5 STEPS TO HIT ANY GOAL

The Kaizan of our lives

I mentioned before that there are some specific tools that can predictably help us reach our goals. In my previous post, we explored the three things that get in our way to reaching our goals. These three dream stealers are lack of perspective, pride, and hopelessness. We also identified the six steps towards creating lasting change. If you remember those six steps are:

• 1. Creator
  2. Heart
  3. Action
  4. Need to
  5. Get back up
  6. Excel in Kaizan

Now that we understand those principles, we can dive even deeper into the specific tools we can use daily that help us to reach our goals. I recall a time in my life when I did not know about these tools and I wanted to paint my house. I had never painted a house before and I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the prospect of painting the entire outside of my house. At the time I had a small child at home with me and life was busy with naps, laundry mountains and everything else involved with being a mom. I had no idea how I was going to fit in learning to paint, buying the paint and supplies and the hours and hours it would take to finally get the job done. I was stuck in analysis paralysis. Ever been there? It is a quaint little place where time stands still and we think we are getting a lot accomplished because we are thinking about something a great deal but the reality is that even though we are exerting a great deal of energy thinking about getting started, we are not actually taking any action, so nothing gets done.  

Then I learned about one tool at the Master Your Power Within Event that helped me to get to work in an effective and manageable way and helped me to finish painting my entire house in just over a week while working in the cracks of time between my baby’s naps. This tool helped me so much that I began to use it in every area of my life; from making sure I spent daily quality time with my kids, to writing a book. It has changed everything for me because it has helped me understand what specifically I can do to get the things I want done.  

So what it this tool? Well it is something that Brandon Broadwater teaches at the Master Your Power Within Event called "Bullseye Times". It is  part of a process that he spends over half a day teaching and although I don’t have half a day now to share with you everything he taught me, I will give you everything I can within the time we have together.

Basically a Bullseye Time is a small period of time that you dedicate each day to taking action on something you want to accomplish in your life and it allows you to accomplish that goal in small, manageable, daily steps. Here are the basics to succeeding at bullseye times.

Bullseye Times:

• Set one specific goal you want to accomplish (i.e.: I will make 5 sales calls daily)
• Set a start and end time of when you will do this everyday.
• Plan to work on it between 15 min to an hour every day. We are much more effective when we are working in small bursts of time.
• During your bullseye time you are taking direct action on the thing you want to accomplish. It’s not a time to plan, it is a time to do! 

Now that you understand what bullseye times are, there is something else you need to know about this process. If you leave this out you will have unpredictable results but add this next step to your goal planning and you will be able to hit any target.   

Consequences and Rewards

This next step is critical because if we leave it out we will not be completely driven to do whatever it takes to reach our goals. All of us are either driven by pleasure or pain. When we are truly motivated to change, it is either because we want to have something pleasurable or we don’t want something painful. For my husband, he is motivated by pleasure and he loves to eat good food so he would be completely motivated to do work he doesn’t necessarily enjoy to get something yummy. Pain motivation doesn’t work for him very often. He is pretty easy going and adaptable so he will just put up with less than ideal circumstances rather than it driving him forward to change it. Now for me I am motivated by pain. I will do a lot to avoid painful consequences. I like good things in my life and will work towards them but when push comes to shove, I will do anything to avoid painful things I don’t want in my life. So for us to predictably and effectively reach our goals, we need to have a motivator in place pushing us forward. If we do not put this in place, our results will be sporadic and unpredictable. If we attach consequences and rewards to our goals and are committed to following through on implementing them based on our performance, we will have a fire lit within us pushing us forward towards creating the life we desire. 

 

To get started, we need to find something you really want everyday. Maybe it is a special type of food, or checking your emails, or hey even brushing your teeth. Whatever it is, it needs to be something that you just can’t do without and would do anything to have it. Now what you do is attach this thing you want most of all to the goal you have. Here’s some examples of how this works. Let’s say you want to workout everyday and you also love to shower every day, you could decide that you can have a shower (reward) as soon as you workout for 15 minutes (goal). If you want to improve your relationship and you realize that you haven’t been telling your kids you love them, your could decide I can brush my teeth (reward) as soon as I tell my kids I love them (goal). 

The next step is to also attach a painful consequence to your goal if you don’t do it. By painful I don’t mean physical pain (that would be weird!), I just mean something that you don’t want that will drive you to take action on your set goal. Here are a couple examples. “I can’t have a shower (consequence) until I have exercised for 15 minutes in the morning (goal).” “I can’t check my e-mails (consequence) until after I have had my morning spinach smoothie (goal).” It is just attaching a consequence painful enough to motivate us to do whatever it is that we really want to do. 

Putting these rewards and consequences in place helps us to avoid being caught in the dream stealer trap of losing perspective because they help keep us focused on our long term desires rather than short term pleasures. We make it easier for us to take the small steps forward necessary to reach our goals than it is staying in comfortable complacency because the pleasure and pain that we have chosen for ourselves drives us to take those small steps. This is just awesome because it helps us to get out of our own way.

Principle in Action 

I had an inspiration that I should write a book book but I found it so difficult to get started and stay in momentum. I would start writing one day and commit to writing for 5 minutes every day. I would do awesome for a couple of days and then life would get in the way and I would have the same old excuses (not enough time, energy, knowledge…the list could go on and on) and I would stop. My progress was so slow that I remember thinking the book might be finished by the time I am 95 years old! Then I learned how to use bullseye times at the Master Your Power Within event and finally understood how I could set myself up to win by simply putting a bullseye time in place and attaching consequences and rewards to it. So that is what I did. I decided that I could have a shower after I wrote in my book. After I did this I remember one time it was about 10:30 at night and Andy came outside and saw me frantically writing in my book and knowing that I normally am not writing that late, he said to me “whatcha doing?”. I told him I am writing in my book because I really want a shower!

Even though putting bullseye times and rewards in consequences worked most of the time, I wasn’t perfect with it. I remember one time I didn’t write in my book and so I couldn't have a shower but I really needed to quickly run into Costco. So I threw my hair up in a ponytail, put on some clothes lying on the floor and ran out the door. While I was at the grocery store I saw someone that I know. At that moment, a mental checklist raced through my mind…"did I remember to put on deodorant, is my shirt clean, I think I have baby spit up on me, did I even comb my hair today?” Let me tell you my friends, it only takes a couple times of running into people you know while running through the stinky pants mental checklist before you are willing to do any goal to get a shower! No one wants to be the stinky, crazy hair lady! That is the power of this principle. When the consequence and reward are something that will really motivate us…we will do anything to get it done!

Let’s Make Sure We’ve Got it

• To predictably reach our goals we need to do it in small manageable steps
• Setting bullseye times are the most effective way to take small, predictable steps towards our goals
• For bullseye times to be effective we need to:
  1. Set one specific goal you want to accomplish (i.e.: I will make 5 sales calls daily)
  2. Set a start and end time of when you will do this everyday.
  3. Plan to work on it between 15 min to an hour. We are much more effective when we are working in a small burst of time.
  4. During your bullseye time you are taking direct action on the thing you want to accomplish. It’s not a time to plan or think, it is a time to do!
  5. Attach a pleasurable reward and painful consequence to doing your daily goal

Digging Deep

Now that we know this principle of bullseye times let’s put it into action in your life. Get a pen and paper or an electronic notebook and let’s get started! 

• What goal do you want to accomplish?
• What specific small daily step can you take towards this goal? (has to be something you can daily say yes I did it or no I didn’t do it)
• When are you going to start doing this every day? 
• How long will you do this for? (15 minutes to an hour is ideal)
• What pleasurable reward can you attach to it if you get it done?
• What painful consequence can you attach to it if you don’t get it done?

Now we know how to set specific, achievable goals and we understand how to break them down into small steps that we can take every day towards our goal. We also know how to set up the environment to win by putting in pleasurable rewards and painful consequences to help push us towards our dreams. I promise that when you put these things in practice in your own life, you will move faster towards the life you want to create. If you want help with becoming clear on your goals or setting specific goals in any area of your life; business, parenting, relationships, money or personal happiness click here to register for a complimentary coaching session.  

Please let me know know how using this process works for you and the successes you have had in moving towards your dreams. 

Much love,
Connie