5 Questions to Help You ACTUALLY Reach Your 2025 Goals

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You have to take 100% responsibility for your life.

That is the first principle of being successful.

You are where you are because of the actions you took or lack of. The results don't lie.

Yes, you may have the odds stacked against you, but focusing on the odds will not get you any closer to reaching your goals.

First, some context..

While it may seem like I have this ‘goal-setting’ thing figured out with what you see me doing today, it wasn’t always this way.

Believe it or not, there was a time in my life when I used to struggle with being disciplined and working towards reaching my goals.

If you know me you know that I pivoted into business and marketing in my late 20s, after not knowing what I wanted to do for work for many years.

I used to set goals and then half way through the year find that I was not any closer to achieving 90% of them.

As this process got frustrating and I was fed up with not being able to figure things out, I decided to take a Tony Robbins program to learn how to ‘get it together.’

I was seriously scared about the outlook for my life during that time. I was super miserable in my then job for the City (I had such a terrible boss), my family life with my parents was a complete disaster (they were going through a separation), and I was also going through a bad breakup.

All around not a fun time.

Now that you understand the context and little more of my story. Let’s dive into how I actually learned to set and achieve my goals consistently (generally speaking - I’m still human after all).😉 

My big hairy goal back in 2009 was to get into a top MBA program (Schulich or Ivey in Canada) and foray into a business career at a top global company.

I learned (by going through the Tony Robbins program a few times) that the right way to set goals was to ask yourself better questions.

So, for the upcoming goals that YOU have, try asking yourself these 5 questions to help with your conviction towards reaching them.

To do this exercise well, choose ONE goal. You can repeat this process for each of them but I recommend setting 2-3 goals max in a given year.

• Why did this goal make the list? Understand your deep motivation behind this goal to get a real commitment from yourself. Example, for me, my why was to make my family life feel whole again (my mom in particular) by providing long-term sustainable financial stability.

• What is the one micro-action I need to take daily to make this goal a reality?

  Identifying a small, consistent daily step makes the goal less overwhelming and creates momentum through incremental progress. Example, for me, back then was to leave the house to go study for 3 hours every single day. Work day or non-work day, I was going to study for the GMAT either before or after work.

• Do I need someone to hold me accountable to reach this goal?

  External accountability increases follow-through by creating social pressure and support. Example, for me, I actually didn’t need anyone to hold me accountable as I had serious motivation to ‘make it’, but I did tell all my close friends about my new goal.

• Is this actually a non-negotiable for me? If not, then go back to step 1. This question ensures the goal is truly important enough to prioritize, filtering out superficial or uncommitted ‘nice ideas.’ Example, for me, my goal to switch careers successfully was 1000% a non-negotiable above all else. No other goal came close that year to reaching this one goal.

• What potential challenge might prevent me from achieving this goal, and how can I proactively address it? Proactively identifying and planning for potential resistance will increase the likelihood of success by getting you to think about how to actually tackle the issue. Example, for me, it was my emotional state about my family life. So, I made a list of activities I could do on the days where my emotions were going to get the best of me. Anticipating this helped tremendously in staying the course as things continued to get really tough for me in the first year of my parents separation.

Phew, okay now that you have gotten to know me a whole lot better..

I hope these are helpful for you! As always, you can reply to this email to ask me any questions you have.

Until next week, thank you for being here.

Other Ways To Connect With Me:

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“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Oscar Wilde