I am one of the most effective people I know in my life. And that statement is not self-promotion. I pretty much achieve anything I put my mind (and heart) into.
I get asked all the time by my friends, family, peers, and even online how I study, manage my time or how do I focus on my goals, etc.
And I have written a lot of things on my personal blog and Quora about Law Of Attraction, Mindfulness, Task Management techniques like making to-do-lists, etc all of which are excellent advice to make yourself on track to reach your goals.
Plus, you might as well have your very own technique. Besides, some people don’t like structure or a frame, they prefer flexibility and spontaneity.
Some also talk about positive self-talk. There is nothing wrong with that. I am sure it might work for some people as well.
Every morning when you can wake-up, start your day by looking in the mirror and say things like, “I am great. Today is a great day and I will be successful, etc.” (Sorry I am not trying to sound cliche).
Except, there is something wrong with thinking about success and failure before realizing your goals. It creates polarity in your mind. Because you have defined what success means to you, you are stressing yourself, even more, trying to chase it, and therefore you never attempt it or follow through till the end because of the fear of failure and rejection.
So instead of all the popular common strategies (I mentioned above), we should initially “realize” the goal.
And the first step of that realization is “visualization” and trying to grasp or sense the final product or destination.
Do you wish to work in a certain position and at a certain company? Imagine yourself already doing that in your mind.
Do you wish to date someone, picture yourself with that person, and think how happy you would be with him/her?
Do you want to buy a home or start a business? Or go to a certain college for a certain major, or earn certain credentials? Picture yourself every day, all day long with such accomplishments while you take your next steps towards that dream.
And make that imagination as detailed as possible, i.e gather more data, learn more or research about the situation, person, position, environment, object, etc and so on. Study it, and think you are part of it and you are already acing it. Climb it, conquer it. And until you do it, don’t stop.
Anytime you cannot realize what outcome you are looking for you should take a pause and rethink to fix that first.
For example, I get asked this question all the time, even on Quora, how long one should study each day to prepare for an exam? Somehow 8-10 hours seems like an ideal number for many.
And I always tell people that studying for 8-10 hours is not the goal here. It is a step that is part of the process. The real goal here is to “show” mastery or prowess in a certain subject or topics in an exam which should lead to high scores. So no matter what you do as a technique, you should verify whether you are reaching the level of proficiency that you can prove in an exam in a given set of time or deadline. So practice, take mock tests, understand the topic well, do whatever you need to do, just do. The number of hours does not matter. It could be 5-6 hours a day instead of 8-10 if one is highly focused on studies without any distraction.
And I can go on and on with many other real-life examples. Visualizing the end goals helps you become more intuitive throughout the process of accomplishing them. You can navigate, make an adjustment, and optimize your process based on the outcome you are expecting.
The majority of the time after I am done picturing clearly what I want to do, I literally observe myself working and sailing towards it.
This is a combined process of Law Of Attraction (LOA) and mindfulness. When you decide what you need to do, you are already orienting yourself towards that.
Now, in the next parts, I will elaborate on how or what else I do to get something done. I will publish the next parts on my Patreon page.
So stay tuned.