Goals are great. They set a direction. They help you get clear on what you want.
The problem is, goals on their own won’t get you anywhere.
Until you make a decision, having a lofty goal, or even a mundane one, won’t kick anything into gear. With a goal, you’re still in the realm of wishing. Wishing for a successful product launch, or wishing for a new client.
What is needed to start achieving your goals is a decision.
Make an active, conscious decision that you will achieve it. Decide that you will do what it takes to reach this goal. Decide that you will succeed.
Got a goal? Ask yourself, is it important to you? Not all the goals you set are or remain important.
Does it match your values? Staying with your values is crucial if you want to feel good about your goal.
If it is important and it fits in with your values, then decide.
Success is a decision. It’s like declaring an intention. Whether it’s a successful meeting, or a successful business, you make the first big decision to commit to it. That decision shows you have the determination to achieve success. It indicates a higher level of commitment beyond just goal-setting.
In making a decision to be successful, you close the door to the possibility that it won’t happen. You shut off the option of backing out, of procrastinating, or even of ultimate failure.
When you make a decision, you’ll keep moving toward your goal, because anything else has become unacceptable.
Closing off possibility can seem like it narrows you to one outcome. And you’re right. It does! The outcome is success.
What making a decision to succeed doesn’t do is close you off from is all the possible ways that it will come about. You can still respond to unexpected opportunities. You can still explore options about how.
Making a decision is clear. All that energy of waffling? Now that energy is available to you. You don’t have to keep questioning your goal, which can keep you from taking any action. It also keeps your action focused.
There is of course more to this than just smooth sailing from when you make a decision. Every time you decide on a goal, you’re buying a ticket to Discomfort-land.
Discomfort-land, unlike Disneyland, is like a moat. It’s the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. Navigating that gap can make you want to paddle like crazy back to your comfort zone. You’ll have to get comfortable with discomfort to get to the other side of the moat, to your goal.
Once you make a decision, you can really get your energy moving by breaking things down, but in a new way. Instead of listing the steps you need to complete to achieve a goal, list the decisions that you need to make. That helps make the process more concrete.
When you make that decision, it tells you and that energetic pool that we swim around in that you’re willing to act to bring it about.
Decisions are like magnets. They bring opportunities to you. You don’t need a plan to begin.
Want to get 5 new customers? Decide that you will. Then, what’s in front of you? What can you do immediately to move in that direction? Decide to do that. When you do, you’ll find the landscape shifts, opens to new opportunities that you can now choose from, because you decided.
So what’s important to you? Is that goal important enough to make a decision, to set an intention, to achieve it? If it is, then make the first decision, to commit to it.
How does it feel to make a decision to succeed? Was that important in achieving a past goal? Share in the comments below!
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Here’s your Alchemy Assignment, your chance to transform what you learned in this article into awareness and action for you and your business:
Take a look at your list of goals. Are there any that you haven’t started to move on yet? It may be that your delay is because you haven’t decided to achieve it. Consider, is this goal important to you? Is it aligned with your values? If it is, then decide, really decide, to pursue it. The energy and commitment of that decision will start you on achieving it.