Setting realistic goals is one of the hardest things to do because you do not always know exactly where you are going…and you shouldn’t!

If you followed our earlier article Setting Up The Goals you should have created yourself some goals and actions.

Now that you have taken action towards your goals it is important to achieve the balance between focusing on that goal, and ignoring everything else (we’ll call these external events).

The solution to this comes from asking yourself the question “how does this external event affect my goal?” There are three possible answers:

  1. It slows or prevents you taking the actions towards your goal.
  2. It helps you with your actions towards your goal.
  3. It gives you an unexpected way to achieve your goal.

If you got the first answer you should ignore that external event and return your focus to making progress on your actions.

If you got the second answer then well done! Your goal has become closer in a shorter timeframe than you were expecting.

Great as that is, the third answer provides the real reason for giving external events consideration. If you are attacking your action list for your goal with the blinkers on like a race horse, you will likely miss out on some of the alternative ways of achieving your goal. And afterall, achieving the goal is the result you want, isn’t it?