Million Dollar Mindset. Laura Maya

control of your life's direction; it also provides you with a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding. Think about it: If your goal is to become a millionaire, then having a million dollars in the bank is the only proof of success. On the contrary, if your goal is to practice acts of charity, then keeping the money for yourself is does not justify your success.

      One of the most powerful things you can do is create a life goals list for yourself. This is a list of all of the things that you want to accomplish in your lifetime. It always changes, it's always updating itself BUT you must write your most important goals and dreams down.

      Setting goals puts you in the driver’s seat, giving you the power to transform your life. As enticing as that sounds, it is more common than those goals are not abandoned.

      2.1 Important Steps to Successful Goal Setting

      Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve and ends with a lot of hard work to actually do it. In between, there are some very well-defined steps that transcend the specifics of each goal.

      1 Have absolute Trust and Belief

      The basic and preliminary step of goal setting is to have continuous belief in yourself and the process or planning that you incorporate to achieve your goals. Be optimistic about your thoughts to achieve your goals, because thoughts turn into action. Positive thoughts turn into positive actions and negative thoughts transform into negative actions. Everything begins with a thought, so work to make your thoughts turn into reality.

      1 Visualize what you aim for

      This is about your vision. Have a long-term vision and visualization of what changes you need today to help you accomplish your goals in the future. The pre-requisites that you need - the spiritual, emotional, personal, financial, social or physical properties which need to be addressed, etc. If your vision is clear and crisp, you cannot lack focus. The clearer you are in your vision, the easier it will be to focus on making it happen.

      1 Ensure writing your goals down

      Write down your goals, to create them and see them turning into reality. Writing down goals is the key to your success. It helps you to recall and remember your goals from time to time. If you do not write them down, you will not be able to focus on them. Write down your goals in a place where you can see them every day and work way forward to accomplish them.

      1 Purpose of your goal setting

      Understanding the purpose of your goals is utmost necessary. It will inculcate a sense of constant interest in working toward it. Knowing why you want something furnishes powerful motivation to see it through to the finish. After all, if the purpose of earning a million dollars is to put it in the bank for a rainy day, you probably won’t be as motivated as you will if you need it to pay for your dream vacation expenses.

      1 Commitment

      Without strong commitment, you aren’t likely to follow through. Generally, people know the importance of commitment but still take it lightly. Realize and analyze your goals, the reasons why you want to achieve them, why they are important to you, what do they mean to you, and what will happen if you fail to achieve them. Also, introspect about what you are doing to make your goals turn into action. Enchanting the answers to the above questions regularly will help you stay focused and committed to achieving your goals.

      1 Stay Focussed

      By focussing on your goals, you manifest. When you make a daily practice of focus, they become easier to reach. Having your goals written down somewhere where you can see them regularly will help you analyze the discrepancies between the state where you are currently in and where you want to reach. This would create a positive pressure on your mind to transform yourself into a person accomplishing the set goals. In such a way, you can bring back your lost focus. Without a regular practice of focusing on your goals, you may be distracted by some other activities.

      1 Have a clear plan of action

      Check and recheck your plan of action to accomplish your goals. Having goals without a plan of action is like trying to complete a complex project without a project plan. It makes the whole process disorganized without having any priorities, task list or deadlines. This makes you frustrated and eventually leads to a failure of the entire system and the goal-setting process. Knowing all the plans ahead of time is not feasible but knowing the next few steps of action is mandatory in case of long-term goals.

      1 Accountability

      This has two parts – first is to make yourself accountable for the tasks on your plate and the second is to provide accountability to your team or your companions whom you are working with to achieve success. The latter plays an important role if you are a leader.

      Completing tasks is easy but getting work/tasks completed by others (your team, friends, family, etc.) is where you need true leadership skills. To push through when things get tough, you have to hold yourself accountable unless you bring in outside help like a coach who provides it for you.

      1 Review your goals

      Reviewing your goal setting process regularly holds significance in itself. It keeps your goals alive, active and at the top of your mind. During this review process, you can convert your entire plan into small and discrete action steps and work on them accordingly.

      1 Feedback

      An honest feedback is likely to increase your scope of improvement. It makes sense to have someone besides yourself who can provide valuable feedback at critical junctures, like a friend or a mentor. You get to know your fallouts, high and lows and then you can work on your incompetency to become successful.

      2.2 The Golden Rules of Goal Setting

      1 Set Goals that motivate you

      While setting your goals, it is important that they motivate you. This means making sure that they are important to you, and that there is value in achieving them. Motivation is another key to accomplish goals. Unless you are motivated to achieve something in life, you will not be excited to work on it or work for it, and unless you work to achieve something, you do not get it. Not in this world at least!

      1 Set SMART Goals

      For goals to be powerful, they need to be SMART!

      S Specific

      M Measurable

      A Attainable

      R Relevant and Realistic

      T Time-Bounded

      (i) Specific

      Your goal must be clear and well-defined. Generalized goals lead to generalized results. You need to precisely define what you need and where you want to end up in order achieving them.

      (ii) Measurable

      Success is achieved when it is measurable. And you can measure the degree of success only when you include precise amounts, dates and other dimensions of measuring it. For example, if your goal is to get up early in the morning until you set a fixed time