What do you want out of life? Is it a great career? Untold wealth? To run your own business? Be able to afford to travel the world and meet lots of interesting people? Is it to have a relationship with someone that really loves you and that you love back?
All of these things are attainable. For many people, when they want them so much, they always feel like they are just out of reach. That they are something that someone else will get, but not themselves.
So, how do you go about getting what you want in life? More to the point, how do you get what you want without trampling over other people and maintaining your own personal integrity?
There are many ways that you can get what you want, in this article, we’ll explore exactly how you can get what you want in life.
Stop Thinking That Other People Are Different
One of the biggest barriers that many people face when they are dealing with their ambition is the feeling that other people are different. That someone else is somehow better than them because they have been able to achieve something.
You may think that someone is luckier or that they are more talented than you. It can be easy to start thinking that you are the thing that is holding you back. All of this can make you bitter or jealous of those that have achieved the success that you want.
Instead of wasting your time and energy on being jealous, you should instead focus on the positives and learn from them. There may be something that they have done that has been the main reason that they have achieved what they have. Study these people. If you are able to, ask them for advice.
Set Realistic Goals
If you don’t have a dream, how are you going to have a dream come true? In order to get what you want in life, you need to know exactly what it is that you want.
It is important to understand that setting yourself a goal means that you will be closing off other possibilities. In order to achieve your goal, you’ll need to be single-minded and focused.
If you are certain about the thing that you want to achieve, you should set yourself SMART goals.
A SMART goal is:
- Specific – This means pinning down exactly what you hope to achieve
- Measurable – How will you know when you have achieved your goal? In fact, how will you know that you are on the right path? Having measurable goals makes it easier to ensure you meet your goals
- Attainable – If your goal is actually impossible, then you’ll eventually become demotivated and lose interest in achieving it. Make sure that what you want is achievable
- Relevant – Pick goals that are relevant to you and what you want to achieve
- Timebound – When do you want to achieve your goals? Having a date or a time in mind will give you something to work towards.
In order to achieve your primary goal, you may need to create smaller goals. For instance, to be the market leader in a certain business niche you may have to complete several steps. Examples of these might be:
- Start up your business- get it off the ground and trading
- Grow your business to a specific turnover level
- Expand your business by opening branches in other towns and cities
- Buy a competitor to increase your market share
- Continue to expand over a specified period of time until you become a market leader
Within each of these objectives, there will be smaller goals again. Keep breaking down your goals until they’re small enough to be achievable with some work. If you constantly only focus on the bigger goal, you will get disheartened and you are more likely to quit.
Make Thorough Plans
For each of the goals that you need to achieve, you should set out a thorough plan. In the example of setting up your own business so that you can later become a market leader in your given niche, you should first plan where you will operate, how you will make your money. You r plan may be broken down further:
- Source financing
- Source products or develop services
- Recruit a team
- Set up trading premises
- Start marketing business
- Start to trade
Within each of these steps, there will, of course, be further steps that you need to make. Make your plan as thorough as you possibly can.
Understand That You Need To Put Effort In
Achieving your goals will be hard work and you need to be prepared to put in the work. There will be times that you will fail. In these moments you need to be able to pick yourself up and move on.
Perhaps one of the most challenging things that you will have to face up to will be your own shortcomings. There will definitely be times when you will fall short of your own expectations. Your limitations will prevent you from making the next leap forward.
This may be due to a lack of skills or expertise, or it could be due to something in your personality. You can try and work around this fact and move forward, however, you are always likely to be brought back to this same point.
Facing up to these aspects about yourself is important. If you want to achieve your goals, then you will need to put in hard work on yourself.
The Power Of Positive Thinking
When you start off on your journey, you may feel full of hope. You’ve set a goal and developed a plan and you are going to achieve this. However, during your journey, you may trip up a few times. Hurdles and setbacks in your way may knock your confidence and make you feel as though you are unable to do the things that you need to do. This can lead to you feeling negative about the project and yourself.
Negativity breeds negativity, and if you get yourself into a mindset where you are unable to see the positives then you are on course for failure. You need to work on developing and maintaining a positive mindset. There are several ways to do this.
Firstly, manifesting is a technique that might help you. By using techniques such as meditation to develop a clear and positive thought process, manifesting will help you focus on your goals and achieve them.
Secondly, creating a routine of writing out daily affirmations will ensure that you are always feeling positive and confident within yourself. These affirmations may include a focus on things that you have achieved, or on personal qualities that you may have.
For example, you might write down the following one day:
- “I have achieved getting funding for my business. Other people believe in my idea enough to give me money, therefore it is a good idea”
- “I have excellent communication skills and I am using them to get the best deals from suppliers on my products”
- “I am a good boss. I am always concerned about the happiness of my team”
By focusing on the things that you are good at and that you like about yourself, you will start to think less negative thoughts and you will be able to break out of cycles of negative thinking.
Measure Your Success Throughout The Journey
As you move along on your way to achieving your overall goals, be sure that you measure your success so far.
Set yourself targets. Having a way of measuring your success statistically will make everything more tangible.
By looking at your ongoing goals, and stopping to celebrate your achievements as you move towards your final goal, you’ll be surprised at just how far you have come along.
Check In With Yourself
Throughout the journey to the success that you are seeking, you should always check in with yourself and review your progress and how you are feeling about everything. It can be easy to become quite focused and single-minded about what you are trying to achieve to the point where you forget to check with yourself that you are still on the path to getting what you want.
Review whether the goals are still the right ones for you. It’s okay if they are not. If you need to change the path that you are on, this is fine. What wouldn’t be okay is if you continued to do something that you used to want to do in order to see it through, even though you didn’t enjoy it, or want to do it.
Remember To Be Grateful
Finally, remember that you should always be grateful for whatever success you have achieved. You should be grateful for those that have helped you and believed you along the way, and you should be grateful for all of the lessons and the difficulties that you have overcome. This again will help you feel more positive and, as such, attract more success.