Is it really possible that you can achieve anything you want in life? This is not a new idea and one man made a conclusion to this question centuries ago. “To him that will, ways are not wanting.” or “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” At least that is what George Herbert said in 1640. What he meant is that if you want to achieve something, you will find a way to achieve it no matter the cost, difficulties, or time constraints.
You can achieve anything you want if you put your mind to it. The only question you need to answer is how you can conquer your fears, take on the challenges, and fight till the end. The biggest barriers and difficulties you will face are those in your mind. Many people dream of success, physical fitness, endless happiness, starting a business, building great products, etc. However, not everyone is able to reach these goals. To some people reaching what they dream of is no more than a dream. Why are so many people unable to reach anything they want whereas a handful can?
Although it is possible to achieve anything you want in life, there are particular steps you must take to secure your success. Millions of people chase their dreams but they fail to reach the other side. They miss important factors that all successful people follow. Others give up right after getting started.
In this article, I will walk you through the ultimate steps you must take to achieve anything you want in your life no matter what it is or the cost. Everything is possible and every skill is learnable. People who are regarded as powerful men and women were once little kids playing in the mud and learning to read just like everyone else. If someone else was able to do it, so can you.
The following are 4 steps you need to take in order to achieve what you desire and realize your dreams.
1. Having a goal is the first step in achieving anything you want in your life
Before you achieve anything you want in life, you first need to know what it is. You should always have a dream/a goal that you want to achieve. You cannot achieve something that you don’t know.
Many people desire to achieve different things. For example, there are people who desire to make millions of dollars. Others want financial stability or good-paying jobs with benefits. There are those who want to travel the world or simply have a stable and happy family.
What about you? What is it that you want to achieve in your life? Do you want to lose weight and become healthy? Or simply get your college degree?
Knowing what you want to achieve increases your probability of achieving it
The truth is that you can achieve anything you want in life. However, you need to know what you want to achieve first.
A wise man once said, “Trying to achieve something you don’t know is like trying to shoot a target that you can’t see.” Although you might hit a target you can’t see(blindfolded), the chances of hitting it are slim and random. The probability of hitting your target diminishes when you cannot see the target.
This concept also applies in life. You cannot achieve your goals or dreams without knowing what they are. Certainty is important when it comes to achieving higher goals. You need a definite goal. Only then, you can devise a plan to help you achieve your goals. Without a definite goal in mind, you will find it difficult to achieve what you desire no matter what it is.
Knowing what you want to achieve in life helps you evaluate your progress and know when you have achieved it.
You will never know if you have reached your destination without knowing what the destination is or what it looks like. Knowing what you want to achieve in life helps you know if you are making progress or when you have achieved it.
A big mistake people make is to work hard for something they are not certain about. It is not about working hard that gets you to your destinations. Instead, it is about making steady progress that gets you closer to your destination. If you don’t know what you want to achieve, you will work hard but most of your efforts will go to waste. No matter how hard you work, you will never achieve anything you want if your effort and hard work are not getting you closer to your goals.
Benefits of knowing what you want to achieve
Knowing what you want to achieve in life makes every step easier and keeps you on the right path.
- You don’t take on random tasks
- Knowing what you want helps you minimize risk
- You make decisions based on facts rather than guesses or random thoughts
- helps you devise a plan on how to achieve what you want
- You don’t rely on others to make choices for you
- It helps you fight and conquer negativity
- You stay on the right path when you know what you want to achieve in life
- You use your resources wisely which reduces waste, improves your time management, and increases your success rates
- People who know what they want to achieve are more confident than those who don’t
- Failure rates are much lower when you know what you want to achieve in life.
It is almost impossible to fail when you know what you want to achieve in life. Your journey could be longer and harder to follow. But, you will eventually get there as long as you do not lose sight of what you want to achieve.
For this reason, you must know what you want to achieve in order to increase your success rate.
How to know what you want in life?
Some people find it difficult to decide what they want to do or achieve in life. If you are one of these people, the following tips can help you decide what you want to achieve in life or what your uttermost desires are. You can easily find what you want by asking yourself the following questions.
- What is my purpose in life?
- What is something I can do for the rest of my life and be happy with it?
- How do I find happiness and what makes me happy?
- What does success means to me?
- What were my dreams when I was younger?
- How do I intend to live my life after achieving my goals
- Why do I need to achieve this goal?
- Will achieving this dream make me happier and more stable than I am today?
- How will my life be if I don’t get what I want?
- Will I still be OK not achieving this dream?
- What will it cost me to achieve this goal?
Answers to these questions will vary from one person to another. However, they are desired to make you decide what you desire the most and how you want your life to be. You should be able to find anything you want to achieve in life by answering these questions. If you can’t figure out what you want to achieve from these questions, take your time. Evaluate your priorities, life desires, happiness goals, financial goals, and where you came from. Sometimes, we need to go back to our roots to find our true purposes in life.
At this point, I am assuming that you have found your true purpose in life and you know what you want to achieve.
Related: How to set up goals and execute them fast?
2. You need a deadline to achieve anything you want
Now that you know exactly what you want to achieve, the next question is: When do you want to achieve it? A lot of people pass the first step which is knowing what they want to achieve in life but fail on the second step. That is they never establish a deadline.
Why do you need a deadline?
A deadline is a predefined time at which you want to achieve something. The deadline helps you devise a plan that can help you accomplish your life goals faster and more efficiently.
A wise man once said, “A project without a deadline never gets finished.” That is right. You cannot finish a project without a deadline. Think of hiring a company to build your house and say they can use as much time as they want. You will wait your entire life without having the house and the resources you will spend on the house will be a hundred times what it could have cost you if you had a deadline. The point here is that people do not work properly or put in enough effort when they don’t have a deadline to beat.
Benefits of having a deadline
A deadline can be the only defining factor between your success and failure. You can’t push yourself to the limit when there is no deadline. Which means that you will achieve little to nothing. Your progress will be minimal which could cost you more resources and increase the time it takes to achieve your goals.
The following are some of the benefits of having a deadline.
- A deadline makes you accountable
- A deadline increases your focus
- You stay motivated with high momentum when you have a deadline
- You lose less time
- Fewer resources get wasted
- You achieve more when you have a deadline
A big mistake many people make when establishing a deadline is to underestimate or overestimate how long a particular goal will take. For example, if you are currently making $30,000/year, it would be unreasonable to say that you are going to make $1 million during the next two months. Although it is possible to reach this goal, it is an unrealistic goal. This is why you need to establish a deadline that is supported by facts given underlying conditions.
The following are tips to help you establish a reasonable and realistic deadline
- Know exactly what you want to achieve
- Break it down into smaller tasks and quantify how long each task will take based on its complexity, your knowledge, experts’ help, and needed resources
- Establish a timeline and add up the time each task takes to come to a final or cumulative time
- Be realistic
- Do not be emotional when estimating a deadline
- Include the time it will take you to learn new skills required along the way
After establishing a realistic deadline for what you want to achieve, move to the next step.
3. Make a plan: A plan is one of the most important steps you need to achieve what you want in life
In order to achieve anything you want in life, you need a plan to help you get there. Trying to achieve something without a plan is like walking by a ravine blindfolded hoping that you will not fall to your death.
After knowing what you want t to achieve in life, you will need to make a plan of action on how to achieve it. How are you planning to hit your target? You don’t just shoot an arrow. Your arrow might not hit the target even if the target is in front of you. Calculating the wind speed, how fast and hard you need to aim, the shooting angle, etc, will all increase your chances of hitting the target.
In short, making a plan is a major step you must take to increase your success rates.
How to make a plan that helps you achieve what you want?
There is no universal plan that works for every major achievement. Your plan will depend on what you want to achieve. However, there are major steps and strategies you must employ, in order to achieve your goals. The following tips can be your guide when putting together your plan.
- Be certain of what you want to achieve
- Understand the complexity of the goal or details of it
- Break your goal down into smaller goals
- Estimate how long each small goal will take
- Make a timeline that reflects how long each step will take
- Quantify the resources you will need at every small goal
- Consider unexpected events that can hinder your progress in achieving your goals
- Estimate all resources such as financial, people, tools, and support you will need to complete the whole goal
- Have a detailed schematic or blueprint of each step, smaller goals, and the entire goal.
- Write down exactly how you are going to accomplish every task, the resources you will need, and how long it will take
- Put a copy where you will see it every day such as in the office or bedroom
- Make a timeline of the entire process
- Evaluate your progress on a daily basis
A plan to achieve anything in life should be like a blueprint. Your plan must help you understand the steps you will take and the decisions you will make including the resources necessary at each step. The timeline will help you track your progress and speed up when necessary.
Make sure that your plan is written down. Also, put your plan in a place where you can see it every day. Whenever you see your plan, you will be reminded of what you are up against and how you will conquer it.
Benefits of having a plan
A plan is a blueprint of what you want to do and how you will do it. Think of a plan as a complete route you will take and every resource necessary from point A to point B. You can’t lose if you have a very well-prepared plan. The following are the benefits of having a plan.
- A plan makes it easy to achieve your goals
- A plan helps you optimize your resources
- You waste fewer resources and time when your plan is optimized
- You will encounter fewer obstacles when you follow your plan
- It is always easy to modify a plan than to start over
- A plan can help you speed up the process
- You can tackle different tasks of the plan at the same time which will save you time and money and speed up the process
Related: 9 important steps to build a financial plan that works
4. You must have the willingness to work hard, be persistent, and stick to your plan
This step is probably the most difficult step for millions of people. There are a ton of people who understand what they want, establish a plan, and put down a deadline but fail to realize their dreams.
So, what goes wrong? Why would anyone fail to realize their dreams or their goals if they have almost everything evaluated and planned correctly?
Although there are many reasons why people fail and never achieve anything they want in their lives, there are a few reasons to blame for their failures.
The following are some of the reasons people fail to realize their dreams
- Lack of willingness to work hard. The truth is that things will not be that easy. Your journey to a successful life or achieving anything you want will not be a smooth one. It will be like a rollercoaster. You will encounter difficulties, things will get tough, and it will take time to succeed. All successes require hard work. If things were easy, everyone would have succeeded. The people who achieve anything they want are those who are willing to work as hard as they can and pay the price. You should have the mental capacity and physical ability to do whatever it takes to achieve your goals. Many people quit when things get tough.
- People never stick to their plans. Assuming that your plan is well organized, you should stick to it all the way to the end. Yes, you will encounter difficulties but as long as you stick to the plan, you should reach your destination. The plan promises a destination only if you can stick to it. A big mistake many people make is to abandon their plans during difficult times. You can modify the plan, but you cannot abandon a plan entirely simply because you are feeling low. Abandoning a plan entirely means that you are going to start over which is difficult or you are going to continue aimlessly which leads to failure.
- People lack the discipline to keep going. Things will get difficult to a level where the only thing standing between you and quitting is discipline. In your early days, you will have a lot of motivation. However, as you go through the process, things will get difficult and you will lose motivation as a result. The only thing that will keep you going is your discipline. Without discipline, you will give up easily and become like everyone else. The sad reality is that the success journey is not for everyone. Only those who are willing to fight through the pain get to the other side. You must be willing to keep going no matter the cost.
You can achieve anything you want in life if you put your mind to it and stick to the plan. No matter the odds, a person who made one more step is always further than everyone else who gave up. Your journey toward greatness will be rough(nature guarantees it). But, you can still get there if you are strong enough to work hard, be persistent, and have the discipline to keep going. Success is for the brave.
