What would you attempt to do if you knew that you could not fail?
What would you attempt to do if you knew that you could not fail? Your answer will reflect just a fraction of your potential. Fear of failure and of the unknown keeps us from doing great things, from realizing our dreams. Give it serious thought and what would you do if failure wasn't an option? If there no way it could go wrong? Move past that barrier in your mind and decide: what are you going to do to get over that fear of failure and start making that dream a reality today?
Share your answers in the comments!
Photo by RG
By the way - that's a photo of one of Dr Robert Goddard's first rockets - a man who's story is true inspiration for sticking to your dreams and succeeding. If you find yourself in Roswell, New Mexico, skip the UFO museum and instead go to the Roswell Museum and Art Center where they have a recreation of Dr Goddard's 1940s workshop.
Dead End Job?
Are you in a dead-end job? Take a few minutes to think about these things:
Does your job feel too familiar? Do you find yourself wishing for something less familiar and more challenging?
Are you too comfortable with your co-workers? Maybe you have been working with the same team forever, and while that can be great, does it mean you are in a static company, where no one changes jobs or responsibilities... ever? If that doesn't sound like any fun for you, you may want to look for a place where you can be given new challenges.
Are there a lot of people in front of you with more seniority who will get advancements before you? If you are ambitious, you won't be happy here.
It might be time to start looking for something else...
Focus on making small, continuous improvements.
Henry Ford once said, “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small pieces.” The same concept configured as a question: How do you eat an elephant? Answer: One bite at a time. This philosophy holds true for achieving your biggest goals. Making small, positive changes is an amazing way to get excited about life and slowly reach the level of success you aspire to.
And if you start small, you don’t need a lot of motivation to get started. The simple act of getting started and doing something will give you the momentum you need, and soon you’ll find yourself in a positive spiral of changes – one building on the other.
Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they arise. It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier. And that’s the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on bigger challenges.
Photo by RG
via 12 Things Successful People Do Differently.
SMART Goals
Successful people are objective. They have realistic targets in mind. They know what they are looking for and why they are fighting for it. Successful people create and pursue S.M.A.R.T. goals - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
Specific – A general goal would be, “Get in shape.” But a related specific goal would be, “Join a health club and workout 3 days a week for the next 52 weeks.” A specific goal has a far greater chance of being accomplished because it has defined parameters and constraints.
Measurable – There must be a logical system for measuring the progress of a goal. To determine if your goal is measurable, ask yourself questions like: How much time? How many total? How will I know when the goal is accomplished? etc. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued efforts required to reach your goal.
Attainable – To be attainable, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work. In other words, the goal must be realistic. The big question here is: How can the goal be accomplished?
Relevant – Relevance stresses the importance of choosing goals that matter. For example, an internet entrepreneur’s goal to “Make 75 tuna sandwiches by 2:00PM.” may be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, and Timely, but lacks Relevance to an entrepreneurs overarching objective of building a profitable online business.
Timely – A goal must be grounded within a time frame, giving the goal a target date. A commitment to a deadline helps you focus your efforts on the completion of the goal on or before the due date. This part of the S.M.A.R.T. goal criteria is intended to prevent goals from being overtaken by daily distractions.
When you identify S.M.A.R.T. goals that are truly important to you, you become motivated to figure out ways to attain them. You develop the necessary attitude, abilities, and skills. You can achieve almost any goal you set if you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that once seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them.
via 12 Things Successful People Do Differently.
Successful people measure and track their progress
Successful people are not only working in their job/business, they are also working on it. They step back and assess their progress regularly. They track themselves against their goals and clearly know what needs to be done to excel and accelerate.
You can’t control what you don’t properly measure. If you track the wrong things you’ll be completely blind to potential opportunities as they appear over the horizon. Imagine if, while running a small business, you made it a point to keep track of how many pencils and paperclips you used. Would that make any sense? No! Because pencils and paperclips are not a measure of what’s important for a business. Pencils and paperclips have no bearing on income, customer satisfaction, market growth, etc.
The proper approach is to figure out what your number one goal is and then track the things that directly relate to achieving that goal. I recommend that you take some time right now to identify your number one goal, identify the most important things for you to keep track of, and then begin tracking them immediately. On a weekly basis, plug the numbers into a spreadsheet and use the data to create weekly or monthly trend graphs so you can visualize your progress. Then fine-tune your actions to get those trends to grow in your favor.
via 12 Things Successful People Do Differently.
Questions to help you review your goals and accomplishments & look ahead
What have you actually finished, completed, and accomplished?
You are making lists of the things you want to accomplish and HAVE accomplished, right? No? Then start now!
Review your accomplishments in a month, 6 months, and year:
- What was your biggest triumph?
- What was the smartest decision you made?
- What one word best sums up and describes your experience?
- What was the greatest lesson you learned?
- What was the most loving service you performed?
- What is your biggest piece of unfinished business?
- What are you most happy about completing?
- Who were the three people that had the greatest impact on your life?
- What was the biggest risk you took?
- What was the biggest surprise?
- What important relationship improved the most?
- What compliment would you like to have received?
- What compliment would you like to have given?
- What else do you need to do or say to be complete this cycle (these past 30 day, 6 months, or year)?
Now that you've looked back, start to think ahead:
- What would you like to be your biggest triumph in the next 30 days/6 months/1 year?
- What is the major effort you are planning to improve your financial results in the next 30 days/6 months/1 year?
- What would you be most happy about completing in the next 30 days/6 months/1 year?
- What major indulgence are you willing to experience in the next 30 days/6 months/1 year?
- What would you most like to change about yourself in the next 30 days/6 months/1 year?
- What are you looking forward to learning in the next 30 days/6 months/1 year?
- What do you think your biggest risk will be in the next 30 days/6 months/1 year?
- What about your work are you most committed to changing and improving in the next 30 days/6 months/1 year?
- What is one as yet undeveloped talent you are willing to explore in the next 30 days/6 months/1 year?
- What brings you the most joy and how are you going to do or have more of that in 2012?
- Who or what, other than yourself, are you most committed to loving and serving in 2012?
- What one word would you like to have as your theme in the next 30 days/6 months/1 year?
Photo by RG
via Questions for completing and beginning the year | GTD Times.
Beware Overambition
People seek roles that are far beyond their current levels of experience and skill, and sometimes they get them. The result can be failure and a difficult ‘managing out' process.
Ambition, achievement striving, and risk-taking are highly valued by our society, but they can come with a dark side. High achievers typically believe in setting themselves ambitious goals and working hard to achieve them, but how do you know when you're pushing things too far?
There are two ways that overambition can bite. The first is skipping steps. Focusing on the basics first is one of the keys to success.
The second type of overambition is setting unattainable or highly improbable goals (occasional claims that anything is possible notwithstanding). While ‘skipping steps' often entails risk, the most common problem with setting unattainable goals is the opportunity cost - that is, while you are working towards this goal that you will never achieve, you are missing out on the opportunity to do something else at which you might be more likely to succeed, or which you might enjoy more.
So how do you set a realistic goal? Here are some essential questions to ask yourself.
1. Why do you want this?
It can be hard, but it's essential to reflect honestly on why you want to achieve a goal. Your reasons for wanting to achieve the goal are what will keep you going when times get tough. It's also worth asking yourself what other ways might there be of satisfying the underlying motivations behind your goal. For example, maybe you want to study medicine in order ‘to help people stay healthy', but your level of academic interest and past performance suggests this might be unrealistic and/or involve some undesirable tradeoffs. You could consider setting a goal of acceptance into one of the allied health professions (e.g. radiology or speech therapy) to achieve the same ends by different means. If your reason for wanting to tightrope walk across Niagra falls is to ‘get famous', you could consider making a funny youtube video with you and your dog wearing a silly hat instead, thus reducing the risk of a plunge to your death.
2. What's the base rate of achieving the goal?
The base rate of success is the percentage of ‘qualified applicants' who seek to achieve a goal, who succeed. You can calculate the base rate of success by taking the number of people that succeed in attaining the goal, and dividing that by the number of people that try to attain it. Maybe you are trying to achieve something that no-one else has succeeded at before (good for you). It's worth investigating how many people may have tried before you, and the reasons they failed.
3. What are the factors that increase the likelihood of success?
Find out what leads to success at the goal you are seeking to achieve - you're going to need to know anyway. How many of these factors work in your favour, and how many can you control? Consider how you compare against these success factors in the light of the base rate of success. People have a tendency to ignore the base rate of success and just focus on the success factors when estimating how likely they are to succeed at a given task.
4. What will the cost be of reaching the goal?
Make an informed estimate of what it would take to achieve your goal (e.g. the time and money required). Achieving any worthwhile goal requires tradeoffs and sacrifice, most often the sacrifice of time available to do something else. You are more likely to achieve your goal if you are realistic about this from the outset. Bear in mind that it's easy to underestimate the costs of reaching a goal (e.g. most people underestimate the time required to complete a given task by over 50%). Compare the costs of reaching to goal with your reasons for wanting to achieve it. Which weighs the heavier?
5. What's the cost of failure?
What happens if you don't reach your goal? A more positive way of asking this question is, "What's my contingency plan?"
When you understand why you want to achieve your goal, what the base rate of success is, what the key success factors are, the cost of reaching the goal and the cost of failure, you are in a good position to make an informed decision about whether this goal is realistic for you. Do the answers to these questions add up to a compelling story? Can you convince others that you have a realistic chance of achieving the goal? Can you convince yourself?
Aim high, but don't forget to aim.
What are your experiences with goal setting?
Have you set any goals that you later regretted or realised were unrealistic?
via The Limits of Ambition | Psychology Today.