When it comes to accomplishing your long term goals, it’s necessary that you are strong in the area of persistence. Persistence is really the determining factor between those who accomplish their life long dreams and those who simply let them die when things get difficult. Here are a few proven techniques to help you accomplish your big goals through the avenue of persistence.
Identify the Why
Identifying the why behind your goal will help you connect your dream to the energy that is necessary to accomplish it. When we fail to identify the why, we can lose sight of what makes that goal important to us.
When the goal no longer feels important, then the urgent matters of life will come in a sweep away all of the energy that you would have poured into what really matters in your life. Just because something is “urgent” doesn’t mean that it should take the place of what’s really important. Keep the why in front of you at all times and you’re more likely to keep central what needs to be central.
Plot Your Course
There is something very satisfying, and possibly even addicting, about accomplishing goals. The problem is that with long term goals, the finish line is often years or even decades into the future. With your big goals, it’s important to break them up into a series of smaller accomplishable goals.
This allows you to get those satisfying small wins along the way in addition to boosting your energy toward the finish line. It ultimately can give you a whole bunch of second winds that energize you and allow you finish strong.
Celebrate the Small Wins
Now that you’ve broken your goals up into smaller, more easily accomplishable goals, make sure to celebrate them. Even though some of them may feel very small, there is something about a celebration that boosts morale and helps you to stay emotionally connected to the long term vision. Especially when you have a team of people working along side you, bring lots of praise and celebrate everything along the way.
Measure Your Progress
It’s very easy to see how far you have to go and get discouraged. When we do this we seemingly forget everything that we have accomplished up to that point. That can be a huge energy zapper. Avoid this by constantly reviewing and measuring how far you have come. This is another reason why celebrating your wins is important. You need to recognize how far you’ve come so that you can stay motivated to keep on going and press through the roadblocks. If you don’t recognize and measure your progress, it’s likely that you’ll give up because your goal seems unattainable. The farther along you realize that you are, the more attainable that goal will feel.
To conclude, I want to stress the importance of realizing that you are capable of making your dreams come true. It’s also important to realize that you shouldn’t try to accomplish your dreams on your own! Build a team to help cover the areas where you are weak. You may be the one with the vision but your vision isn’t sufficient in and of itself. Bring your vision to a team of people that you trust and let them help you bring your dreams to reality. That’s not weak, it’s good stewardship of your vision and a display of good leadership.