Achieving Goals: Now That You’ve Got Them It’s Time to Make Them Happen

It’s the $10-million question.

How do you bring your goals to life?

What’s involved in achieving goals once you’ve devoted the time and effort needed to define them?

We might fantasize about a magic wand or fairy godmother which brings what we’ve envisioned to our doorstep. With such magic aid:

• We’d go to bed with a goal of getting fit and healthy and wake up full of energy and just the right size.
• We’d arrive at the work ready to wrestle that big project to the ground and find it front and center on our desk, completed and ready for presentation.
• We’d take that long dreamed of trip without the struggle of planning our visit, making the necessary reservations, and attending to all the associated details.

In short, in our imagination, achieving goals is just a short pit stop at the end of the goal setting process itself. The details are magically taken care of for us.

The reality, of course, is somewhat different.

Once you’ve made a plan, achieving goals requires:

• Creating an action plan for fulfilling your goal
• Carrying out the action plan
• Keeping the action going even when obstacles arise until you actually reach your goal.

This systematic process is identical for each goal you set.

To create an action plan you compare your starting point with the goal you’ve stated. The action you need to take to close that gap is the work you need to do. To make your action plan you break that work into chunks of reasonable size and put them in an order that makes sense given your available time and other resources.

When your action plan is complete you go right ahead and take action. In other words, you do the work you outlined step by step. Sometimes all will go smoothly and you can proceed without disruption on the patch to achieving your goal.

In other cases executing an action plan can lead to surprises. Obstacles, resistance, discouragement or all kinds of other unforeseen events can pop-up derailing your progress. Achieving your goals when this happens means finding a way to keep the action going anyway, revising your plans if necessary and appropriate.

These three steps will carry you on the path of achieving all of your goals, both large and small. The trick is to plan your action, execute, and keep going until you reach the goal, literally.

When you’re ready to move to the action phase:

• View a sample action plan and prepare your own action plan
• Take that all important first step and start working on achieving your goal


• Understand the biggest obstacles to making progress and achieving your goal – and how to beat them.