Choose a goal and plan for it

The true first step is that of defining a goal and understanding exactly what one intends to achieve and by what means. Once the goal is chosen, the planning phase begins.

Just like athletes visualize their goal even before reaching it, those who follow a project also have to keep their gaze fixed on the path needed to get there.

Put the goal on a list

In everyday life it’s easy to forget the reason behind a project, forgetting WHY, as the Americans say, and then losing sight of the final goal.

Every “WHY” defines a potential reason that allows one to continue ahead

Everyone, then, has their own style. For example, many studies show that writing by hand involves more of our brain and makes it more active and concentrated during the writing process. Really for this reason many people have a “pen memory”: writing helps to establish what is being thought about.

A best practice is making a list of all the reasons why one wants to reach a determined goal, writing them right away just like they come into one’s head. There’s a high probability that the first to emerge will be the most important and motivating ones.

Creating Some Milestones

It’s difficult to stay positive and motivated when a project is far from completion. Because of this, it can be useful to define some milestones, which allow for verification of the intermediate targets that have already been achieved. Milestones are some mini-goals that make the planned path more concrete.

Often we feel overwhelmed by the sensation of having a number of impossible things to do, in a limited amount of time.

For this reason, breaking the project into very small pieces that are realistic to obtain, and ending them one at a time, can be the key.

“Eat the elephant in small pieces” 😉

Establishing a Strategy

Choosing a strategy is the next step, it involves the ability to adapt and be flexible (we’ll talk about these).

In the course of developing and achieving a determined project, it surely happens that one runs into an unforeseeable and unplanned occurrence: be resilient (I spoke about that here) and flexible, this is the solution.

Imagining “How it would be if…”

Imagining the day that one’s goal is reached happens to everyone: being seated at graduation, signing a highly desired contract, the completion of a project that we worked hard on.

Imagining that happiness, that sense of satisfaction, can increase motivation and make it easier to find it again in a moment of loss.

Motivation can be easy or difficult to trigger, it all depends on how strong and rooted the underlying motivation is, as it stands at the base of it all.

It all depends on how true, strong, and powerful our WHY is