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Three Steps to Achieving your GOALS in 2011

It’s that time of the year, you know that point when we reflect on what has happen and look forward to what is going to happen in the next year.  In other words it time to create New Year’s resolutions.  The actual tradition of creating New Year’s resolutions has been around since 153 B.C. and was supposedly created by the mythical king Janus of early Rome.  The two faces of Janus on the early Roman coin looks back at past events and looks forward to the future. Today we make New Year’s resolutions of things that we want to achieve.  I recently read an article that says 45% of all Americans will make some sort of New Year’s resolution.  

Sadly, the same article stated that six months later less than half of those individuals will still be on track to accomplish those resolutions or goals.  That means that only 1 in 5 Americans will be on track to meet their goals in July of 2011.  How about you?  Do you continuously make New Year’s resolutions only to fall short year after year?  I have done a little reading and research and I have come up with the following three steps to help you achieve your goals.

1.   Begin with the end in mind – In his bestselling book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” author Stephen Covey discusses the habits that highly effective people have.  One of those habits is to begin with the end in mind.  In other words, decide exactly where you would like to be in different areas of your life and set your goals to get where you want to be.  Therefore, if your goal is to reduce debt you should list your debts and decide which ones you plan to pay off during 2011.  If you want to save more this year, you should decide exactly how much you want to save, divide that amount by the number of pay periods you have in 2011, and have that amount taken out of each paycheck every payday.  Beginning with the end in mind requires you to have a long-range vision of where you want to be, then developing goals to help you get there.

2.   Write them down – The single most important thing that sets successful people apart from the not so successful is a clear set of written goals.  Author Mark McCormack said it best in his book “What They Don’t Teach You in Harvard Business School.”  Mark did a study of the 1979 Harvard MBA class where upon graduation the question was asked “Have you set clear goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”  Ten years later the results were as follows, 13 percent of the class said they had goals but didn’t write them down; these individuals earned two times as much as the students that had no goals at all.  The most stunning find was the 3 percent of graduates that said they had goals, and had written them down, earned 10 times more than the rest of the class.

By writing your goals down you make them tangible, you automatically make yourself accountable, and you take ownership of them.  When you take ownership of your goals you are in tune with them and they are always in the forefront of your mind.  Think back when you first bought your car.  If you are like me, it seemed like you started to see the same type of car everywhere.  You saw the car in different colors, you saw the car at a stop lights, and you probably even noticed that your neighbor two streets over owns the same car.  You have to write your goals so that you will have a constant reminder of what you are trying to accomplish.

3.   Take action NOW – Here’s a riddle for you! There are three frogs on a log and one of the frogs decides to jump off.  How many frogs remain on the log?  If your answer is three then you are correct.  When it comes to setting goals the easy part is setting them, the difficult part is doing the things necessary to accomplish them.  Each year we say that we want something different, but we never actually do anything different to accomplish them.

The third and final step to achieving your goals in 2011 is to DO SOMETHING, and do it now.  I challenge you, when you are done reading this article, sit down and decide what you want to accomplish this year, write them down, and go out and make them happen.  Changing your life could be as simple as making the decision to do better than you have.  Deciding that you CAN achieve the things that you set out to do will ultimately lead you to where you want to be.

You have the power to choose to do something different.  If you want a better tomorrow, you have to do something different TODAY.

This article was written by Lonnie R. Mathews for the Who's Minding Your Money blog. Lonnie is an author and speaker in the area of personal finance. To learn more about Lonnie or to contact him visit www.lonniemathews.com