We all know the hustle of planning a special person’s birthday. The cake, decorations, invitations, the food, and keeping the surprise. OMG! But no matter what, at the end we pull it off perfectly.
But what happens when we say – from now onwards I will attend all online classes or I will study every single day or I will submit all assignments on time or I will go to the gym four days a week this entire year? (Look sad) The enthusiasm stays for a few days but eventually we end up procrastinating and the pile of failed goals keeps rising. But why?
Why doesn’t it end up perfectly like that birthday party? Don’t worry we will make this very easy for you. So, in today’s video, I will give you 2 things.
- A Five Step guide to set your goals and
- Three Tips to help you achieve those goals
So, Get yourself a pen and a notebook. Breathe in. Breathe out. And Let’s get going.
Hey, this is Chetna and you’re watching ChetChat. Let’s begin with the Five step guide to setting our goals.
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Step One: DreamBox
Ok, so Open your notebook and Divide the page into two columns. Now, it’s the time to dream. Ha ha I mean don’t sleep but day dream. Ok, think of 5 dreams you wish to achieve this year. Write them down in the first column. Let’s take some examples.
- One – Getting selected in the school basketball team by clearing the trials after 5 months.
- Two Making a website in the next 6 months.
- Three Getting chosen for the school dance group in the next 5 months.
- Four Clearing the Beginners level of guitar in the next 12 months.
- Five could be Scoring 95 per cent in the final exams after 12 months
While writing your dreams, make sure they are measurable and most importantly, they should be realistic. Avoid something like, I want to become famous or I want to score 100 per cent in the exams.
Before we move to Step number two, I would like to give a shout out to Ananya Pandey who left this message on our last video which got 89 likes from you.
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Step 2: Failure Filter
Now think of one dream at a time. What will happen if you fail at it. Imagine that feeling. What is it like? chilled, stressed or relieved? One by one when you do this for each one of your goals, you will find out for sure which goals are the closest to your heart. I call this the Marie Kondo technique of discovering what you truly love.
Sometimes we set up dreams for the wrong reasons. Though I strongly believe that you should try your hand on a variety of things. But learn to tell the difference between something you are just trying to figure out and something that you are deeply committed to.
When we continue working on the dream even after we feel like we are failing, it tells us that we have an emotional attachment to that dream.
With that discussion, let’s say for the moment that we have removed the dance team goal from our list of 5 goals that we put down in Step 1.
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Step 3: Fan following
Let’s move to the second column. The Fan Following. This column should be filled up with all those things that you are applauded for or praised for. Write down 10 skills that people appreciate in you, things that you are often told you are good at. Let’s take some examples –
- Artworks
- Cooking
- Video Games
- Calculations
- Studies
- Handwriting
- Dressing sense
- Typing speed
- Fitness
- Basketball
Make sure the skills you list are not too generic like using the internet, talking. That’s it. Now get ready to move towards the next step.
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Step 4: Building the Bridge
This is the easiest step among all. Simply match the columns. Match your dream on the left of the page to the skill it requires on the right hand side. Skip if you don’t find the match. Let’s take a look at our list.
- Scoring 95 per cent in the final exams – Calculations, Studies, Handwriting
- Getting selected in the school basketball team – Basketball, fitness
- Making a website. – Artwork, Calculation, Typing Speed, Handwriting, I don’t know, depends on what kind of website you want to create
- Learning to play the Guitar. (none)
Dreams with the highest number of matching skills are more likely to be achieved with minimum hurdles. Think twice about the dreams with no skills like learning to play the Guitar. Such dreams will invite the devil into the room or bring in many distractions and hurdles. But If you still have a strong gut feeling about them. Write a very reasonable ‘Why’ story for this dream. In short, “Why do I want to pursue learning to play a Guitar?”
And before we go to Step number five, if you feel that laziness is the biggest reason you are not able to achieve your goals, then do check out this video which has simple techniques to help you beat laziness.
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Step 5: Tom and Jerry Effect.
This effect means that there are two or more goals which cannot be completed at the same time. Goals that fight or compete with each other for limited time, effort or money. Like in our case basketball and Scoring 95 per cent. The game would require a great amount of training to be selected in the team and Scoring 95 per cent will require equally committed time.
So, this requires eliminating or postponing any one of those dreams for some time depending upon your priority.
And if your dreams are not competing with each other. Take some time to think about the possible hurdles in achieving the goal and prepare your mind for that.
Finally go to Column Number 1 and highlight the goals that have made it through the obstacle course and list them down in the comments section below, for us to read.
And let’s move on to the Three tips to achieve your goals.
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Tip number One – Scream out your goals
This tip works like salt in the food. Completely changes the value of your goal. Go ahead and announce your final shortlisted goals to close friends, family, a mentor or a teacher. Sharing them with fellow chetchatters is one way to do this.
This will not only help you get the other person’s perspective but also cements your own commitment towards your goal. Now, once you have made these announcements, your mind will hesitate to break your commitment. So you will make sure you stick with your goal
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Two – Find your Herd
Positive competition is never a bad idea. Even in the days when you are unsure about your goals, your co-travellers might give you a fresh perspective and enthusiasm towards it. It works vice-versa as well for example, motivating others which gives you a sense of contribution. This mutual support makes the journey easier and fun at the same time.
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Reward Yourself
What kills the motivation to achieve your goal is the lack of encouragement in the process. We all know that completing the goal is a great sense of satisfaction but the process completely drains you out. So, to prevent that, break your goals into small milestones and reward yourself for completing each milestone.
And with that we can easily set goals for ourselves and achieve them as well. So happy watching.