How I Set And Achieve Goals

so every new year millions of people are setting goals to better themselves in some way right around the time of the new year and I find this time to be very interesting because it seems as though within a few weeks of going through January of this coming year people start to forget about their New Year's resolutions they start to forget about their goals and they remember them at the end of the year at which point they set those goals for the next year and they continue to do this year after year maybe it's to become healthier to workout every day or to go back to school or to focus on this one hobby that you've just never had any time to do so you set that goal for the next year and then somehow it just seems to slip away now what I'm gonna do in this video is I'm going to show you my strategies for setting goals and then achieving those goals as well as sort of how I plan my life I've gotten this question quite a bit so I wanted to just go through make a thorough very personal video as to how I go about this process now I want you to keep in mind that this is not a one-size-fits-all this is not necessarily something that's going to work for you but it works for me and there's there's a chance that you might go to take some of this information and use it for yourself as well so first of all one of the things that I do is I actually planned my life starting backwards and this might sound very strange but it actually very much keeps me happy it keeps me in check and it's by essentially saying where do I want to be at the end of my life who do I want to be remembered as who I wanted my funeral maybe that's a strange way to think about this but this is just what I personally do and like I said this is what keeps me happy it keeps me content and it very much keeps me in check because it makes sure that I makes decisions for the long run instead of just thinking short term and I've seen people do this whether it be in business or in life where they're making these short-term decisions where they're cutting ties with family members or they are making these short-term money grabs in business that are going to end up hurting them in the long run but they're just focused too much on the short term so what I do is I start from way at the end of my life and I say where do I want to go and then I work backwards in that and it's okay if you don't know where you want to be in 20 years nobody knows where they're gonna be in 20 years but what I like to do and what I think is very important for people to do especially if you're lost at any point or you're wondering how you should set your goals is to start working backwards and to say well what do I want my dream life to be what would who my friends be who would my family be where would I live what would be this sort of utopian life that you could have and one of the first steps to do is to write it down now I've said this multiple times in other videos but look guys you need to write down your thoughts you need to dump your brain on to some paper or at the very least write it in the notes on your phone but organizing your thoughts somewhere in writing is going to have such an influential effect on yourself now look what I would used to do is is I would try to keep this all my brain and I would try to think about these goals that I would set for the next year and I'd keep them inside of my head what happens that well just like with a computer where you might have 500 gigabytes storage on your computer your brain starts to forget things over time and it starts to overwrite and it just that forgets about these ideas that maybe you had two months ago that you forgot to write down and there's a chance you're never going to remember them ever again so the point here is to start writing down your ideas and even if it's something that might seem absolutely ludicrous this this idea or this goal of you know it'd be really interesting to to work at NASA or you know it would be interesting to become a senator in my state write down some things that you would just really love to do in your life if you could do it and hey look everything starts with an idea Amazon this trillion dollar company started with an idea from Jeff Bezos Apple Computer it started with just a simple idea from Steve Jobs so even something that seems so absolutely out of this world ludicrous it all started with somebody just writing it down on a piece of paper and so imagine if you were going to attempt to lose weight in this coming year and you never stepped on a scale that doesn't make very much sense right well you need to track your progress of losing weight and just like with tracking your progress of losing weight by stepping on a scale you're gonna want to be able to measure how far you're getting towards your other goals in life as well such as maybe you have a goal of you want to run a marathon at the end of this year so it's important to write these down and and and see how you're progressing over time to see if you're getting better if you're getting worse if you're getting worse there's something going on and you can to find what areas you need to improve upon so that's one of the first steps it's just by simply writing down all of your ideas and look you don't have to know exactly how you're going to get to your goal especially if it's something absolutely that that seems so so far-fetched that seems so far away maybe it's something like you want to break the world record in the mile that sounds absolutely insane right but when you start to break it down it can become much more feasible or at least much more likely than what it would be for most people who are thinking about their goals but never actually act upon them so let me kind of share with you how I go through this process of not only setting goals but breaking them down into bite-sized fragments so that something that seems so far away can suddenly seem much simpler or much more of a process that you can get to it and much more doable so let's take for example let's say that you are not very satisfied with the current political situation and you decide that at some point in your life you want to become a congress person in the United States or in your country because you want to make a difference all right so you say okay well you know I'm say that you're 25 now and you want to be there in 10 years now in 10 years is quite a bit of time but even when looking at that statistically well in the u.s. there's one Congress person for about every eight hundred thousand people in the United States so the odds are not in your favor but does that mean you can't get there no absolutely not and I think anybody who tries to instill limitations onto others are just sort of reflecting their own limitations that they've set on themselves so really I don't see any limits in life obviously you know not everybody can be Michael Jordan I can't be Michael Jordan but for the most part there's not many limits in life and that's really how I view it so if you wanted to become a congress person in ten years you start to break this down you start to say well okay if I want to be there in ten years where should I be in five years and you say okay well maybe I should hold some type of smaller position like a position on a school board or maybe the treasurer in my local Township or the tax collector or some type of smaller position but a step away from Congress right and then maybe start came backwards even more and say okay well if I want to be there in ten years and I say that okay I want to have a smaller position of say being a school board in five years what should I be in two years well maybe I should focus on finishing my college degree in political science or maybe I should start to volunteer for some campaigns and break it down even farther you say what should I do in this coming year what should I do in 2020 well maybe your goal would be to spend 15 to 20 hours per week working for a local political or organization or political campaign for the coming elections and that would be one of your goals for this year you start to break it down even further then you break it down into the month you break it down into this coming week and you break it down into what are you going to do today it can be something as simple as going and talking to your local political organization or talking to your local congressperson to try to get a better idea of the job that it might entail and how you can get further towards that goal that's just an example that you break it down into these bite-sized segments and it sort of becomes a lot easier to actually tackle it's just like if you're going to write a book well you're not gonna just try to write this whole book in a day because that would just seem totally overwhelming you break it down you're saying instead of writing a full book and and and being faced with that pressure you say every day I'm gonna write five pages or I'm gonna write a thousand words a day for this book and then suddenly it becomes much more feasible it suddenly becomes much easier to actually achieve that goal now I'm actually gonna share a couple of my goals with you and then I'm going to show you two strategies that I use to actually achieve those goals and follow through with them and something that's worked quite well for myself one of them this is really getting on a personal level but one of them is to retire by 30 people think that's ludicrous but I that goal when I was 16 and I've been working towards and I've made quite a bit of progress towards actually getting to that goal and I'm I like to think that I'm going to get there I've been making a lot of great progress maybe there's gonna be some hiccups maybe there's gonna be some setbacks and that happens that's understandable but I broke it down into every single year what should I do how much money should I save and going back to what I said much earlier in this video about keeping your head in the long I'm thinking about planning your life backwards by setting these long-term goals and then working backwards I can say you know what if I want to retire at 30 then I probably shouldn't buy that Starbucks today I should we just make some coffee on my own and save five dollars and that little decision those little habits on an everyday basis is going to start to add up quite a bit and it allows you to really tackle that goal much easier that's one of my goals another is to have a family by 35 now this one's can be a little bit more difficult to actually achieve at that time or to measure that very easily it's not something you can rush obviously but it's still something on my list I'm gonna start working towards eventually at some point before I'm 35 another one is that I want to have a massive thousand acre farm I'm not afraid to say that but the truth is I'm gonna need quite a bit of money to buy a thousand acre farm you're gonna need close to a million dollars for that so I need to find a way to make more money and I need to find a way to get to that goal so what I've started to do is find ways to increase my income quite significantly over the past few years and I'm gonna continue to do that in the coming years and that's not to sound conceited in any way whatsoever that's just to show you that this is what the goals that I set many years ago and I'm starting to really focus on on breaking those down into smaller fragments now what I want to kind of share with you here first of all is to set measurable goals if you set the goal of you want to become healthier or you want to become a better runner or a better writer or you want to become a better parent that's not very measurable of a goal and if it's not measurable you're not gonna have any way of tracking your progress it's gonna be difficult to even write it down and put it into words of how far you've gotten so you need to set something that's measurable in in most most cases this is going to be by by having numbers in some case in one way or another so if you wanted to become more involved in your church instead of just setting the goal of becoming more involved you should set the goal of I want to make sure that I go to church every Sunday or every week so so you're setting something a little bit more measurable for yourself now there's two ways that I really go about achieving my goals and this is kind of an interesting thing that I want to bring up here but essentially the one strategy for hitting your goals is to use the pleasure side of it so let's say that you wanted to become a really good runner you wanted to win the race for your local community event your local community 5k and you wanted to be the number one runner well the the pleasure driver for this goal would be to think about winning that race whenever you go out for a run why do you wake up in the morning go for a run because you're thinking about getting that gold medal right so that's the pleasure side of it that's that good feeling of winning or achieving that goal is going to be a great feeling right then there's another side to it that you want to be very careful within you know I can't necessarily recommend this for people because I don't want to induce stress unto others I've used it in the past and I still use it from time to time but it's a driver to to achieve your goals that can be a little bit sticky a little bit tricky but I'm gonna share with you money baby cuz this is me this is personal this is this is what I've done in the past and you know like I said earlier it's not gonna fit everybody's not going to work for everybody but there's pain drivers for achieving goals as well and you wanna make sure that you're doing this for the right reasons of course but an example of this is that say that you wanted to work out three times a week say you wanted to go for a run three times a week right and you just can't find yourself doing it you sleep in maybe you're going out to party or something and you just don't find yourself working out as much as you would like to so what I've seen people do and what I've done in the past is you set some type of pain oriented goal in the sense that you are setting a consequence for if you don't achieve that goal so an example here is that if you set that goal of working out three times a week and you don't do that because you just sleep in or you don't really feel like it you're too lazy then every time you don't work out you give your friend $20 that's just an example there and there's a lot of other ways people go about this but having some type of consequence for not hitting the goal now I want you to be very cautious with this and this is why I can't really recommend it because it could induce stress I've set these things for myself before at much higher levels than just $20 I found it to be very beneficial and it's the reason why I've been doing pretty well with business in the past couple of months is because I set some of these sort of consequences for not achieving my goals and it works for me guys so you know maybe you shouldn't do that just big disclaimer don't do that focus on the pleasure oriented goals focus on the winning side of it of of getting that gold medal of becoming healthier of becoming a better writer instead of the pain side of it but I don't even really know why I brought that up but it's just something that I've done and that's just me that's that's personal so thanks for watching the video everyone I really appreciate all the support on the channel and you know I really wish everybody the best of luck with their goals in the next coming year I think anything's achievable in life so thank you for supporting the channel I really appreciate all the support guys and I'll see everybody in the next video

Channel: Nate O'Brien

Views: 97,792

Rating: 4.955832 out of 5

Keywords: goal setting, how to set goals, how to achieve your goals, reaching goals, new year resolutions, nate o'brien, goals, setting goals, planning life, how to achieve goals, personal growth, self improvement

Id: RZTNixvUJZs

Length: 13min 55sec (835 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019