How do you achieve goals? Steal my process.

You've got something you want to achieve. A job change. Complete a half marathon. Start investing.

You set the goal. You're excited. It's going to be great!

Now what?

I always say that getting what you want starts with knowing what you want.

And that absolutely is the first step.

So often, it can also be the last step.

I've lost count of how many goals I've set over the years, only for them to gather dust. I know the frustration that can follow that initial burst of excitement. I shared my many goal setting mistakes over here.

This is no longer my reality.

Goals I've achieved in the last five years:

• Increasing my income by over 40% over 4 years and redefining my relationship with money

• Attracting my Man and experiencing the happiest, healthiest, most fun kind of love

• Buying a house

• Being promoted to the leadership team at work

• Addressing my fatigue, breaking the cycle of frustration that with my healthy habits I still felt awful

Goes to show that you can go from sucking at goal achievement to smashing it.

This is my goal achievement process.

Step One: Growing my belief that I can achieve my goal

Some goals I start and I know if I do the work, I will achieve what I want. Running my first (and only) half marathon was like that. I knew from the very start of training that I could do it if I put the work in.

Other goals I'm less confident about. They feel more foreign and further away. Finding my dream relationship filled me with doubt and took a lot more internal work (more on that in a tick).

It's vital for those goals that I work on my self belief, otherwise I'm going to self sabotage.

There are three things I do to grow my belief that I can achieve my goal:

1. Who am I with this goal? Picture it.

2. What are the reasons I think I can't have the goal? What thoughts come up when I picture myself having achieved the goal?

3. Interrogate those thoughts. Are they irrefutable facts? Probably not. More likely they are just stories I’m telling myself.

4. What do I want to think instead that supports achieving my goal?

Why it works:

It teaches me to think in alignment with my goal. From there I’m set up to take action towards the goal and build belief in my ability to achieve it.

When we don't believe we can achieve the goal, our brains can be very sneaky in ways it prevents us from achieving it. I will find myself doing busy work instead of things that actually move me towards the goal. I will do everything else expect work on my goal and then tell myself I don't have the time.

When I can picture myself as achieving the goal and believe it, those sneaky tricks fall away. I'm not fighting against myself anymore.

Step Two: Pick an anchor thought

Once I’ve interrogated my thinking about my goal in step one, I like to pick a single thought that I can repeat to myself when the doubt creeps in.

When I was working on attracting my Man, I used to spiral into thoughts of ‘what else do I need to do to have a great relationship? What else do I need to heal within myself or change about what I’m doing?’

I would slip into a forceful energy, trying to figure out what else I needed to DO for my dream relationship to happen.

In those moments, I would say to myself:

The Universe is preparing my Good Love for me.

That single sentence took the pressure off. It reminded me that I’d done my part and now I could allow the love to flow into my life.

A couple of months of this, I was set up on a blind date and the rest is history.

Why it works:

A lot of achieving goals comes down to being able to keep working towards the goal even when, especially when, it looks like your goal is not happening.

When we hit those moments of doubt, we need a way to nip it in the bud. That’s what an anchor thought does.

It is the default reminder every time you lose hope. The single sentence that keeps you on track and moving forward.

Step Three: Celebrate progress daily

I’ve tried a lot of different strategies for keeping motivation up as I work towards my goals.

The one that works is celebrating progress daily.

I learnt this idea from Andrea Crowder and what she calls the Go Me Club.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Create a note in your phone with your goal at the top.

2. Set a reminder to add to your note every day. I have mine set at the start of my getting ready for bed so it slots into my existing routine.

3. Write 1 - 3 ways you’ve made progress towards your goal. Could be action taken, mindset shifted, opportunity opened up, anything.

All done in less than 2 minutes.

Why it works:

It keeps me optimistic. I see the progress, however tiny, every day. That keeps motivation high. And when you’re motivated, you keep showing up.

Even more, it keeps me accountable. All day I’m looking out for progress to write down at the end of the day. Which usually means doing something towards my goal.

As the list grows, I have very concrete evidence that I’m making progress towards my goal. Building my belief as I go.

Step Four: Progress checkins

Before I started my maternity leave, I had a savings target I wanted to hit.

Each week I would log into my bank account and note how my spending was tracking for the month. And take the opportunity to celebrate the money already sitting in my account. At the end of the month I would fill in my progress tracker, loving that I was getting closer to my goal.

Progress checkins is how I review what’s working, what isn’t and decide what adjustments to make.

For my savings goal, logging into my bank account wasn’t about celebrating (that’s step three), it was about information. Information that helped me decide to put off buying something until the next month.

Why it works:

Something that can derail achieving your goal is changing approach every five seconds.

Having regular progress checkins, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, gives you a set moment when you reflect. A moment to decide if you need to tweak what actions you’re taking. Once decided, you stay the course until the next progress checkin, allowing the momentum to build.

This cuts down the flip flopping. The second guessing. Shiny object syndrome when someone on IG suggests a different approach. Your efforts have a chance to pay off.

Plus you’re basing any changes you do make on what you’re learning from the action you’re taking. You’re no longer trying anything and everything in the hope something will be a magic bullet. You’re in control and that’s empowering.

Step Five: Focus on habits

What are the recurring actions needed to achieve this goal?

In my Goal Gameplan Playbook, I separate out the initial exploratory actions and the ongoing habitual actions.

There comes a point with a goal where achieving it is based on what I'm doing on repeat.

If I want to run a half marathon, it's about executing my training plan. That's a habit.

If I want to deepen my connection to my intuition, it's about doing my daily breath work. That's a habit.

If I want to build my investment portfolio, it's about increasing the gap between my earnings and my spending so I have more to invest. That's a habit.

Why it works:

Being clear on what action you’re taking and being consistent in that approach is the most efficient way to tackle your goal.

You’re not wasting energy relitigating the approach, rehashing already made decisions a million times. You’re getting on with your habit.

You know exactly what you need to be doing. Nothing kills a goal faster than not being clear on what action to take.

Focusing on habits creates consistent action that compounds. That’s the way to achieve a goal.

Taking action is how I achieve my goals.

There are two parts to achieving goals.

The action you take to achieving the goal itself AND the action you take to stay motivated to achieve the goal.

Without action, you’re excited about the possibilities but never make forward progress.

Without motivation, you lose momentum, making stop and start progress if you don’t give up altogether.

Achieving goals requires action.

The simple but not easy truth. Even to win the lottery, you need to buy a ticket.