We all want to grow and become better and that’s a good thing.  Oftentimes we get excited about something (“I’m going to lose the weight this time!), and we rush out of the gate and start frantically trying to get there.  Then we have set backs, get discouraged and fail.  It can be two steps forward, 1 step back even on a good day.  Growth is hard work! But, like all difficult tasks, we will have beter success if we have the right tools, the knowledge of how to use them and the fortitude to stick with it.  With this in mind, I’m going to give you an incredibly simple, and powerful formula that you can adsapt to any situation where you are trying to grow and become better at.

Assess Where You Are Currently

This is the part that most people skip and it’s honestly one of the most important things for us to do as humans.  We have to be able to look at oursleves and make an honest and humble assessment of where we are currently.  This can be really tough sometimes!  But think about it this way.  If you were going to take a trip to California would you just hop in the car and start driving?  Of course not! You would assess where you are currently, how far away California is, the roads to take, what kind of transpoirtation to use and 100 other things.  We know this and do it instinctively at this point because we are familiar with the idea of taking a trip.   So, why not do the same thing when we are attempting to grow in a new area?

Healthy growth starts with healthy assessment of where we are currently.

Set a Goal for Where You Want to Be

This is the easy part!  We come up with goals and dreams all the time!  However, here’s what we need to do that will be a little bit more work.  We need to write this Goal out so that it is measurable.  Here’s what I mean by that.

Most times when we set a goal for ourselves it isn’t measurable until we are finished and have either succeeded or failed at it.  In other words, the “measuring stick” doesn’t come out until the end and now it’s too late to help us!  Measuring your Goals is not suppossed to be a test you take at the end… it should be a tool that we use all along the way to stay on track!  So, write your Goal out in a single sentence and make sure it is Measurable.  Here’s an example:

Let’s say you want to grow on social media.  You might normaly say,

“I want to have 12,000 Followers in the next 3 months.”

Now, this seems like a good goal.  But again, it’s not measurable until the end of the 3 months when you find out whether you succeeded or failed.  Instead we want to break this goal down into smaller pieces.  For example,  you have 12 weeks in those 3 months.  So, if you get 1,000 followers each week for 12 weeks you will reach your goal.  However, if during week 1 you only get 500 followers then now you know that what you are doing is not going to get you to your goal and you will need to change something you are doing.  So, how do we know what to do to reach success with our goals?  Inplementation Strategies.

Create Implementation Strategies

Implementation Strategies are things that we do that we believe, “If I accomplish these things then I believe I will reach my goal.  They are concrete, measurable items that we do daily.  Usiing the above of exmplae we wld take 1000 followers a week and then ask ourself, “How many followers do I get on average when I publish a new video?”  Let’s say the answer is “On average, 10.”  Therefore we know we ned to make 100 videos this week to reach our goal.  We then take that number and divide it by 7 giving us 14.2 videos per day.

At this point we can look at that number and say, “Ok, this doesn’t seem very reasonable, perhaps I should set a more reasonable goal considering my numbers.”  We then cut our goal in half and now we only need 7 videos per day, a much more achievable result,

It’s important to make these strategies measurable and time related.  For example, “I will publish 7 videos per day.”  This is a measurable goal with a time limit.  We can assess every day whether we are on the road to success or we are falling behind in our goals.  Again, the idea here is that when we break these things down we can see our progress along the way instead of just shooting for the big prize at the end.

Remember this, you must set achievable goals or you will burnout, feel depressed and feel as if you are a failure.  But what you realy failed at was planning this all out properly, not implementing it properly.  In fact, it’s not your fault for this at all!  You literally followed the plan… your plan just sucked.  All too often we get down on ourselves for the wrong thing because we have set ourselves up for failure!

Evaluate Your Progress

There must be an Evaluation process daily.  You need to be able to honestly measure how you are doing.  Doing well?  Great!  Carry on!  Your plan is working!  Not doing well?  Return to Steps 2 and 3 and adjust!  Otherwise, you are doomed to failure!  Listen, if you mess up Day 1 and only make 3 videos then you are behind the 8 ball already.  This means in order to simply break even you need to make 7 more tomorrow, plus make the additional 4 that you didn’t make today!  This is insane!  What will actually happen is you’ll do 9 tomorrow, still be behind, feel pressured and stressed which wil impair your ability to make creative videos the next day and you’ll only get 3 done which now puts you a full day behind! By day 5 you’ll quit and say, “This was stupid idea!”

Why beat yourself up like this?  Instead, set measurable, realistic Goals and Implementation Startegies and then adjust them as the data comes in every day.

Here’s to your success!