Does this sound familiar? – You plan your big dreams meticulously, you attack your goals guns ablaze, but enthusiasm wains and you fail. Ending up right where you began, again and again… Now you’re daunted by the prospect you’re hopeless, that there is no path to success and you’re just too weak to ever follow through with your aggrandized plans.
Here is your hope – have you considered you approach your goals from the wrong paradigm? Perhaps you don’t understand how to breakdown your goals into small actionable steps the correct way so that you only need small amounts of will-power to fulfil them. If you learn to breakdown your goals into actionable steps correctly you can achieve anything.
To help you understand why and how to breakdown your goals into actionable steps I am going to explain to you:
- What the whole journey of making radical transformation in your life looks like. That way you’ll have the most information on the task ahead of you from the beginning. You’ll understand the true magnitude of what you’re committing to and make an informed decision on whether this commitment is actually how you want to spend your life.
- Why you can’t underestimate how much and for how long you’ll suck when you begin this goal. Proficiency takes time, be prepared to endure some character building adversity before you can be successful.
- How and why the smallest, seemingly insignificant gestures of goodwill towards your goal everyday will slowly but surely compound over time and eventually change the person you are into an individual that reflect the traits of a highly disciplined and successful individual.
Once you have exhausted your understanding of these steps and how to turn yourself into the person who can consistently complete small action steps you will only limited by the ambitions you dare to dream up. I have taught myself and other adults how to cultivate new habits, identities and proficiencies even late into adulthood. These are not the only steps you need, obviously, but internalise the ability to breakdown and fulfil big goals into small actionable steps and you will be wildly closer to success regardless.
Make sure the goal is right for you
Before you can begin to breakdown your goals into sizeable chunks you need to appreciate how big the goal is, how long it’s going to take you and whether you really want to do it.
For starters, picture your biggest goals taking years. Years full of daily commitment. So whatever you pick as your goal understand you’re in this for the long haul – it’s essentially a lifestyle. And although in any case big goals do require you to face some hardship it’s important you feel your goals are worthwhile; Is the juice worth the squeeze? I’d strongly advise you try and be as brutally honest with yourself. Even if the ambition is laughable, a goal that resonates deeply will be easier to fuel in the long run.
Once you’ve picked a worthwhile goal, be it big or small prepare for hardship, sacrifice and the need for undying commitment (That’s the best case scenario). If you’re not ready to do what it takes for said goal, that’s okay – you’re most likely still misaligned. Until you find your thing seek out experience, discomfort and environments that push you, your goals will come in time.
Its going to be hard no matter what you pick
Regardless of whether you’re perfectly aligned to your goal the journey ahead of you is still going to be arduous. Especially at the beginning of your goal – you can’t underestimate how bad and useless you will be and for how long. It just takes so long to build proficiency, and you have to be willing to push past all the feelings of inadequacy and doubt.
Let me explain why. It’s important to understand some tasks have proportional outcome; for each unit of effort you put in you get one unit of production out – think weight loss or muscle transformation. Others do not. Think stand up comedy, you’re getting laughs or you’re not. You reach critical mass at some random point in time and you make huge leaps in progress instantaneously. Plotted on a graph it would not be linear (x=y), it’s exponential (if you know what that is), it’s deathly slow to increase and then takes off like a rocket. What this boils down to is that most of the time you are going to suck. And you will continue to suck until one day, when you’ve normalised the taste of shit in your mouth to such a degree you can’t even remember what shit tastes like, you will all of a sudden become proficient.
So when you begin to question whether you’re truly aligned to your goal, and likely consider quitting for the million and one reasons that have floated into your mind, remember – the painstaking process of commitment and discipline is a universal right of passage in succeeding. You must completely interalise the mindset ‘there is no other option other than to keep going’.
Set small actionable steps that are impossible to fail
Albeit I’ve just read you the riot act on discipline now I want to explain to you how and why to nurture the softer side of your psychology. Using small, seemingly insignificant action steps to build positive association towards working hard. And perhaps more importantly preventing you from feeling overwhelmed and negatively impacting your ability to maintain the discipline you’ll need for long term success.
If your big goal is a house made of bricks, and each small step is a brick, then you need to make sure those bricks aren’t so big that you get tired and stop building the house. Of course if you can do things fast then you already will be, but if you’re used to failing try even smaller tasks. If your goal is weight loss, don’t even worry about what’s on your dinner plate while you can’t stop yourself snacking between meals. Don’t worry about finding a girlfriend/boyfriend when you’re too socially anxious to talk to people regularly. Don’t worry about starting a business when you can’t sit down for an hour a day to work productively. Make your steps, your bricks, so small it’s impossible to fail. And if you fail that goal well then it obviously wasn’t small enough. You’re setting goals this way because consistency is king. The ability to show up everyday no matter what is a ritual so powerful cultivating it in yourself will inevitably produce success in the future.
Once you can breakdown your goals into small steps that are so easy to fulfil you can learn and grow consistently with no threat of feeling overwhelmed you will inevitably be successful in achieving your big goal. You just need to take your time in allowing yourself to change into the person that is capable of such dedication and success, no matter how long that transformation is from where you begun. Just be patient until your psychology catches up from the person you were to the person you are willing yourself to become.
Conclusion
Breaking down your goals into actionable steps is therefore a multi-step process in itself: pick the right goal, struggle through the hardship whilst remembering to give yourself enough breathing space by taking a series of day by day easy wins. It’s a combination of soulful exploration, dedication through hardship and going at a reasonable pace relative to where you began.
As with all goals the solutions to fulfilling them are simple, but their implementation to achieve success is difficult. Unfortunately, however great an opportunity your goal is, or however great support you have been afforded, ultimately the secret sauce is always going to be hard work above all else. Making promises with yourself that you will commit to whatever sensible plan you set out from right now. Making a succession of actionable steps won’t come to fruition without some self-motivated drive to remain unshakeable in the face of future obstacles. Where that drive derives from is debatable. You’re either born with it, or through the sheer necessity to manifest your dreams it can be manifested. So if you do find yourself failing again and again even after a perfectly executed plan don’t lose faith. Your personal growth is occurring through merely existing, and if you aren’t ready now perhaps you will be in the future, or perhaps you were meant for a whole other goal altogether.
In any case I wish you all the best in whatever you choose to fill your time with. Remember, we don’t take anything with us when we die, so enjoy the journey because that’s all we ever really had.