Switch careers! Find love! Travel the world! Get into shape! Why is it that we can strike little things off our day-to-day to-do lists, but our most heartfelt ambitions manage to elude us year after year? Yes, circumstances can trip us up. But all too often, we unknowingly get in our own way. “We tend to put barriers between our goals and ourselves because we become convinced that we’re either not up to the task of achieving them or we secretly don’t believe we deserve to accomplish them,” says Alice Domar, Ph.D., coauthor of Live a Little!

If your roadblock is… resistance to change..
We know—it’s terrifying to make that first move toward a long-held goal: “Most of us experience discomfort when we break from our routine,” says Jim Loehr, Ed.D., a performance psychologist and the author of The Power of Story. (Free Press). “The trick is to give yourself enough incentives to make tolerating that discomfort worthwhile.” To embrace the new, put yourself through these paces. .

1. Fantasize about your future bliss. Imagine how satisfied you’ll feel when you reach your objective. If you want a more fulfilling job, visualize doing work you’re passionate about. Jot down the specific emotions this achievement would evoke (“I’d feel inspired, not bored, at the office”). “You’re giving yourself some compelling reasons to move forward,” Loehr explains. .

2. Escape the same old, same old. Identify a few novel habits that could help you reach your goal and start integrating them into your schedule. If you want to find a new gig, you could revamp your résumé and resolve to send it to at least one potential employer a week.

3. Make the shift stick. Every morning, reread aloud how you’d feel if you realized your fantasy. Every evening, write down how well you’ve fared with your new habits and record any progress. (You scored an interview!) “This method will help you tie your actions to your goal, which will make your efforts seem producticve and propel you further forward,” Loehr says..

If your roadblock is… perfectionism..
It’s awfully tempting to put off pursuing your goal until you’re better prepared or totally sure you can hit the mark. Unfortunately, that ideal moment may never come. “Perfectionism can be paralyzing,” says Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, author of The Power of Women. (Times Books). Perfectionists tend to have an all-or-nothing view of the world (“I need to drop 20 pounds before I can rock a bikini!”), so it’s important to identify the rewards that come with making even a bit of progress toward your dream, Nolen-Hoeksema explains. (You can still frolic in a two-piece and feel good about your body without dropping two dress sizes.) To do that, write down your aim (e.g., to lose 20 pounds). Then detail how you’d benefit from getting 25 percent, 50 percent or 75 percent of the way there. .

“This exercise will help you value incremental change,” says Nolen-Hoeksema, who advises patting yourself on the back each time you make one stride. “If you don’t reach your initial benchmark, you’ll be able to relish the progress you have made without getting demoralized.”.

If your roadblock is… catastrophizing..
Playing out every possible what-if may seem like a smart way to make absolutely certain that pursuing a goal is advisable, but when you think about all the disasters that could ensue, “you inevitably psych yourself out,” says Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., author of My Stroke of Insight. (Penguin). Instead, get out of your head and into the moment with these tips from Taylor that will help you stop overanalyzing and start acting. .

Doomsday dilemma. I’m freaked out by what could go wrong.
Soothing solution … To prove to yourself that the earth will not shatter if you move forward, take one tiny step toward what you’re striving for, Taylor suggests. Do something unintimidating, such as exploring an aspect of your goal online. (If you want to start a blog about crafting, check out three similar sites.) You’ll get closer to your dream without stressing out. .

Doomsday dilemma. I second-guess myself so much, I’ve stalled.
Soothing solution … Anchor yourself in the present by focusing on the physical sensations you experience when you do something related to reaching your dream: If you’re surfing sites, draw your attention to your breath as you look at a particularly cool webpage. “Immersing yourself in the sensory side of the process will help you get into the flow and focus on what you can do in that moment,” Taylor says. “That creates momentum.”

Goals have a property we can call immediacy. An immediate goal is directly connected to whatever you’re doing right now. For instance, right now I’m typing this with the goal of finishing the article you’re reading. By contrast, less immediate goals are less directly connected to what you’re doing right now. For me, right now, a less immediate goal is to help project teams work more effectively. I’m typing this, in part, because I hope that people reading it might gain some insights that they can apply.

Achieving your goals requires both passion and action. Knowing when to emphasize passion and when to emphasize action are the keys to managing yourself, or others, toward achievement.

A goal’s immediacy determines the effectiveness of any particular goal achievement strategy. To achieve a less immediate goal, focus on it. Contemplate it. Imagine it. Imagine achieving it. Imagine having achieved it. When you do, you wake up your passion, and you unconsciously do what’s necessary to achieve that goal.

Imagining success is far less effective for immediate goals. If I want an ice cream cone from the store across the street, imagining it probably won’t make it happen. To achieve immediate goals, focus on what you have to do, and then you’ll take action.

For a less immediate goal, focus on the goal, and the doing will take care of itself. For a more immediate goal, focus on the doing, and the goal will take care of itself. It’s when we get the two confused that we get into trouble.

To help people and organizations achieve goals, use these same principles. As a manager or leader, you’re responsible for your own personal goals, but you also take some responsibility for organizational goals and for goals of subordinates.

When the goal is immediate, do what you can to help people focus on what they need to do to achieve the goal. When the goal is less immediate, do what you can to help them visualize achieving it.

For instance, a near-term project milestone is an immediate goal. Although focusing the attention of the team on the milestone might be helpful, still more helpful would be a focus on this week’s work, because that’s what people must do to achieve the goal.

On the other hand, since goals related to, say, business development tend to be less immediate, a more vision-oriented approach is likely to be more effective for them. Focusing a team’s energies on what life will be like when we complete this set of projects could provide people with the guidance they need to set their own priorities consistent with that less immediate goal.

There’s a time for passion (imagining), and a time for action (doing). One without the other doesn’t work. Knowing when one is more important than the other is the key to achievement.

It’s when we get passion and action confused that we get into trouble.

by Rick Brenner 

I make my living helping people figure out how to create careers that light them up, so I end up having a lot of random conversations about career passion. While the idea is appealing to everyone (because who wouldn’t want to love their work?), it can also kick up a fair amount of skepticism.

No doubt some of that skepticism is fueled by an overdose of happy-thought gurus who are long on fluff and short on realistic implementation. But a big part of it is also tied to an all too common misperception that pursuing passion is little more than unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky dreaming. That misperception is fed by a number of widespread myths. Here are four of the most common myths that prevent people from stepping into their potential.

Myth No. 1: Pursuing your passion is selfish and self-indulgent. Too many people fall prey to the notion that if it’s fun, it must be selfish. And of course we can’t have that! Better to stick our noses to the grindstone and grit our teeth. (What’s up with that?) Is creating a career where you feel energized and engaged in your own best interest? Of course! But finding work you love is also one of the best things you could ever do for your loved ones.

Imagine the difference between someone who grinds through the day in a job that sucks the life out of him and someone who actually gets energy from the work she does. Which one would you want to be around at the end of the day? Which one is going to be a better wife, husband, parent, or friend? When you love what you’re doing for such a significant portion of your waking hours, the positive ripple effect on your family, your coworkers, and even just random people you encounter can be substantial.

Myth No. 2: You have to be “realistic.” People say, “Sure, I’d like to pursue my passion, but when it comes to work, you have to get realistic. I have responsibilities. I can’t just go chasing after fun.” After all, work is called work for a reason, right? You don’t get paid to have fun–or so many of us believe. There’s often an element of this myth at play in myth No. 1. (“I can’t be selfish and have fun because I have to get serious and take care of my responsibilities.”)

Don’t get me wrong. I agree wholeheartedly that, yes, you do have to be realistic. But it’s important to be clear about what realistic means. For many people, what they really mean is “Here’s a wet towel I’d like to smother that dream with.” Realism becomes another word for unquestioned pessimism, and it becomes a great (and often unfounded) reason to say no.

There’s nothing wrong with taking realistic stock of the situation and acting accordingly. In fact, the likelihood that you will succeed goes up exponentially if you do. I think of that as “positive realism.” “Negative realism,” on the other hand, takes stock of the obstacles and simply stops. It doesn’t say, “OK, here are some of the challenges blocking my path. Now, what are some possible ways around that?” We’re amazingly creative, we humans, but when we buy into negative realism, we allow ourselves to be trapped in a tiny box of possibility.

Myth No. 3: Do what you love, and the money will follow. Sorry, folks. “Do what you love, and the money will follow” is actually the abbreviated version. The full version is “Do what you love, work really, really hard, be patient, be persistent, be open, work really, really hard some more, and the money will follow.” Not quite as catchy, I know, but much more accurate.

When you set things in motion in the direction of your passion, things do have a way of happening. Doors open you would never have known were there. Opportunities come up you would never have imagined. But it’s not guaranteed. Just because you’re doing what you love doesn’t mean you’re snorting magic fairy dust that will automatically turn the dream into reality. You have to get there the hard way, just like anyone else.

Myth No. 4: I’m limited by the rules. This one makes me want to scream. When I hear a variation on this theme, I always have to resist the urge to look at them and bleat, “Baaaaaaaah!” Sheep! Whose rules?

“The rules” create a needless barrier between you and your potential. I frequently hear people look back with regret on the career path they chose, saying it ultimately left them feeling unfulfilled and stuck. They got sucked in by external rules and expectations about what success looks like, what is respectable, even what kind of life they should live. And not so surprisingly, they ended up living someone else’s life. When you follow cookie-cutter rules and take a cookie-cutter approach, you’ll get cookie-cutter results. Pursuing your passion is inherently about creating your own path. It’s about breaking out of the ruts and saying, “No, guess what? These are my rules. This is the way it’s done.”

A real-world perspective: If you want to succeed in pursuing your passion, you have to be realistic, and you have to work hard. You also have to question assumptions and be creative in figuring out ways to make it happen. You have to ask the hard questions and sometimes make the hard choices. It isn’t pie in the sky. Making it happen is a very down-to-earth, nuts-and-bolts process requiring you to develop a deep awareness of both yourself and the world around you.

After years as a professional malcontent, Curt Rosengren discovered the power of passion. As a speaker, author, and coach, Rosengren helps people create careers that energize and inspire them. His book, 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work, and his E-book, The Occupational Adventure Guide, offer people tools for turning dreams into reality. Rosengren’s blog, The M.A.P. Maker, explores how to craft a life of meaning, abundance, and passion.

I’ve finally realized that I need to put together a 5-year plan to continue my personal development and reach goals. I’ve found your post, Think About Your Life Goals , and it’s started me in the right direction, but left a lot of open questions. To start, I really don’t know what questions I should ask myself to get to the items I really want (if I even know what I really want in the first place). Is there some sort of personal plan worksheet that you know of that would cover the complete realm of development? I feel that I would be more successful if I could easily view my goals and track my progress within one main document.

A great question, but to tell the truth, since I wrote that article, I’ve simplified my goal-planning system. A lot. I’ll get into that simple system in a minute, but let’s break Bob’s question into three parts:

1. How to choose life goals

2. How to get there

3. How to keep track of all your goals and actions

How to choose life goals
There is no perfect answer here. Some people have known for awhile now what they really want, but just haven’t pursued it, and for them, it just takes a little contemplation to realize what they’ve wanted all along. Others will have a more difficult time, as they have never figured out what their dream is, or what they’d like to accomplish. For them, I’d make a few suggestions:

1. Take some time for quiet contemplation.

2. Think about what’s important to you.

3. Think about what you’d like people to say about you when you die.

4. Brainstorm — make a list of all the things you’d like to do in life, things that sound fun and exciting and wonderful, and then choose the best of the list.

5. You don’t have to come up with your life goals right now. You could just think of something you’d like to achieve over the next 6 months to a year, and continue to explore different things until you find your dream.

How to get there
If you know your goals, the next question is how to get there. A great method that I’ve seen numerous times, most recently by Mark Joyner in his Simple*ology system, is called backward planning, a method used by the military. Basically, here’s how it works:

• Have a clearly defined goal with a clearly defined outcome — you should be able to visualize what it looks like when you’ve accomplished the outcome.

• What is the last thing you’ll need to do to achieve that outcome? If your goal is to publish a novel, for example, the last thing you’ll need to do (before the publisher does the layout and design, printing, marketing, etc.) is edit and submit the final draft.

• What is the thing you’ll need to do just before that step? In the above example, you might want to get an outside editor to review your draft and give your criticisms and suggestions and edits.

• What is the thing you’ll need to do before that step? In the example, you’d need to do a revised draft to submit to your editor.

• And so on, until you get to the first step. The first step is what you need to focus on. In the novel example, you might have “brainstorm novel ideas” as your first step.

If you follow this plan, you’ll have a step-by-step guide to achieving your goal. Now you just need a way to track your goals and achieve them.

How to track and achieve your goals – a simple method
As Bob suggests, it would take a well-planned form or software to track a bunch of goals, broken down by periods of your life (1 year, 5 years, 10 years, etc). That can be very complicated, as I’ve discovered myself.

So how can you simplify this? Of your life goals, choose one to accomplish within the next 12 months. If none of them can be accomplished in 12 months, choose a sub-goal of one of your life goals to accomplish in 12 months. And only choose ONE goal. Here’s an example:

Life goal: build my dream house
1 year goal: save $5,000 towards a down payment for my dream house

Once you’ve chosen your 1 year goal (and remember, only choose one — not one for each area of your life, but just one), then choose a medium-term goal that you can accomplish in 3-6 months. It should be a big chunk of your 1 year goal. For example:

medium-term goal: save $2,500 in 6 months

Then choose a short-term goal you can accomplish in 1-2 weeks. For example:

short-term goal: set up automatic deductions from my paycheck to go straight to savings — amount: $200 per paycheck.

The reason you should only focus on one goal at a time is that it’s hard to track a whole bunch of goals, and it’s hard to maintain focus on more than one goal at a time. If you just have to accomplish one thing this week, you can really put your energy into making it happen. But if you need to do 3-5 things in the next two weeks, it’s much more likely that you won’t do any of them.

So, focus on your short-term goal (1-2 weeks) and then when you complete it, choose the next short-term goal to get you to your medium-term goal. Once the medium-term goal is accomplished, choose a new medium-term goal to get you to your long-term goal (1 year). Once your long-term goal is accomplished, set your sights on a new long-term goal. Keep this up, and you’ll achieve a lot.

Here’s another example:

1 yr goal: Quit my job and work from home
medium-term goal: start an online business that will bring me income
short-term goal: brainstorm and research ideas for online business

I’ve found that this simplified system does a lot to helping me stay focused. It’s also hard to only choose one goal, as we always want to do 10 goals, but I think it’s worth it to decide what’s most important.

And the goal-tracking system is simple: on a simple 3×5 index card (or any sheet of paper), write down three things: your 1-year goal, your medium-term goal, and your short-term goal. When you accomplish the short-term goal, just cross it off and write a new one. It doesn’t require any fancy software or planning system.

The key is to maintain focus on your one goal, and to put all your energy into achieving it. Don’t forget it, don’t be distracted from it. Let it be the point on the horizon that you continually keep in sight, moving around obstacles but constantly heading towards that point. Maintain your focus, and you’ll achieve it.

by ZenHabits.net