Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren’t sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. Dr Heidi Grant Halvorson discusses these nine points – for full report see link at the end.
1. Get Specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. “Lose 5 kilos” is a better goal than “lose some weight,” because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like.
2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and
how many goals we are juggling at once, it’s not surprising that we routinely
miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them.
3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself.
4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in
lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation.
5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the
ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the
ability.
6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty.
7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control “muscle” is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn’t get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time.
8. Don’t tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it’s important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don’t try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time).
9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do. Do you want to successfully
lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves.
See link for full report http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/nine_things_successful_people.html?cm_sp=most_widget-_-default-_-Nine+Things+Successful+People+Do+Differently
