The better way to sell online

A guide to reaching goals

I wish I could give you a five-step program that would make everything in life easy. But if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that there aren’t any short cuts. If you want to make magic happen you’ve got to set goals, put in the work and be accountable.

I wish I could give you a five-step program that would make everything in life easy. But if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that there aren’t any short cuts. If you want to make magic happen you’ve got to set goals, put in the work and be accountable.

I’ve previously written articles about SMART goals (goals which are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely) and several time management methods.

While they’re all useful techniques to have in your arsenal, they don’t work without accountability.

It’s all well and good to set yourself goals, but if you aren’t actively making the decision to pursue them everyday -and you make excuses as to why not- you’re simply not being accountable for yourself.

I’ll be honest; I’m no superhero. I pick Netflix over study sometimes, and I stretch out my lunch breaks by half an hour if I can. And while these things are okay every now and again, it’s important that they don’t become routine.

Accountability shouldn’t be a chore. But it should be a reminder that you’re in control of what you do with your time. If you’re not reaching your goals because you’ve been watching television: that’s on you.

Stop saying no

It doesn’t work because- I’ve tried something similar before- Oh, that’s out of my hands-

It easy to find excuses not to put in work. You might be tired. You might have a long day tomorrow. You might simply prefer doing other things. You might not see a clear path to your goal.

Here’s something people do a lot: they think up one solution, decide that it doesn’t work, and promptly give up.

If you want to reach your goals you must start thinking widely. You must think broadly. You have to keep looking for angles and searching for ways to find solutions.

This can be scary.

Accountability shouldn’t be a chore. It should be a reminder that you’re in control of what you do with your time. If you’re not reaching your goals because you’ve been watching television: that’s on you.

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It’s easy to say ‘I’d like to reach x amount of sales one day’. But once you start prioritizing it, it becomes real. And the chances of failing become real.

And unless you get stuck into it, you’ll only ever be dreaming: not working towards goals.

There’s never a perfect time.

I wouldn’t call Charles Bukowski a role model. He was a drunk, a womanizer, and spent most of his life unhappy. But as a poet he wrote some choice words; including this excerpt of one of my favourites:

if you're going to create
you're going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you're going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you're on
welfare,
you're going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you're going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you're going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquakes, bombardment,
flood and fire.

I know, I know, it’s a little dramatic.

I hope you'll never have to work during earthquakes or while cats are crawling up our backs, but he does make an interesting point: there’s no perfect time. There’s no perfect time to work, to create, or to pursue goals. If you want to reach goals, you’ve got to work on them even when it’s inconvenient.

There’s only now. And it might not be a good time, but it’s what you’ve got.

You might not be able to control your circumstances, but that doesn’t mean you should let your circumstances control you!

Own your goals

I rent a house in Dublin. Every summer, in the interest of saving money, I Airbnb it and go somewhere cheaper.

Every time I return I’m a little appalled. The walls are dirty, the dishes are undone, the houseplants are dead and the bathroom is knee deep in grime.

So I spent a week or two cleaning. I buy new houseplants. I frame pictures for the walls. I care for the house because I feel a sense of ownership towards it: I’ve lived there for years, and I have an interest in its maintenance. If things go wrong or break, I fix them.

The summer-stayers, on the other hand, view the house as temporary. There’s no need to care for it, because they’ll be gone soon, and its condition will have no impact on the future of their lives.

Here’s my question for you: are you willing to invest time and energy, and ownership, knowing that you might lose something as a result? Are you me, painting walls and maintaining, or you the summer-stayers, letting broken things stay broke?

Here’s the truth: unless you own your goals, and you’re willing to put in sweat, and money, and fix problems as they arise … you’ve got no real chance of success. You'll have to work on your attitude first.

Make it happen!

I mentioned at the beginning of this article that there aren’t any easy five step programs. Thankfully, there’s a two-step program you can follow. It goes like this: you set a goal, and then pursue it.

This is the hardest and easiest advice to take. If you want to succeed, you need to put in the work. It’s that simple.

Lena Klein

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