Hi everyone, it's Andy LaCivita, founder of milewalk and the milewalk Academy, and award
winning author of The Hiring Prophecies, here with this week's episode of Tips for Working
Life.
Continuing on our trek to help people succeed at work, we're going to talk about something
for all those individuals who really want to take on a big goal or a big project, but
they're just a little bit nervous.
They're really not sure they can handle it.
They're not sure how high to set the goal.
I know this time of year, we're all setting a lot of goals.
We're looking back at what happened in the current year.
We're looking forward to a new year, and it's a great time for goal setting.
So got me thinking about what can I offer that really would give you the confidence
to take that first step, and I think about the big goals that I set and what goes through
my mind.
So I'd like to talk today about four key signs you can ask yourself to know you will succeed,
a surefire way to know there is no way you will fail, and I think about these every time
I'm about to undertake a project.
Now as we get rolling, there's a step zero.
Step zero is you got to ditch the self importance.
You have to let go of the baggage, worrying about what other people are going to think,
how it's going to look.
What I if fail?
What if I don't reach my goal?
What if I don't hit the deadline?
Whatever it is, you got to get rid of that.
All that does is it creates tension in you.
It puts a huge, huge drag on you, and it's not going to do anything to help you achieve
your goal.
But starting with number one, this is not the place where a lot of people start, but
it's with sacrifice.
If you're going to set a goal high enough, there's going to be plenty that you have to
give up, and actually for most of you, if not all of you, the sacrifice part of achieving
your goal is going to be a lot harder for you than what it's going to take to figure
out how to achieve the goal in the first place, or the effort that you're going to have to
put in.
It's the stuff you give up, that you don't want to give up.
This year, I thought about the things that I had to give up in order to grow my business
and to add new products and services and offerings so that I could help you, and I had to give
up my golf games, and I had to give up my dinners, and I had to give up some time with
my wife and my dogs and my family, and these are not things that come easily to a lot of
us.
For you it could be something completely different.
You don't want to give up exercising, but you might have to trim those workouts.
You might have to rearrange your schedule on a Saturday to spend a few extra hours doing
something.
So you have to create the space somewhere.
If you want to run a marathon and you're running those extended runs, something's gotta give.
So number one, are you wiling to sacrifice?
And sitting down and thinking about, "What do I really have to give up, and am I going
to be okay with that?
And what kind of time am I going to have to create?"
People don't think about this stuff in advance, and it sabotages them along the way.
So that's number one, sacrifice.
Number two: Are you willing to learn whatever it's going to take in order to achieve that
goal or accomplish that stage or get that promotion or whatever it might be?
Because you are going to encounter situations along the way, you weren't prepared for them,
you didn't plan for them.
You're going to have to learn new and creative ways of accomplishing things.
Sometimes your initial plan is going to tell you what you need to learn, and you're going
to have to figure it out along the way, but not only are you going to have to learn new
things, but you're going to have to relearn things you already know.
I'll give you a great example.
Back to me and thinking about as I was blogging more and growing my business and creating
training courses.
I love to help people.
I'd been writing for a long time.
I had to learn the craft of putting together a good book or a good blog post, and I can
write my thoughts, communicate them to you in a manner that was very digestible, where
you would learn, but in order for me to reach more people and to help more people, I had
to learn how to shoot video.
I had to learn how to create a podcast.
I had to learn these things that I never anticipated.
I'm delivering similar messages, if not the same messages, but I'm having to use different
mediums to do that.
So I had to learn that.
Now I suppose I don't have to do that, but I want to do that.
I want to help reach more people, so in order for me to reach my goals of reaching and helping
more people, I have to do those kind of things, and once I figured out how to learn one camera,
I got another camera, and so I had to learn how to use that, and technology changes.
So you're not only having to learn new ways to do to things, you're having to learn different
ways to do things, and then once you learn how to do something, you have to lean new
and improved ways to do it.
So that's number two.
Are you willing to learn whatever it is you need to learn in order to accomplish what
you want to accomplish?
Number three.
We live in a world of distraction.
I suppose humans have always been distracted, but it's really, really obsessive now.
So number three, are you willing to focus and remain focused in order to accomplish
your goal?
Now this is probably a simple one for you to digest.
You live it every day, whether it's at work or with social media or the news or even family
events and other things that you enjoy, those create distractions for you, or there are
distractions that prevent you from doing what you want to do.
So you have to think about will you remain focused if you want to achieve those goals
amidst many, many distractions?
You're really going to have to discipline yourself in order to figure out ways to remain
focused on what it is you want to accomplish and what's important to you, and you're going
to have a lot of distractions that you introduce to yourself or that others introduce to you,
and so you're going to have to remain steadfast in focusing on the things that are important
to you, which is very, very different because you're going to have to say no to a lot of
things, people, even distractions that sometimes you might need.
So that's number three, focus.
And then number four, and this is the biggest one, is will you believe?
If your goal is high enough, if it's far enough out into the future that you need to work
your way up toward it, you're going to encounter a lot of obstacles and a lot of challenges
that you didn't anticipate.
It's going to be difficult to overcome those, and as you see them, some you may have expected,
some you might not have expected, but no matter how hard you get hit, will you believe in
your ability to figure it out?
Will you believe in your ability to keep going?
Will you be able to muster up and believe in your ability to generate the energy that
it takes to keep going when you're tired, when you're fatigued, when you're not sure
if you love it anymore?
So those are the four key areas is: Are you willing to sacrifice?
Are you wiling to learn?
Will you remain focused?
And will you believe?
If you are planning a big project or a goal and you sit down and you really, really challenge
yourself in these four areas, you really think about it, I think it'll give you some great
peace of mind and confidence to take that first step, and you don't need to see the
whole map.
You don't know exactly the route you're going to take to accomplish that goal, but it starts
with the first step, so if you can give yourself a running start by going through this exercise,
jotting down your thoughts about these four questions to make sure that you're going to
be able to have the confidence that you need to take that first step, I think you'll do
great.
So I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you did, please share it.
I would love to hear your thoughts and your feedback.
If you have any other questions that you ask yourself before you're about to undertake
a project, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
Whether you're watching this on my blog or you're watching it on YouTube or you're listening
to it on my Tips for Working Life podcast, I'd love to hear it from you.
Til next week, have a great one.