Small-term goals can be the baby steps to a big success. There’s no harm with setting big goals. Unfortunately, people who chase them in one big jump often fail.
When we have goals, we can figure out what we want and have a vision of achieving them. We’d be motivated and think of ways to reach those dreams. Successful people started with making goals until they reached who they are today.
Bruce Lee, for example, wrote a letter to himself (which is now framed at Planet Hollywood) as a promise to his older self that he would meet his goals as a high-paid actor.
All the success stories have one thing in common: they learned how to visualize. Visualization, a bit similar to manifestations, is the daily practice of ‘imagining’ that you have achieved your dreams already.
Author Jack Canfield says that there are four key benefits when you do visualization: 1. It turns on your creative subconscious that will help you make more ideas 2. It builds your inner motivation to make plans in achieving your dream 3. It activates the law of attraction, which can magnet the resources and circumstances you need for your goals, and 4. It prepares your brain to readily perceive and recognize said sources for your goals.
Figure out what you want to achieve in the long run. Visualize yourself a decade from now. Who do you want to be? Where do you want to end up? Set a time to think of what you want. After setting your lifetime goals, you can now make smaller goals to reach that lifelong plan.
Think of stairs. What would be the first thing to do for you to reach at least half of the staircase? Start with a one-month plan, then three to five months, and then switch to a one-year plan after achieving the goals you have started with the first few months.
Small goals can help you focus better
People often lose sight of the present. They are often too distracted with setting their goals too far off the future, diving too early, thus losing themselves and their goals in the process.
Jumping into big goals will lose your motivation, confidence, and focus. It is better to keep your eye on one ball for now. Setting your eyes in ‘one ball’ will increase better chances of catching it.
Success can be achieved through small steps
There is no shortcut to success. To reach the top, you’d have to start at the beginning of it all. A fitting example would be making a small clothing shop online. You shouldn’t feel bad for having 0 followers. You’d need time to grow your brand, make content, attract the right customers, and have a few sleepless nights editing photos for the shop.
Baby steps are the way for you to get there. You can’t expect something big to happen fast if you haven’t done much. But once you get there, a different sense of fulfillment will flow in you, and you’d realize how good it feels to finally have the success you’ve been aiming for. So the secret is: start small, don’t pressure yourself.
Small goals are realistic
Another reason to start small is that it is much more realistic. Often, it takes time to achieve something big.
An example would be weight loss. You dream of losing weight and being fit. You can’t just wake up one morning and see that you‘ve lost weight. Forcing yourself to go to the gym almost every day and work out for hours is a bad idea too. You would have to learn how to eat healthily first, start working out in small steps since it is more realistic.
If your body is not used to such physical activities, it will give up on you and you’d find yourself giving up on that goal. It’s best to stick with small and realistic goals.
They can promote immediate action from you
A study from Columbia University concludes that people tend to work harder once they see progress and feel closer to their goals. You can feel easily motivated once you see the fruit of your sacrifices and hard work.
Imagine you have been dreaming of having your dream house and have finally saved enough for it. Watch how you’d want to contact a construction equipment supplier and find yourself do the renovations! Kidding, but you’d be so hyped up to start as soon as possible. But because of that dream house, you went to work on double shifts, sacrificed a lot of time, sweat, and energy. You did immediate action, got motivated, and moved forward to your goal.
Do remember that our goals change through time. There might be unforeseen events, circumstances, the inevitable, and you might realize that you’ve changed paths for somewhere else. This is why it’s important to start small because you will still end up having aimed higher compared to nothing at all if you didn’t try.
If you can, start with two to three small goals. See which one you’d enjoy best. You can experiment; it’s your life after all.
