Now, if we all agree that it would be a good thing to reach our goals, then why is it that most studies show that a vast majority of people never write down their goals?

Now it’s not that you don’t have goals. You have goals, but very often you’re not specific, or you lack clarity on specifically what you want to achieve.

In a study done by Dr. Gail Matthews of Dominican university of California, they focus on strategies to help people achieve goals.  What she found was, empirical evidence that… three tools help people to achieve goals.

One was writing goals down, two was commitment, and three was accountability. Now let’s look at those three things. Writing down goals is an important part to achieving your goals.

First of all, if your goals are just in your head, a lot of times they’re just “wants and desires”.  They become wishy-washy likes things like I’d like to lose weight, or maybe I’ll go on a vacation this year.

So whether it’s your health and wellness goals, your relationship goals, business goals or whatever, it is very often that we’re lacking clarity on what we want. So we have to get specific as we can in writing down our goals.

Dr. Matthews found that 70% of the participants that wrote down their goals and sent weekly reports to their friends, reported the successful completion of their goals compared to 35% of the participants that kept their goals to themselves and did not write them down. Now that in and of itself is pretty significant, showing that writing down goals and sharing them with a friend for accountability, made a significant statistical difference in helping to achieve your goals.

Now, commitment means that you’re actually writing down a commitment to yourself to achieve your goal.

And accountability is when you use a friend or a mentor that you can talk to either weekly or monthly to report to so that there’s a greater chance and likelihood that you’re doing the things that you need to do to achieve your goal.

Another tool that I like to use to help people achieve their goals is the acronym GPS.

Now, GPS has got a dual meaning. We all know that GPS stands for global positioning system, which is used in navigation systems, but the GPS I’m going to talk about stands for…

G.P.S

Goals, Plans, and Strategies.

Goals: is writing down specific goals for what you will achieve.

Plans: are what you need to do to accomplish those goals and

Strategies: are what are the specific tasks and activities that you’ll take to fill out those plans that will help you reach those goals. So choosing your goal becomes the destination in your navigation system.

So as long as we have that goal set, as our specific destination, we can manage any detour or obstacle that may get in our way.

So again, remember on the path to achieving your goals, think of these simple tools…

One; writing down and setting specific goals, as specific as you can. 

Two; make a commitment to yourself. Put it in writing, which will help even more.

And three; use someone, a friend, or a mentor as an accountability person that you can send either weekly or monthly reports to, or just have a phone call with, to check on your progress on how you’re doing towards reaching your goal. And they may be doing the same by using you as an accountability buddy, as well.

And remember my acronym of GPS for  goals, plans, and strategies.