In our first post of this series, we talked about goals, and becoming not just a goal setter, but a goal achiever.

In the post that followed, we got into visualizing, beginning with the end in mind.

Now, let’s talk about some specific action steps that we’re going to be doing this month for your “Success in 12 Months.”

Write Out Your Vision

It starts by writing out a detailed vision of your unique life, at its most successful.  This is where you can really have a lot of fun.  You can sit down and really take the time to think about your ideal life.

The problem is, most of us never even take a minute to really think about our ideal life, what we actually, truly want if we could have anything.

Let’s face it, most of us are too busy with the day-to-day ongoing of what’s happening in our lives.  We go to work, maybe we’re commuters and stuck in traffic for two or three hours a day and we’ve got to get the kids to school and to sports and we have to get the house cleaned and we have to go visit our friends and go to family functions.

Before we know it, there’s no time left to actually do the things that we want to do that we think and say are most important to us.

We often lose touch with this ultimate vision or the things we truly want at a gut level.

So now we’re going to take the time this month to sit down and actually think about what we truly want, what are ultimate vision would be if we could really have anything.

Identify 5 Goals

From there, we’re going to start thinking about some specific goals.  Specifically, I’m going to recommend that you identify five major goals that will help you propel towards this ultimate vision

When you start creating goals, you start realizing that there are steps you could be taking, actions you can put into place that will begin making this vision become more of a reality.

When you first begin setting this vision in step one, it’s going to feel almost detached from reality, because it’s so far beyond what you’re doing right now.  It’s so far beyond what you’ve allowed yourself to think about having for your life.

But when you actually start assigning goals to these things, to these visions, you start seeing and saying, “Maybe this is possible, because if I at least start working on these goals and if I could take them from step A to B to C and further, then really my ultimate vision will start unfolding naturally, as long as I’m persistent.”

I want to make sure you set at least five major goals that will propel you forward.

Obviously, it’s not just about setting the goal and getting all exciting, visualizing what might come to pass if you were to hit these goals, you want to break these things down.

You want to break them down into smaller, manageable steps that you can start working on right away.  That might mean giving yourself a list of things to do, starting today and this week.

Even though you have this long-term vision, and it may take you years to get there, you have something that you can start putting into play right now and you can build momentum and grow that momentum and start seeing and saying, “Hey, this vision really is becoming a reality.”

Create a “Goals Blueprint”

Finally, I want to recommend that you organize what we call a goals blueprint.  This is really just a place where you can put all of your manageable goals into a single spot.

If you’re a pen and paper type of person, it could be a binder or a folder that you just stick that in your filing cabinet.  Or it could be some kind of virtual file that you put on the desktop of your computer or into a mind map, or even using some of the newer technology these days, programs like Evernote and Dropbox, that you can sync up to your mobile devices and you can have it with you on your computer, on your phone or you can print it out on paper if you need to see it in physical reality as well.

You can have all these goals in front of you and you can manage them and trace them as you go forward.

That’s your assignment.  That’s the overall concept for the first month.  These are your action steps.

Now all you need to do is proceed into the exercises, and for the next four weeks simply follow through each and every exercise and you’ll begin to work on your vision and crystallize those goals.

We’ll pick things up next month, bringing you closer to your “Success in 12 Months!”

In the meantime, I would love to hear from you about the goals you want to achieve and the action steps you have committed to taking. Share them with me in the comments section below–let’s get a conversation started!

Here for your support,

James