Often times people discuss how someone they know is setting themselves up to fail in a new venture or goal – for example, by not reading all the facts, neglecting proper planning or failing to take into account potential events or circumstance which could negatively affect their ability to acheive their goal.

So that stuff we all know but how often do we set ourselves up for SUCCESS with our goals?

It’s possible and it’s easy!

By looking at every angle of the goal you are setting out to achieve and taking steps to make your journey from where to you now – A – to where you want to be – B – as easy for you as possible.

I’ll give you an example from my life…

I recently agreed to partake in 3months of intense physcial training, wherein I’d be sticking to a strict food diet and training 5 times a week in a central london gym.

I was no gym buff to begin with, infact I normally found going to the gym a lack lustre past time. Also, while my diet is fairly balanced – I love cake (still do) + I had no real concept of what food is good for me when working out.

Further to this I don’t live in Central London. Infact I live a good 40 minutes away from the gym.

Surely at some point in this barrage of hurdles to jump over en route to my goal I’m going to slip up right?

Well I’m proud to say that I complete the entire 3months of intense training and diet without missing a single day in the gym!

That’s 5 days of gym a week for 3 months and not a single day skipped!

And all this despite various aillments cropped up during the 3 months such as:

• a perpetual back pain (not an injury – I checked!),
• wisdom tooth torture that provided me with sleepless nights
• and occasionally experiencing that odd feeling when a cold is coming on which saps ones energy – except I did’t have a cold. Odd one.w

Each one of these reasons in the past would have been sufficient for me to miss a days training if not an entire weeks worth!

So what’s changed for me.. I’ll show you.

Here are some of the steps I took at the start of my course to set myself up for success:

1. I fully committed to the 3 months training by verbally stating my commitment and I got a training partner to hold me accountable. Accountability is the strongest way to fully commit to and achieve any goal in life.By working with a partner, if either of you fall – the other can pick you up.. if you fall alone you’re screwed! And in the past falling over would equate to a few days procrastination for me!
2. I signed a written contract and put at stake a sum of money to ensure my commitment to the 3 months. If I should break my commitment for any reason other than extreme illness or death I will lose my money or part of it. Now there’s a game changer that will motivate pretty much anyone’s ass into action.If money doesn’t motivate you then find something that will.. be it your time or another luxury item to put at stake. A quick tip that it’s important here to build a contract around your terms and conditions that will protect you from loss should you fall ill or any other circumstance out of your control should arise to prevent you from achieving your goals as agreed.
3. The task of picking out my dietry foods was delegated to a healthy food conscious friend. So I didn’t need to concern myself or worry about doing things wrong. I’ve enrolled an expert to make my life easier.
4. I bought a 3 month train ticket upfront – this just made my general travelling easier – so I would never have to consider topping up my travel card. This Made for a smoother train journey to and from the gym each day. I also paid out 3 months gym membership upfront, which again, made attending the gym a smooth process.
5. I focused on my bigger goal in life. I’m passionate about success in all areas of my life and having an fit body and healthy lifestyly is important for me as part of living a successful life.So I tied my current goal into my long term vision. This kept me inspired and motivated on my 3 month journey. It’s always important to have a focus on the reason WHY when doing things… with no reason WHY its simple to give up or get bored.

With all these aspects of my challenge taken care of – all there was left for me to do to achieve my goal was get my ass to the gym!

All other concievable and major hurdles had been taken care of.

Of course, en-route to my success, new hurdles would crop up now and then.. and when they did it was important that I looked at how to set up structures or solutions to minimise their interuption on my set goal. For example getting my wisdom tooth sorted and still making it to the gym required some logistical planning but was simple enough to do. I always made my goal the key focus!

So… now… for all the goals you’ve set for yourself… have a look what hurdles could possible cause you to stumble.

What to look out for:

1. Accountabilty – Do you have someone to support you on your journey towards your goal E.g. Like having a training partner.
2. Stake – What can you put at stake such that it would motivate you to keep going beyond the point of boredom or fatigue, which generally occurs when one in persuit of a goal.This why I gave my word, put up money and signed a contract to solidfy my agreement to play full out in achieving my goal.
3. Expert Delegation – Which areas of your goal are you most unsure about and of which you would benefit from having an expert in this area help you. For example: I had a friend who knows about healthy food aid me with picking a diet plan and the exact food I required.
4. Automation – what parts of your goal are repetitive and so you would save time if you could automate them. For example: I automated the travel and gym expenses by paying them off in advance so that I never have to repeat this exercise during the 3 months.Another example of such a hurdle was my twice weekly shopping for the best organic food. It’s great food but time consuming to go shopping twice a week. A new hurdle and the new automated strategy was to order online and have the food delivered to my house which actually only costs a little more money and save me a load of time and from having to carry heavy bags on the train!

   Note: Another form of automation is to delegate tasks to people who can help you. This is a major key to successfully completing your goal. Rarely is a goal achieved alone. Enrolling people to aid you with your tasks frees up your time and allows you to multiply your efforts to speedily achieve your goals. In my experience delegation is one of the most powerful skills yet most often neglected and procrastinated upon.

5. Define and focus on your big reason WHY? The bigger the reason for achieving your goal the more focused and determined you will be to achieve it.Maybe your goal is part of a bigger mission in your life. It doesn’t matter what it is – as long as it inspires you into action. You will know you have hit upon your big WHY when the thought of achieving it causes a big smile to spread across your face.

By using these 5 simple steps to Set yourself up for success you find reaching your goals a whole lot easier!

Not long ago I was asked by a friend and former client:

“Your life seems awesome and fun… how do you have time to do the things you love?”

It was a nice compliment and  a great question. Though I did not know an answer for him right away. I took some time to look at my life and how I do things before answering. I realise many other people  have this question so this article is a summation of how I ensure I make time for the things  I love and get things done in a really simple way.

Firstly, have you ever heard anyone say “I don’t have the time to do x” or “I’ve got too much to do to spend time doing the things I love”?

I’ll make the bold assertion here that at some point in your life you have had this thought or said these words to someone.

Getting straight to the point: ‘having’ time is a myth…

Time is not something that we can ‘have’ in real life.

It’s not a physical object to hold. You could be a little more scifi and say that time doesn’t even exist. In fact it’s just something we humans made up to manage our lives and to keep track of occurring events.

So what good is all this seemingly esoteric verbiage to you..?

Well, so often people get so caught up in the groove of their lives, with things they believe they HAVE TO or MUST DO and they don’t stop to consider alternative options…

In reality – the only time we all we have is the RIGHT NOW. That is this present moment. And how you spend that time is up to you.

To put another way: you ‘choose’ how you spend your time. Actually.. you ‘create’ time for various activities. And what you majorly create it for will become your resulting destiny (life).

So bring your focus to that right now. Everything you do – you choose to do it.

You don’t have to do it.

I repeat: You do not have to do it. You choose to do it and create time for it.

Sure, in certain cases if you don’t do things there will be consequences e.g. if you don’t go to work you don’t get paid. But realise here that you choose to go to work because you deem it a necessary part of your choice of lifestyle. There are alternatives – seek them out if you dare!

However most people don’t see this aspect of choice in life.

Instead most people ‘spend’ the majority of their time dealing with whatever comes ups in the moment and justifying it under the umbrella of “it’s what we have to do”. Whether it be work related or random errands or fixing the blocked sink. All this running around inevitably leaves them with endless undone items, no real fun time and a dull destiny ahead.

So, instead of leaving your time management to the whims of what comes up in life – you can start to create your time by taking control of what you are doing and when you want to do it.

Here are the steps:

Step 1.

First consider what it is you’d really like to do.. this year, this month, this week or even today!

Step 2.

Grab a diary /planner and take a look at what you’re doing over a specific period of time in which you’d like to complete the task.

Note: If you’ve never used a schedule or planner this is a great time to start putting activities in and it will begin to put all the things you ‘have to do’ in to perspective and you can see how busy you really are.

Step 3.

Look for the first available free time for you to do your desired task — schedule it in now and stick to it!

The key here is seeing that if you ‘want’ to do something .. either something you love or something ‘important’ that you just never seem to get around to doing then you have to create the time to do it and stick to that time. No excuses.

This last bit ‘stick to it’ is really important! Often times this is where people ‘lose’ time – by deciding last minute to change their commitment in favor of something new!

If you don’t make time and stick to it – you’ll never ‘have’ the time to do it as life will always throw up new situations for you to deal with.

For those of you who say… “but no, seriously, I have too much to do.. I simply won’t find the time”

Yup sure there are things that are important for you to do for example: going to work or pick up the kids from school (if you have kids) ..

But how you do these things are up to you. Thinking outside the box of norm a little and considering perhaps instead of picking up your kids yourself all the time.. request a friend or spouse to aid you, thus giving you more time. Pay for a nanny even!

With work you could request to do less time in the office.

When taking control of your time there are always 3 options you have:

1. Delegation

• Ask someone to help by doing all or part of the task. Most of us like to act alone which makes learning to delegate a golden tool to owning your destiny.

2. Making Requests.

• Similar to asking for help but also you could ask for more money, more time, more resources – whatever will help free you from having to do the task or aid the task in being achieved quicker.

3. Deleting unimportant tasks.

• Consider if your task is really still relevant and important to you. If not then delete it! Simple. Bonus free time to do other things!

Now if you still have too much to do it is likely you’re not making enough time for yourself – which is important! Or you’re not being entirely honest with yourself about what you do with your time. Delegation is your first port of call. Don’t be a hero and do everything yourself. It can take up a lot of time!

What makes me so smart?

It’s the simple realisation that each of us has 24hrs a day. We get up, we do stuff, we go to bed. The next day we get up, we do stuff and go to bed again. And we rinse and repeat this pattern till one day we die.

So be smart with your time. It’s limited. Use the tools in this article to get more done, quicker and have more fun.

You will own your destiny by taking control of your daily tasks and how you spend your time.

Lastly, if you think the issue is simply you’re no good at managing your time.. well good news.. you can learn how to! It’s a skill not an inherited characteristic.

It all depends on how much you really want to do all those task you say you really want to do .

If it is truly important to you – you will find a way of making it happen.

I’ll admit my mind wandered down some dark and dreary alleys of “what if it all goes wrong” … “what if I end up poor” etc etc.. concerns, worries and doubts.

Yup I still have doubtful thoughts at times. I am a human. And thankfully I know better and what soon kicked in like an emergency back up power generator was the truth that is… I’ll become what I focus on and anything is possible!

Instantly I had a shift in my being!

In the down state of worry and woe I felt low energy, no focus, doom gloom and no fun. No plan or idea was good or worthwhile… it was all grey and doomed to fail.

The instant I came out of that crap I felt the zest of adventure and the twinkle in my eye. I felt energised and cheery. My focus was sharp and I knew exactly what I want out of life.

I like to call this state of being: Flow.

This is where I prefer to be, in the state of flow, and the truth that anything I want is possible.

I’ve always thought to myself that in any situation in life, whatever the scenario, even if its dreary and gloomy, there will always be at least 1 person who could rise up and make something positive out of it.

Like the numerous people who become millionaires during an economic downturn. And so that person can quite easily be me.

In this state of flow my mind drifted to the thoughts of what it means to be ‘realistic’. Aha.. the point of this article.

To be Realistic is a phrase often heard banded about by people – especially when ideas, dreams or plans are being discussed.

Some people love to be realistic. However I realised a while back that ‘being realistic’ doesn’t actually mean anything other than ‘let’s be cautious and play safe’.

When people say to me ‘you’ve got to be realistic’ I feel to punch them in the face! And say ‘what the fuck do you mean?’

Being realistic to me = Being boring and playing by limitiations that don’t actually exist and result in no excitement at all.

Being realistic is what leads to successful people being called ‘lucky’ because ‘realistic’ people often can not realistically see the possibility of themselves being that successful.

This can be an unfortunate shame for people with such a realistic view as they can be stuck behind this view point instead of seeking to learn how the success people made it and thus potentially follow the same path to achieve their own success.

The key point to understand in this article is: There is no real ‘realistic’ way… why?… because each and every one of us has a different definition and guideline for ourselves about what is realistic or not.

You define your own realistic view based on your own beliefs. Exciting news!

You can do whatever you want..’realistic’ or not. You just have to believe in it enough and take action to make it happen.

For some people being realistic is buying an Island at the age of 20 (Sir Richard Branson). Alternatively for some, if not the majority of folk out there, being realistic is getting good school grades, getting a good job, doing something which doesn’t necessarily inspire them but it pays ok and it has a good pension scheme, and then waiting 60 odd years till they are retired (a.k.a old) to set off and have ‘fun’.

Sounds a bit shit to me – so I’m willing to get physical with anyone who tries to put their limitations on me. I’m kidding of course!

Did you know there are people out there who make a million and more in a day?

It’s possible, it’s proven, it’s realistic to them and as such you can do it too if you want.

In conclusion I’ll pass on some golden advice I once recieved:

“Don’t do what you think is realistic – do what inspires you…”