The Secret to Achieving Your Goals

Most of my readers are highly ambitious professionals, so I have no doubt you have done your fair share of goal setting and achieving many of those goals your entire life. It’s just how we’re made 😊 

So, for many of us, creating goals is really quite easy! We can set them, we can get them going, but the real difficulty starts to show when time has gone by, and you’re still not where you want to be.

And like many things in life, the way we achieved goals in the past, whether it was the structure we were in, like school, or perhaps life circumstances, may not be working anymore. 

Sometimes we hit a roadblock or sometimes come up with such a massive goal that we realize takes a lot more to achieve, and whatever we did before just isn’t working. It’s not getting us to the other side. 

And that’s exactly what this article is about. Unlocking the secret to why you might not be achieving your goals like you used to and how to optimize the process so that you do achieve them!. 

The Secret to Achieving Your Goals

There’s really a secret to this! And thankfully, it’s simple. But it does take time, and most importantly, it takes consistency. 

The secret to achieving your goals is simple, and it’s two-fold: 

What keeps you going and holds you to your commitment is progress.

So long as you are making tangible progress on whatever goal you’ve set for yourself, you stay in the game. You taste the outcome; you have a sense that you are on track. And that is hugely motivating. 

But the reality is that most people are unaware of their progress or what it looks like. Why? Because it has to be tangible. How would you know if you aren’t keeping track of what you are doing to get there! This leads us to the second part. 

To make progress on your goals, you must measure your progress. 

If you have no way to assess what actions and choices you’ve made over time towards your goal, you have no way of knowing if you’ve even close to achieving it! 

Measuring progress is about documenting your baseline, knowing where you started, then documenting where you are one week, one month, three months, etc., from where you were. 

When you see that you are doing things differently than when you started, that’s the ultimate motivator to show you that things ARE happening. The sense of accomplishment you gain will help you commit deeper toward your goal, giving you greater clarity on how to get there. 

By taking the time to evaluate the progress of your goals, you can learn from your successes and failures, apply those learnings, and make better decisions moving forward.

However, to be successful in doing so, you must measure your progress against YOURSELF. It’s called the “Gap vs. Gain” principle by Benjamin Hardy. 

Focusing on where everyone else is will leave you stuck in the gap between where you are currently and where you want to go. It leads you down a path you can never obtain. You’ll always be behind someone. Whereas gains occur when you focus on your progress towards your goal based on what you’ve documented, and you continue building from there.  

That’s why it’s so important that at the end of each day, each week, and during check-ins on the timeline we’ve established to meet our goals, we have a system in place to document progress and reassess if we’re on track to achieving what we set out to do. 

How to Measure Progress Towards Achieving Your Goals

Measuring progress is as easy as writing it down consistently. 

There are many ways you can accomplish this. Try one of the million mobile apps, online templates, and even specialized journals with prompts to get you writing. 

But the further into my self-growth journey I go, the more I learn to keep it simple. So, my favorite way to track the progress of my goals personally is with the old-school notebook.

Okay, Steph, then what do I write about!? 

Great question. 

You set yourself up for success by asking the same question to yourself each time you document progress. Keep it simple. Your notes will make it very obvious if you’re doing the same thing week to week. You’ll see what has changed and maybe what has not. 

I refer to these questions as prompts, and they’re essential for getting you to write answers that dig a little deeper and require you to get to the heart of the matter, so you’re better able to decide where to go from there. 

To do this, you need to consider what questions work for you! They need to be tailored to YOU: your goals and your way of thinking. 

Journal Prompts You Can Use to Measure Progress on Achieving Your Goals

To get you started, I’ve listed a few prompts you can use for journaling. Notice how they are similar but ask you to reflect based on the amount of time that has elapsed. This helps you keep perspective.

Daily:

• What choices did you make today that align with your goal?
• What did you do well today?
• What will you improve tomorrow?

Weekly:

• What is the biggest step you made towards your goal this week?
• What is working/not working?
• What adjustments will you need to make to reach your goal on time?

Monthly and Quarterly:

• Are you still working towards reaching the same goal or what has changed?
• What is holding you back from making progress? What is the key factor towards your progress?

Incorporate Journaling the Progress on Achieving Your Goals into Your Routine

Establishing a journaling cadence and where that fits into your routine is also a component for success. You need to determine will you review your goals, and how often? I recommend having a daily prompt (simply a question or series of questions), an end-of-week assessment, a monthly and a quarterly check-in. 

For example, if you’ve given yourself a year to achieve said goal, it would be wise to ascertain how far you’ve come every three months to either continue working towards it or make the necessary changes to get back on track.

Then, you’ll need to decide what time of day works best to journal and stick to it. I tend to do my daily reviews at night before bed and the bigger check-ins on a Saturday or Sunday at a nearby coffee shop.

How motivated are you to achieve your goal? 

The faster you want to get there; the more frequent I suggest you document your progress. The clearer my goal, typically, the quicker I want to get there, and during those times, I will be diligent in journaling daily.

The simple things, maybe even boring, tend to be significant in impact, and measuring your progress is one of them. You’ll never truly know where you are with those massive goals until you develop a disciplined.

And by doing so, you tend to reach one of two outcomes: You achieve your goal, or you realize your heart’s not in it, and you gain clarity on what the real goal is you want to achieve. Your journaling provides those answers for you.

Ready to make real progress on the goals you’ve set forth this year? Get yourself a notebook, write your prompts, and each night, end of the week and close of every few months, ask yourself where you stand. You’ll be on the path to achieving your goals in no time!