Pádraic O’Maille, motivational speaker and business coach, sat down with me pre-COVID to advise me on goals. Our last post was about goal-setting. The next is trying to actually achieve them.

Here are the practical tips that Pádraic shared with me to help you start meeting your targets!

1. Break down your goals into small, achievable steps

This quote above by Tony Robbins really captures what we mean here. If all you have are these huge, chunky goals – for example, “we’ll increase our profit this year by 50%” – you can get disillusioned and lost. The key to achieving is breaking down your big goals. Forget about the huge targets and break them down into smaller, daily tasks. You’ll be shocked by what they can accumulate to over time!

Instead of focusing on the marathon you’re planning to run in 6 months, think about carrying out a weekly task of three 40-minute runs. You can build this as time progresses, until you eventually hit your big goal. Little changes you do now – the 1% you commit to today – will build into the big change you need. Once you get into a routine, it becomes easier to build on your tasks.

Watch the 60-second clip below to see Padraic showing you exactly how to break down your goals.

2. Visualise yourself completing your goals

Imagine your goal happening and picture yourself exactly where you want to be. Start thinking about the small steps you need to do to get there. It helps you start to actually do them.

Visualisation is backed up by science. It involves your RAS (Reticular Activating System) – a filter in our brains that seeks out what’s good for us, ie. what we want to see. We can use this as a way to achieve goals.

Watch an example of the RAS in action.

Imagine yourself doing it and you’re more likely to do it!

Watch the 80-second clip below to see Pádraic explain visualisation a bit further, through a story about his two-year-old son.

2. Surround yourself with the right people

Think about the people you’re surrounded by every day. Who do you want to become and who are you trying to be now? Do those two profiles match?

We are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with!

-John Rohn, Motivational Speaker

One way to make sure you’ve got people around who will motivate you is join a mastermind group, or a ‘tribe’. This means finding like-minded people who are interested in the same things you are – maybe even working towards similar goals. Maybe your goal is to set up a business, or just to make your current one sustainable, or any number of things. Find people with similar mindsets and you’re closer to achieving!

Sometimes you can also be surrounded by the wrong people, who can bring you down.

For example, if you tell someone who has never made a speech that you’re about to go give a talk to 100 people, they might react badly. They fear the idea as they’ve never done it themselves. Whereas, if you tell someone who’s given 20 of those talks in the last year, they’ll be automatically supportive and normalise what you’re about to do, giving you confidence.

Watch the two-minute clip below for an example from Pádraic’s life – where he realised one of the closest people in his life was unconsciously stopping him from achieving his goals.

Think about who your “tribe” is. There are groups out there once you know what you’re looking for. Keep an eye out for our future blog posts, there’ll be one going into detail on how to find them. Contact us and be added to our email list if you want a notification when it goes up.

Summary

To start achieving your goals, you need to:

  1. Break your goals down into small, achievable steps.
  2. Visualise yourself completing your goals.
  3. Surround yourself with the right people.

With these three tips in mind, you’ll start to see an increase in how often you’re hitting your targets! They are simple but effective methods.

Do you have anything else you use to help you achieve your goals? Let us know in the comments! And stay tuned – we have plenty more information nuggets from Pádraic coming up over the next few weeks.