How to Discover and Achieve What you Want in Life
By: Ryan Cron
Tags: Self Improvement, Inspiration, Life Lessons, Life, Self Development

Alice Donovan -Unsplash

I’ve outlined what I consider to be the steps needed to accomplish your goals. It’s what I follow when tackling a new challenge and it’s proven effective. What goals are you struggling with? what goals are you putting off?

New year’s resolutions are lame

Don’t wait until Jan 1st to implement positive changes to your life. Start now. Start today. If it’s really something that will improve your life you owe it to yourself to get after it immediately to reap the benefits. If it’s a diet, start it today. But what if I blow it during the holidays? then you blow it. Don’t judge yourself, just start again the next day. If you started now versus Jan 1st, you get 3 weeks of being closer to your goal. Don’t put off something that’s good for you because of the holidays. There are always going to be things that cause you to slip or fall off a plan. That’s ok, what matters is getting back on track when you get off. Rant over. Let’s get to the meat and potatoes.

Clear

The first step in getting what you want is to have a clear mind. This is easier said than done for most people. I never appreciated the benefits of a clear mind until I added “mind-clearing” into my daily habit.

There’s a quote from Philosopher Blaise Pascal which I wholeheartedly agree with that says, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” When you take time to just sit and be alone with your thoughts, your mind gets to “purge”. Constantly having noise and other stimulus coming at us causes your mind to not be able to process your thoughts. I personally feel much more anxious and restless when I don’t practice daily mind clearing. Your mileage may vary.

Action tip: try this. Just for 5 minutes every day, just get quiet. Turn off all noise and just sit quietly. Your thoughts will come racing and it may get uncomfortable. That’s ok. It doesn’t matter what your thoughts are. Don’t try and ignore them, just let them come and go. This isn’t mindfulness meditation. There’s a time and place for that. What I’m talking about is just letting your mind flow and process your thoughts without judgement.

After a few minutes, you will start to just feel better, maybe lighter. This is how I start every day. I take 15–20 minutes and just sit, usually outside drinking coffee enjoying the morning or with my cat, and just allow whatever thoughts I have to come. I have never felt “clearer” in my life. Doing this daily practice will help you think clearly about what you want and how to get it.

Know your goal

You have to know your goal. Whether it’s to make more money, get in shape, resolve a relationship, it’s important to have a clear goal. If you don’t know what you really want, you’re never going to get it. Try to find your root cause. If your goal is to lose weight, ask yourself why. Is it to be more attractive to your spouse, increase your self-worth, or gain self-confidence? If it’s to make more money, ask yourself why having more money is important. Are you simply seeking status or to striving for financial freedom?

Self-awareness is one of the best attributes we can have. It’s important to understand why your goal is important to you.

Remove mental roadblocks

The biggest obstacle we will ever face is ourselves. It’s not about how smart you are, how privileged you are, your status, or your finances. It’s about getting out of our own way. When you set out to achieve anything, massive self-doubt sets in. We think we aren’t good enough to get what we want, or we don’t deserve it because we’re a flawed human being. We are afraid of acting because we don’t want to be judged by others or we are afraid to fail. We have to let go of all that negative nonsense.

If you struggle with a lot of self-doubts, you could start a daily practice to overcome it. Such as affirmations. Repeating phrases to yourself is a powerful way to reprogram your subconscious. If you struggle thinking you’re not smart enough to achieve your goals, repeat the phrase “I am smart enough”. You can say it quietly to yourself, say it loudly, or write it in a journal over and over every day until you believe it.

Education

Learn from others who have achieved what you want. Seek out others who are successful in the ways you want to be successful. Consume valuable content that provides practical and actionable advice. Understand the strategy and tactics of what it will take to accomplish your goal. If your goal is fitness, it means understanding the diet and exercise. If your goal is to get a promotion, it’s to understand the requirements needed and maybe how to negotiate for a higher salary.

Many of us tend to get held up in the education step. We make the mistake of thinking because we don’t know everything there is to know about something, we can’t be successful. That’s a trap. We just need to know more than we currently do. How much more will depend on your goal. When it came to lifting weights, I had zero idea what I was doing but when I had free time I would learn about a new exercise or a new workout. It’s not about knowing everything; it’s about knowing more than you did yesterday.

Take massive action

This one is huge. Once you have cleared your mind, realized specifically what you want and how to get it the next step is to GO! Take action every single day that puts you closer to your goal. If it’s to get in shape, you take daily action by making conscious decisions about your diet and moving your body every day. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering action. For example, regarding this newsletter, every day I committed to either write something or learn something. Whether that’s writing 200 words or 2,000 words. Maybe that means researching a topic for 5 minutes or 5 hours. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is taking action every day and celebrating it as a win.

Fail

If you are not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. If you first attempt is successful, you waited too long. The path to success is failure after failure. Failure is life’s best teacher. Every important lesson I learned in life, I learned through failure. Anything I am good at; I was horrible at the beginning. Videography, playing the drums, marriage, working out. All things I had no idea about when I started and made mistake after mistake. However. The key is to not give up. Act. Fail. Learn. Act. Fail. Learn. Rinse and repeat.

Learn

It’s crucial to learn from failure. This takes immense self-awareness and reflection. Many times, we have a tendency when we fail at something to overcorrect and never go near that subject again. This is the only way to truly fail. When you don’t learn from your mistakes at best you repeat them and at worst you never try again. Maybe the key is coming at your goal from a different angle. Maybe it means changing your approach in a way that suits your abilities better. It might mean pivoting to a new understanding of what that goal means. If you’re trying to make more money but the e-commerce clothing brand you launched failed, figure out why. Was it your marketing? your product? is a clothing brand the best business for your abilities? It might be time to rethink the strategy or pivot to a new business entirely.

Achieve

Eventually after enough failing and learning you start failing less and less. This is where the magic happens. This is where you get a little success in whatever it is you want. Maybe it’s the first dollar you make in your business, maybe it’s the first pound you lose. Celebrate every success no matter how little or insignificant. Once you make your first dollar in a business you started, you achieved something most people never will. Celebrate it and scale to more success, bigger wins. Keep learning, adapting, and growing until you achieve your goal.

To quote the Mandalorian…” This is the way”. This is how you achieve. This is how I’ve achieved anything in my life. I nearly flunked 7th grade basic algebra but passed college algebra 2 with straight A’s. I nearly lost my vision to an autoimmune disease until I immersed myself in research and made diet and lifestyle changes that reversed my condition. I could go on and on. Not because I’m special. But because we all are. As amazing of a human, you and I are, there’s nothing inherently better about me or you than anyone else in the world. Most people who have had success all say the same thing, that there’s nothing special about them. If they can do it, anyone can. Everyone is an amazing human in their own way. I truly believe anyone can get what they want.

I’d love to get your feedback. Was this helpful? why or why not? What goals are you going to tackle?

Today is December 8th and it happens to be my birthday. If this was valuable to you, I would love it if you shared it with someone. To find and subscribe to my newsletter visit Self Innovation (substack.com). If you wouldn’t mind weekly emails of positivity and actionable life hacks, I hope you will consider subscribing and sharing.