Sometimes our biggest life goals seem so overwhelming. We rarely see them as a series of taking small steps and turning them into an achievable tasks, but in reality, breaking down a large goal into smaller steps—and accomplishing them one at a time is the path to success which is exactly how any big goal gets achieved.
So after you have decided what you really want and set measurable goals with specific deadlines, the next step is to determine all of the individual action steps you will need to take to accomplish your goal.
In this article, we will learn exactly how taking small steps is the path to success. Keep reading to change your life.
#1. Taking Small Steps in Other Words How to Chunk It Down.
There are several ways to figure out the action steps you will need to take to accomplish any goal.
One is to consult with people who have already done what you want to do and ask what steps they took. From their experience, they can give you all of the necessary action steps as well as advice on what pitfalls to avoid.
Another way is to purchase a book or manual that outlines the process. Yet another way is to start from the end and look backward.
You simply close your eyes and imagine that it is now the future and you have already achieved your goal. Then just look back and see what you had to do to get to where you now are. What was the last thing you did?
And then the thing before that, and then the thing before that, until you arrive at the first action you had to start with.
Remember that it is okay not to know how to do something. It’s okay to ask for guidance and advice from those who do know.
Sometimes you can get it free, and sometimes you have to pay for it. Get used to asking, “Can you tell me how to go about…?” and “What would I have to do to…?” and “How did you…?”
Keep researching and asking until you can create a realistic action plan that will get you from where you are to where you want to go. What will you need to do?
How much money will you need to save or raise? What new skills will you need to learn? What resources will you need to mobilize?
Who will you need to enroll in your vision? Who will you need to ask for assistance? What new disciplines or habits will you need to build into your life?
#2. The Path to Success is Doing First Things First.
The goal is to stay on schedule and complete the most important item first. In his excellent book, Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time , Brian Tracy reveals not just how to conquer procrastination but also how to prioritize and complete all of your action items.
In his unique system, Brian advises goal-setters to identify the one to five things you must accomplish on any given day, and then pick the one you absolutely must do first. This becomes your biggest and ugliest frog.
He then suggests you accomplish that task first—in essence, eat that frog first —and, by so doing, make the rest of your day much, much easier. It’s a great strategy.
But unfortunately, most of us leave the biggest and ugliest frog for last, hoping it will go away or somehow become easier. It never does.
However, when you accomplish your toughest task early in the day, it sets the tone for the rest of your day. It creates momentum and builds your confidence, both of which move you farther and faster toward your goal.
#3. Plan Your Day the Night Before.
One of the most powerful tools high achievers use for chunking things down, gaining control over their life, and increasing their productivity is to plan their next day the night before. There are two major reasons why this is such a powerful strategy for success:
1. If you plan your day the night before—making a to-do list taking small steps and spending a few minutes visualizing clearly how you want the day to go—your subconscious mind will work on these action steps all night long.
It will think of creative ways to solve any problem, overcome any obstacle, and achieve your desired outcomes. And if we can believe some of the newer theories of quantum physics, it will also send out waves of energy that will attract the people and resources to you that you need to help accomplish your goals.
2. By creating your to-do list the night before, you can start your day running. You know exactly what you’re going to do and in what order, and you’ve already pulled together any materials you need.
If you have five telephone calls to make, you would have them written down in the order you plan to make them, with the phone numbers next to the person’s name and all the support materials at hand.
By midmorning, you would be way ahead of most people, who waste the first half hour of the day clearing their desk, making lists, finding necessary paperwork—in short, just getting ready to work.
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#4. Read Books On Success Mindset.
If you want to retire a millionaire, for instance, there are hundreds of books, ranging from The Automatic Millionaire to The One Minute Millionaire, and workshops ranging from Harv Eker’s “Millionaire Mind” to Marshall Thurber and D.C. Cordova’s “Money and You.”
There are resources on how to make millions investing in real estate, investing in stocks, starting your own business, becoming a super sales person, and even marketing on the Internet.
Taking small steps like this will increase your confidence and slowly start to shape your life in new directions.
If you want to have a better relationship with your spouse, you can read John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus ; attend a couples workshop; or take Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks’ online course “The Conscious Relationship.”
For virtually everything you want to do, there are books and courses on how to do it. Better yet, just a phone call away are people who’ve already successfully done what you want to do and who are available as teachers, facilitators, mentors, advisors, coaches, and consultants.
When you take advantage of this information, you’ll discover that life is simply a connect-the-dots game, and all the dots have already been identified and organized by somebody else.
All you have to do is follow the blueprint, use the system, or work the program that they provide.
#5. Why People Don’t Seek Out Clues.
I once went a salon for hair cut, I asked the salon guy what his long-term goals were. He said he’d always thought about opening his own salon, so I asked him what he was doing to make that happen. “Nothing,” he said, “because I don’t know how to go about it.”
I suggested he offer to take a salon owner to lunch and ask how he had opened his own salon. “You can do that?” the salon guy exclaimed. You most certainly can.
This is the first small step or action plan everyone needs to take. You cannot just sit idle and wait for success to come to you.
In fact, you have most probably thought about approaching an expert for advice but rejected the idea with thoughts such as Why would someone take the time to tell me what they did?
Why would they teach me and create their own competition? Banish those thoughts. You will find that most people love to talk about how they built their business or accomplished their goals.
But unfortunately, like the salon guy most of us don’t take advantage of all the resources available to us.
There are several reasons why we don’t:
- It never occurs to us. We don’t see others using these resources, so we don’t do it either. Our parents didn’t do it. Our friends aren’t doing it. Nobody where we work is doing it.
- It’s inconvenient. We’d have to go to the bookstore, library, or local college. We’d have to drive across town to a meeting. We’d have to take time away from television, family, or friends.
- Asking others for advice or information puts us up against our fear of rejection. We are afraid to take the risk.
- Connecting the dots in a new way would mean change, and change—even when it is in our best interest—is uncomfortable. Who wants to be uncomfortable?
- Connecting the dots means hard work, and frankly, most people don’t want to work that hard.
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#6. How to Seek Out Clues to Achieve Success.
Here are three ways you can begin to seek out clues and take the necessary action steps to achieve your goals.
- Seek out a teacher, coach, mentor; a manual, book, or audio program; or an Internet resource to help you achieve one of your major goals.
- Seek out someone who has already done what you want to do, and ask the person if you can interview him or her for a half hour on how you should best proceed.
- Ask someone if you can shadow them for a day and watch them work. Or offer to be a volunteer, assistant, or intern for someone you think you can learn from.
#7. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
Think of your comfort zone as a prison you live in—a largely self-created prison.
It consists of the collection of cant's, musts, must nots, and other unfounded beliefs formed from all the negative thoughts and decisions you have accumulated and reinforced during your lifetime.
Perhaps you’ve even been trained to limit yourself.
#8. Example of The Baby Elephant What Happens When You Don't Take Your Action Steps.
A baby elephant is trained at birth to be confined to a very small space. Its trainer will tie its leg with a rope to a wooden post planted deep in the ground.
This confines the baby elephant to an area determined by the length of the rope—the elephant’s comfort zone.
Though the baby elephant will initially try to break the rope, the rope is too strong, and so the baby elephant learns that it can’t break the rope. It learns that it has to stay in the area defined by the length of the rope.
When the elephant grows up into a 5-ton colossus that could easily break the same rope, it doesn’t even try because it learned as a baby that it couldn’t break the rope.
In this way, the largest elephant can be confined by the puniest little rope.
Perhaps this also describes you—still trapped in a comfort zone by something as puny and weak as the small rope and stake that controls the elephant, except your rope is made up of the limiting beliefs and images that you received and took on when you were young.
#9. Taking Small Steps To Get Out of Your Comfort Zone.
One way to stretch your comfort zone is to bombard your subconscious mind with new thoughts and images—of a big bank account, a trim and healthy body, exciting work, interesting friends, memorable vacations—of all your goals as already complete.
The technique you use to do this is called affirmations. An affirmation is a statement that describes a goal in its already completed state and the good news is that you can change your comfort zone. How?
There are three different ways:
- You can use affirmations and positive self-talk to affirm already having what you want, doing what you want, and being the way you want.
- You can create powerful and compelling new internal images of having, doing, and being what you want.
- You can simply change your attitude to change your life.
All three of these approaches will shift you out of your old comfort zone.
#10. Example of Jim Carrey How He Changed Self-Talk with Affirmations.
I’ve always believed in magic. When I wasn’t doing anything in this town, I’d go up every night, sit on Mulholland Drive, look out at the city, stretch out my arms, and say,
“Everybody wants to work with me. I’m a really good actor. I have all kinds of great movie offers.”
I’d just repeat these things over and over, literally convincing myself that I had a couple of movies lined up.
I’d drive down that hill, ready to take the world on, going, “Movie of offers are out there for me, I just don’t hear them yet.” It was like total affirmations, antidotes to the stuff that stems from my family background.
------- Jim Carrey
That's all for now. I hope you loved reading this guide on taking small steps to achieve success. If you enjoyed reading please do not forget to share and comment your thoughts.
