The Most Important Part of Goal Setting is that You WANT it

Once you’ve set your confidence goal, you need to WANT it. It’s the most important part of goal setting.

Are you ready to carry on with your confidence goal?

If you’re not sure how to properly set a confidence goal, you can read about the best way to do it, by reading this earlier article.

So, hopefully you’ve identified your main goal? Now, you need to get leverage on yourself to help ensure its success.

That’s why I believe ‘WANT‘ is the most important part of goal setting.

What is WANT?

Just like SMART, WANT is an acronym.

SMART is a framework that helps you to format your goals in the most effective way.

WANT is a framework that helps you to to get the most leverage on yourself, to achieve those goals.

If you’ve got powerful leverage, you’ve got the most important part of goal setting. The more leverage you have, the easier it’ll be to achieve your goal.

So, with that in mind…

Let’s break it down

Why do you want it?

Knowing WHY you want to reach your goal is half the battle. If you find a big enough why, your mind is like a well-oiled machine and it’ll find a way to get you there.

Advantages gained

Take some time to imagine all the good things that’ll happen when you reach your goal. Also, think about everything good that you’ll experience on the journey.

Give yourself as many reasons to succeed as possible.

Some of the things you might include are;

• • that because you’ll be doing something you love, you’ll be more ‘present’ with loved ones. or,
  • you’ll have more time and money to spend on vacations, etc.

Any reason you can think of is a good one. The more reasons you give yourself to succeed, the better it will be.

Negative Aspects

Next, identify all the pain you’ll feel if you fail to succeed. It’s a fact that a person will do far more to escape pain, than they’ll ever do to get pleasure.

The pain you might feel for failure may be…

• • that you have to get up every day and work at a job you hate, for a boss who doesn’t appreciate you, or
  • if you don’t succeed, you’ll never be able to experience the pleasure of supplying world class widgets to the people who need them, etc.

Also, list any barriers likely to prevent your success. These could include…

• • unsupportive friends, or family
  • lack of money
  • lack of experience, etc.

Then write down how you’ll deal with these barriers if they come up.

And please remember what I said earlier. People will do a lot more to escape from pain. So make sure you write down all the pain you’ll feel and any barriers you might face along the way!

Tell everyone

It’s much easier to stop chasing your goals, if you’re the only one who knows you’re chasing it. So, the final part of WANT is to make giving up difficult.

You could tell all your family and friends your plans, because I’m sure you won’t want to disappoint them by failing?

Or, you could sign a Commitment Contract with a website like stickK. stickK helps users to define their goal, acknowledge what it’ll take to accomplish it, and then leverage the power of putting money on the line to turn that goal into a reality.

However you decide to do it, make it really difficult to fail.

The science says…

A survey in the Journal of Clinical Psychology (1-1-2014) found that a person who explicitly sets goals, is 10 times more likely to achieve them than a person who just has vague idea of what they want to achieve.

62% of Americans set at least one goal per year, only 8% of those actually achieve them. Of that 8%, just over half (64%), reach their goal and keep it for one month before slipping back, 46% make it past 6 months.

This means that less than 4% of people who set goals, manage to maintain them once they’ve been achieved.

That’s why WANT is the most important part of goal setting.

You’ve done as much as you can to set a goal that’s got the best chance of success. Actually walking the path that gets you there isn’t so easy though.

If you follow all the parts of the WANT process, you’ll also have everything you need to keep going, even when it gets tough. That’s why it’s the most important part of goal setting.

Final thoughts…

You’ve used SMART to set your goals. You’ve used WANT to get enough leverage.

The only thing left now, is take action on your first task!

Once you’ve achieved your goal, don’t fall into the trap of believing that everything will be fantastic. Once you get there, and you will, you’ll have other desires that your want to realise. Go through the same process with those goals and you’ll get them too!

Never forget that the small wins along the way are more important for your confidence than the main goal. Take as many opportunities as possible to register a win.

Any questions? Drop them into the comments 🙂

If you’d like to download a free printable worksheet to help you with the WANT part of the process, you can find one in our free member community 🙂