“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” - Pablo Picasso "A goal without a plan is just a wish" "A man without a plan is not a man" - Friedrich Nietzsche "We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then, is not an act, its a habit".- Aristotle "What gets measured gets improved" “If it doesn’t challenge you it doesn’t change you” "Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great". - Niccolo Machiavelli   Here's the link to the previous post So now you have your goals defined and they meet the criteria The criteria being that they are   Based upon your values - Who you want to be and who you are Made sure they are specific and clear Big and compelling enough to be worth pursing and to invoke emotions Written down and reviewed daily to check progress and to keep it in the minds eye And have made sure its aligned with your values Meets the SMART goal 5 factors   The next part is how to achieve these goals "A man without a plan is not a man" - Friedrich Nietzsche To achieve your goals you have to have a plan. To achieve your goals you have to have a bit of luck “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” - Seneca   Now I remember watching a documentary about I think the Vietnam war (may be wrong I'll try to find the documentary clip and leave it here) In the documentary, soldiers were trained how to act if they became POWs, they were taught to always be planning. So if, lets say they were locked in a cell, they were trained to always be running scenarios in their heads. E.g. The guard leaves the cell unlocked, so as a soldier I do A, then I do be B and if F happens I do G. If a bomb drops and blows a hole through a wall I do A etc... So you have to always know each step along the way to arrive at your goal, via a series of contingency plans. This means you always know what it is your supposed to be doing. So back to the goal example I gave in the other post   "Lose X amount of weight by following y diet plan in z amount of days"   First thing, to achieving the goal, you have to journal and understand yourself so that you can contingency plan effectively, you will know strengths and weaknesses - so you'll be able to adapt on the fly [note - leave journaling/commonplace book here] This allows you to plan, so that when a threat arises to your goal, you can deal with it For example, you're sticking to y diet plan to lose weight, which requires you to cut out sugar, and the urge arises to eat a donut instead of a chicken salad, you know what to do, you engage the displacement activities. You've planned ahead. You've got your plan A and then you create two backup plans, you are thinking two steps ahead, you have your plan B and your plan C. If plan A fails (lets say plan A was to destroy the urge to even eat the donut) you immediately go to plan B (distract yourself) and here's what's really important you need to work out these plans while you're clear-headed and unemotional, because otherwise you are a slave to your urges, and you will default to eating the donut. Don't have one plan you put all your money on, and then when that goes south, you're freaking out and emotional and you eat the donut. People make poor choices when they don't have a fucking plan. But you're smart, you know in your head if A doesn't work out I'm gonna do B and you've already worked out the details prior. When we fail in our goals we fail for one simple reason Because we allowed ourselves to fail - we gave ourselves permission to fail Because you allowed yourself to get to the point that you didn't have plans, so you can't handle the urges and you just fail and eat the donut. The defining moment between the winner and the loser, is who chooses to go for the donut and who chooses to go for the chicken salad.  This is how Rockefeller became so rich (the richest man in the world) because during the banking system crash in the early 1900's, when he was a banker, and he lost all his money, he learned his lesson. So when, the downturns came, he actually grew in wealth and power. Why? because he learned to have a fucking plan and then capitalize on opportunities. While everyone else is running left you can run right because you're the only one who has thought ahead. This is how you can become better than others. Now as mentioned in the previous post, you're goal has to be measurable Because it allows you to set milestones - basically to give you the information that your planning is coming together. If a goal is measurable, and you've done the vital habit of self journaling e.g. Understanding the self - understanding self image Then you can set marginal improvements based upon your skill level, and start planning This linking to the TED talk video linked below - "How to achieve you most ambitious goals" These incremental steps will soon turn to major leaps forward with time and consistency "What gets measured gets improved" “If it doesn’t challenge you it doesn’t change you” "Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great". - Niccolo Machiavelli "Well-Being is realized in small steps. But it is no small thing" - Zeno This is the winners mindset - the mindset of "Taking Souls" You have to do what others can't and that takes humility The humility to admit where you are and then push forward Step by step - Sticking to the plan If you can do that you can achieve your goal   Now a major step to planning is installing habits Let me give an example as to why habits as so vital   In 1993, there was an elderly man named Eugene Pauly who was infected with viral encephalitis which ate through the soft tissue of his brain -- specifically, his memory centres. After recovering from the infection, Eugene could not remember where he lived, or his children, and he would forget where he was within minutes of arriving anywhere. Eugene, however, was still able to do some very perplexing things. Eugene would wake up in the morning, walk out of his bedroom, downstairs, turn into the kitchen, open up cabinets, and make himself breakfast. But when researchers asked Eugene to draw a floorplan of what his house looked like, he couldn't remember. Eugene would also disappear in the mornings and go for walks, but when researchers took him outside and asked him which house on the street was his, he couldn't remember. Then, he would promptly walk up the street, turn left down his side walk and walk into his house.  What researchers were learning was that Eugene still maintained the same habits that he had before his viral infection. Eugene would be cued by something, like an alarm, then execute his routine, getting out of bed, navigating his house, and making breakfast. Now researchers noticed that sometimes Eugene would get lost on his walks, and they tried to find out why. They looked at his environment when he would get lost and found something interesting -- when there was bad weather or road work or something similar, Eugene’s cues to go home changed and he would get lost. Something as simple as a tree branch in the road could cause him to get lost on his walks.   Now why is this important to achieving our goals? Because its second nature for Eugene to enter his normal morning habit. You want it to be second nature to follow through with your plans and your habits. Your habits in a sense are your plans. Your schedule is your life. You need to make achieving your goal your nature. Write out a list of habits you should be doing daily, and implement a schedule/regimen into your life to achieve your goals. Here's an idea for some examples Remember, if you fail its because you allowed yourself to fail. Because you choose the donut over the chicken salad, and you have no one to blame for that but yourself. So I'm going to go make a post on how to journal now, another quick post on the self image and then I plan one last one on the importance of Solitude - I'll leave the links to them here Remember the main theme To achieve your vision/dream - you must define your goals - to achieve your goals you must change your habits - to change your habits you must know yourself  - These require solitude Here are the video links Any additional notes you'd like to add please do Thanks for reading