I want to discuss a key that is vital in your goal setting to achieve your life goals.

Ask any successful person what was it that enabled them in their personal goal setting to reach goals that to the ordinary person appeared beyond comprehension, they will tell you they took action. If you do not take action on a goal or a dream it will eventually die.

Being decisive and taking action fortunately is a skill that can be learned. Successful people do the opposite to unsuccessful people in as much as they make decisions quickly and change them slowly, if at all, unsuccessful people make decisions slowly and change them quickly.

Unsuccessful people want everything in place BEFORE embarking on a goal achieving journey; they continually ask ‘What If Something Happens?’ Successful people give successful quotes such as ‘What if it doesn’t happen?’

Top achievers, in their personal goal setting, do not wait until every ‘i’ is dotted and every ‘t’ is crossed before they decide to take a course of action. Once they feel they have enough information to make a personal goal setting decision that is just what they do, they then use the time on their journey to modify plans, take different directions, even stop and re-consider. But they took the initial action to get going, un-achievers procrastinate and are subject to inertia.

It was Dr Martin Luther King jnr in one of his famous success quotes who said, ‘Take the first step; You do not need to see the whole staircase before you, just take the first step in faith.’

You see there is no shame in lack of success. To successful people, failure is only finding out that what they were doing needed modifying, they learn from the experience.

I have experienced both situations in my personal goal setting, although I have always been known as a person who makes decisions quickly, embarking on some activities that were doomed to a lack of success. But each time I did not succeed another lesson was learned what I was doing was not the correct goal setting way to reach the goal I wanted.

Time for analysis and modification – so what; at least I was involved in personal goal setting and going toward my goal not sitting hoping something would happen.

There were times in the past however when I used to blame anything around me, people, events situations for my lack of success, I always had an excuse and my goal setting activities diminished.

You know what is the wonderful thing about our minds?  We cannot tell ourselves lies. Think about it, when you are looking to blame someone else for you lack of success with personal goal setting, isn’t that an outside thing, don’t you just know deep inside yourself that the responsibility really lies at you own door.

Remember when you point a finger there are always three fingers pointing back.

There are three types of people in the world as far as I am concerned.

Those that make things happen; Those that sit back and watch what is happening and finally those that say ‘Uh! What happened?’ To which group do you belong?

Fortunately for me I learned to take responsibility for my own personal goal setting and actions, and everything that is in my life NOW is a direct result of ME bringing it into my life through personal goal setting, no one else – ME!

There again it is amazing how little effort you need to exert to start off making things happen in your life. As you start toward your goal you attract more and more energy that drives you toward success. Getting into action helps you maintain action; it’s the simple law of physics, once a body is moving it is easier and easier to keep it moving.

I can only use the analogy of driving a car, at first as you press the accelerator you move slowly but the law of physics takes over and the car moves easier and easier with less pressure on the accelerator (Gas pedal for our American colleagues).

Look at your personal goal setting, have you have written them down. Just take one of them and decide to take action on it NOW! Ignore the fact that you haven’t planned out the finest detail, ignore the number of times your negative self tells you it cannot happen Just DO IT! Choose a reward you will give yourself when the goal is achieved; no matter if it is just a setting a goal to clear the garden of weeds, take action and you will quickly learn that the only way to successful personal goal setting is to take action in the first place.

As Martin Luther King jnr said “Take The First Step” that is take ACTION NOW! or in twelve months time you will still be sat here wondering where the time has gone.

Tags: achievement, goal setting, goal setting success, goal setting theory, goals setting planning, motivation, personal development, personal goal setting, personal growth, professioanl development, success, success quotes

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 4:14 pm and is filed under First Step. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.