It might seem some people, especially those your read bout online, make everything look effortlessly. But if you dig deeper, you’ll find they have worked hard with focus, a plan and need I say, goals. Want to see what I mean? Check out these five steps that can help you reach your goals.

Make Your Goals S.M.A.R.T.

S.M.A.R.T. goals have been part of the business lexicon for years and they are smart (excuse the pun).  If you haven’t heard of this acronym, here’s what it stands for:

See what I mean. Smart, huh? For any goal to be achievable it must first be clear and specific. Only you know what that is, but don’t make it so easy you’re not making progress. But don’t hesitate to challenge yourself. Set your objectives on the high side.

You also want them to be possible. Say you’re determined to fill your eBay store with lots of new listings and set a goal to complete 100 listings a day. Let me tell you, that might be possible, but you won’t be able to move or even talk the next day.  That goal needs to be realistic. Once you work on a listing, you know how many you comfortably do each day. That might be 10 to 12. Then you can push it a little further, say 15?

Create Actionable Goals

Any action you want to meet needs to have the “why” and the “how” included with the “what”  of the goal. And they must have an action attached. Just like the goal above of adding lots of listings to your eBay store,  you need to put them to work.

Just writing your goals down is a big start. It’s something about seeing them in black and white (or purple, pink or green) makes them real and gives importance, but, there are a few more steps necessary to achieve your goals.

Put Together a Schedule

Leave nothing to chance. Instead, schedule in the work necessary to reach your goals into a real calendar. Writing a list isn’t good enough – you need to schedule in everything so you don’t miss a single day due to losing track of your schedule. So getting those 100 eBay listings done, break the goals into steps. Make a goal to do 10 to 15 a day and have those first 100 done within two weeks.

You need to be realistic about how long each thing will take and schedule them into your day. Then push yourself a little harder for the next batch of goals.

Take Action

No goal is ever achieved if regular action isn’t taken each day. Each morning, look at your calendar and follow through on the plans you’ve made and the criteria you’ve set for yourself to get things done. All you have to do is the minimum necessary each day to reach your goal. When you get through each day having done the minimum, you’re a success – every single day. There is nothing else that can result from daily action other than success when you think of it this way.

Rinse and Repeat

Finally, you must repeat these steps every single day. When you make specific and clear goals with specific steps to achieving the goal, based on reality, you will soon discover the secret to success that seems to escape so many people. The real secret is in the doing. It’s like going on a long hike – if you take one step at a time, moving toward the map that you’ve planned out for yourself, you will get to the end and you will be a success.

Reaching your goals is just a matter of setting reasonable and realistic goals and then setting up a schedule of actionable tasks and steps that bring about the result you want. You can start today to achieve your goals.

Need More?

Here are two books about goals that might help. They are all highly rated and contains more information on how to make goals and put them into action.

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