What Happens When You Set Goals
What are you thinking? Isn't that unrealistic? There's no way you can do that. You're too inexperienced, you're too young, you're not qualified...
Now, here's the point where most "motivational" figures will tell you that these common phrases aren't true. Just haters being haters, they'll assure you. Only those who've never achieved anything will say this kind of stuff...you need to dream big if you want to make it.
And on and on it goes.
Well, I'm not a motivational figure. I'm here to actually help you, and not just sound all cool and inspiring. So I'm going to tell you the truth.
Those haters are actually right. And in a way, they're doing more for you than any motivational speaker out there. You just have to look at it in the right light.
Because, and I mean this seriously...most of your goals are absurd. Have you ever looked at them? Let's say you want to be a published author. Okay, so that's your goal? When you get out of bed, you say "my goal is to be a published author"?
That's ridiculous. That's not a goal. But what is a goal?
Goals vs. Dreams
Simply put, a goal is something concrete. Not "I want to be a published author". That isn't concrete. Concrete means that you only have to take one action to achieve your goal. So, how do you become a published author? It's definitely not a one step process. Just off hand, without any real digging, I can think of at least a handful of steps you'd need to go through to get published.
If your goal can't be reached in one step, you've got to call it what it is. It's a dream.
Now, there's nothing wrong with dreams. Having a dream to work toward is just as important as having goals. But you don't want to get stuck in the "dream phase", where you have an idea, but no path towards the end of that idea.
The good thing here is that it's not that hard to turn your dreams into solid, achievable goals. All you have to do is break down all the romanticism of your end goal, or your dream. So how do you do that?
Breaking Down your Dreams
Okay, so you want to be a published author. Great. How do you get there? Well, first of all, you need to write a book. That's no easy feat. In fact, there are innumerable steps you'd need to break that into. But for the sake of brevity, let's just assume you've already written and edited a book.
So you take your book and submit it to publishers, right? Seems logical. Until you realize that no serious publishing house will even look at a book submitted by the author. They'll only take it seriously if it's submitted by an agent. Alright, now it's time to find an agent. So you submit your manuscript to some agents.
You wait a couple weeks...then a couple months. No responses.
There go your dreams...crushed.
After you look into it, you realize that agents have their own set of requirements for submissions. You learn about queries. You learn about the difference between an automated rejection and a personalized rejection. Suddenly, what seemed so simple (to get published), has turned into a maze of steps. You're lost, and that dream of being published only seems farther away.
But it isn't! Despite the overwhelming confusion of breaking down a large dream into small steps, it's actually better to be confused while forming a path to clear, concrete steps, than it is to be clear-headed while still in dreamland. At least now you're actually making progress towards that dream.
Start From the Beginning
The beginning is the best place to start. Duh. But what is the beginning? Well, for nearly everything, the beginning is research. If you do some proper research, then you'll save yourself tons of time in the long run, no matter how boring or tedious it seems in the moment.
If you're our aspiring author, then the right research would've saved you from submitting unnecessary and unwanted manuscripts to publishers. It'd also have kept you from possibly blacklisting yourself from potential agents because you didn't read their submission requirements. It would've saved you months of waiting on responses that were never going to come.
Basically, research is the foundation of your dreams. From there, you can break your dream down into the tiniest goals you can imagine. From there, all you have to do is...
Organize, then Attack
Like any great army throughout human history, an organized assault is much more likely to succeed, while a disorganized one will almost definitely fail. Once you've broken down your dream into the smallest goals possible (remember, 1 goal = 1 action), then you have to organize them into a logical order. It doesn't have to be linear. In fact, in most cases, it won't be.
Often, to achieve a dream, you'll need at least a couple goal streams. Organize your goals into streams that make sense chronologically. If one goal can't be done in order with the other goals in that stream, then it gets a new stream.
Your streams come together to form a river.
After you get organized, you can get after it. It's that simple. Of course, you want to make sure that you're actually making progress. Here's where it can get a little complicated.
A good idea is to set a goal (a goal within a goal...the inception of success). Set a goal to accomplish one goal per day. That way, you'll always be working towards the ultimate goal: your dream.
Don't Be Afraid
Making progress towards your dream can be scary. What if you fail? Then that dream is gone. It makes sense to be scared to go down that road.
But don't look at it like that. Instead, think "what if I succeed?". That's where the real fun begins. So, sit down. Grab a pen and paper, and write down those dreams you've always had, but never accomplished. Then break them down. Start from the beginning. Do your research. Get organized. And live your dreams.