will take to complete the task (an “optimism bias”), leading to giving up.
• Difficulty. The optimism bias equally applies to difficulty as well as time.
• Distractions. People tend to underestimate the distractions and competing goals.
• Rewards. Disappointment sets in when achievement of a goal doesn’t translate into other goals or to the desired happiness.
• Maintenance. Maintaining changed behavior is difficult, and there is always the pull of the old and the fear of the new.

Remember: the usual problem is not setting goals but completing them.