In order for your life to change or get better, you have to change and get better. When most people have new goals, want to accomplish more, take their life to a new level or make a powerful mindset shift, they want their life to shift. Most changes fall short because people don’t implement a process to make that transformation. Transformation is challenging and takes discipline and true commitment. You can’t talk about saving money and pull out your credit card to buy a Louis Vuitton purse. You can’t talk about losing weight when you are eating a cheesecake. One of the keys to achieving your goals is having your actions be congruent with your words. If they don’t line up, then you are a hypocrite. To be honest, everyone is a hypocrite at some point or another. We have all said that we want something, but our actions are not congruent with what we are saying. It’s important to take a look at our actions and our words and have them be aligned.

Your goals should motivate and inspire you every day. I see motivation as having to do with tasks. Whereas inspiration has more to do with the bigger picture of life. Inspiration is having to do with what you want in life which looks like what you want for your family, what you want for your friends, and what you want in your professional life. Motivation has to do with tasks. You must be motivated to perform tasks even when you don’t want to do them. One way to be motivated is to tie everything to your inspiration or your vision for your life. Nobody is excited to call customer service, have a tough conversation or discipline their children. However, if you have a strong inspiration and purpose, you can tie motivation to move forward.

A common complaint and excuse of why people don’t achieve their goals is that they think they have unique limitations or challenges. Lack of time, connections, and/or resources are a few examples of reasons people have for not going after or reaching their goals. In the world, somebody out there has dealt with the challenges that you are going to face. I could easily create a narrative that states that nobody has the challenges I have. However, I want my dreams badly enough and I am willing to work around my limitations. Guess what? There are other people who have limited time. There are other people who have limited resources. There are other people out there with insecurities. There have even been people who achieved amazing success in a wheelchair. Imagine that. Part of YOUR PROCESS is including all the challenges that you, and only you, have.

As you start working on your goals, you are going to incur challenges that you will not even think exist. A big part of amazing success is being able to deal with the challenges as they come up. Amazing people understand that challenges are just a part of life. As you implement the process, you must implement steps that address the challenges that are unique to you. When I decided to go to USC, a big part of the challenge was just figuring out how to live. I had to figure out how to do my homework with assistance. I had to figure out how I was going to use the restroom. I had to figure out how to get a roommate so I could get ready in the morning. After all that, I had to figure out how to pay for it. In my business, I had to figure out how to be productive in spite of my disability. I had to figure out the challenges that any other business owner had to deal with. A working mother balances her work outside the home with her other obligations to her family. A diabetic’s routine includes monitoring sugar and fulfilling their non-health related obligations. Every journey of success has a challenge that is unexpected. Every business owner has dealt with a situation that in the beginning was not even on the radar. When my parents found out that I was on the way, they had no idea that I would be born disabled and the challenges associated with my disability. Every business traveler has a horrifying story. Every parent has a “you can’t believe what my kid did” story. I have many conversations with people around me who say, “I can’t believe you go through that.”

Nothing will change unless your habits and routines change. What are the habits that prevent you from achieving amazing success and what are the habits that you need to improve upon in order to achieve amazing success? What activities do you need to start doing or increase to achieve amazing success? Next, what activities do you need to stop doing? This may include being distracted, engaging in other people’s drama, telling yourself that you don’t deserve it, or pleasing other people all the time. It’s also about focusing your time and your money on your goals. If you don’t give your goals the proper resources, then there is very little chance that you will achieve them.

There are times when you are working on your goals and there are times when you are working on other aspects of your life or resting. For the times that you are not working on your goals, you have to have routines that inspire and motivate you. So, when you are working on your goals you can do so with more focus and intention. For example, sleep not only recharges the body, but when you get the proper amount of sleep, it organizes your thoughts. When you exercise, you use endorphins. When you have positive relationships, you are not dealing with drama. You are having a good time and you are just happier. When you have people encouraging you, you have more confidence. The list can be endless.

A critical part to achieving goals is skill development. What are the skills that you need in order to achieve your goals? Develop those skills. With larger goals, it might be advantageous to use the skills of others. I often consult my team when I am ready to make a new decision for my business. One of the issues is that people have wrong assumptions. They eat a salad, but don’t realize that the dressing has loads of fat. They order a salad at a restaurant, but fail to realize that the salad may have more calories than a hamburger. Some business owners assume that since a college kid receives a hundred likes on a post, they are a social media expert. Skill development is important. It might be more efficient just to consult with an expert. If you are a busy executive, you might not have time to research the latest diet trends. However, you can pay a nutritionist to write a meal plan for you. When I decided to market products online, I spent hundreds of hours watching YouTube videos, reading books and paid for courses. I pieced a plan together and assumed it was right. I hired Automated Dreams to implement the plan and asked if they would audit my work. Within a week, they improved what I had done and I decided that I would have them take over that piece. There are a handful of people who can take your work and help you build something better. My strengths lie in dreaming and content development. My business needs a slew of other skills. I leverage a team to help me accomplish the company goals.

There are two kinds of skills: hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are everything above. However, soft skills are interpersonal skills. These can include dealing with people, what your subconscious is saying, etc. When people go after their goals, they tend to only look at hard skills. We all have a narrative of life. This narrative tells us how much money we can make, whether or not we are good enough, whether we deserve success or even if the government is out to get us. This narrative is engrained in us from a young age. As you achieve your goals, you need to look at the narrative and rewrite it. Since I always needed a lot of help in my life, I had challenges becoming the leader that I needed to be. One day, I decided that I was getting in my own way and I needed to address it. That mindset shift was the most powerful shift that I made. That lead to massive improvement. Before I made that improvement, I assumed that I needed more of a certain something. I did not know what that was. Now I realize that it was a simple shift.

A major factor to amazing success is being grateful for what you have. Larry Winget says, “find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others.” A common excuse in not achieving our goals or even not going after our goals in the first place is lack of resources such as time, energy, money, connections or any other thing that gets in the way. There are resources that you can apply to any goal right now. There were periods in my life when I assumed that my limitations were too much to deal with. As I look at other speakers that are able to walk, take care of themselves and even speak without a speech impediment (imagine that), I think to myself that would be nice. Then I realize nobody told me that I had to become a speaker. I told myself to be quiet and make it happen. When I set out on a journey to market online, it took me longer than I thought it would to round out my team. However, the team members that were in place are amazing. I just had to kiss a lot of frogs and find the rest of the same. Once I took on that attitude, the team members that I was missing appeared.

According to Noah St. John, one common trait of successful people is that they have encouragement along the way. Human beings are social creatures and need support. It is challenging to achieve your goals without encouragement. There has to be people who can pick you up. The more successful you are, the more people that you need on your team. For smaller goals like losing ten pounds or getting in shape, you may have a friend or hire a trainer to encourage you. For larger goals, you may need a business coach or a team to help you achieve your goals. In addition, your goals are going to affect the people around you. If you decide to take one day a week to work on your book, your family time might decrease. If you decide to eat healthy, you can’t split nachos or dessert. For larger goals, your friends or your family may think that you are foolish. They might call the weekend seminar that you attend garbage. They think that the self-improvement industry is a sham.

If you really need and think you can involve people in your network, you have to engage with them differently. Sit down with them, and explain what you are doing. Also, educate them about what you need them to do and how they can support and encourage you. If you feel that writing a book is your calling, explain to them that you need this time in order to complete your goals. Describe the end result.

Lastly, it’s taking everything that I talked about and bringing it into a plan. Dreams don’t come true; well-executed plans come to fruition. You must take everything above and put it into a plan and then produce the result. Most goals have several different parts to the plan. Losing weight has exercise, rest and diet plans. A business plan has a marketing plan, a sales plan, a growth plan, etc. Every element must be produced by you or somebody on your behalf. Part of the plan is developing hard skills and developing yourself as the leader of your world. You should always be developing your soft skills which can be as important as your hard skills.

When you achieve your goals, you have the opportunity to live a more successful and mindful life.