The Art Of Achieving Your Goals: 3 Simple Habits Of People Who Actually Follow Through
The difference between dreamers and doers.
Mike Jones | Pexels Why do some days feel like such an uphill battle while others feel like you’re gliding effortlessly downstream? How can you explain being hopeful about your goals in one moment and deeply discouraged about them in the next? And why does achieving alignment with your goals even matter, anyway?
Alignment with your goals is the most critical factor in achieving them. It’s a state of non-resistance in which you're open — mentally, emotionally, and physically — to the outcomes you intended.
Here are 3 simple habits of people who actually follow through on their goals:
1. They pay attention to their feelings
When you’re driving your car, you can feel the pull that alerts you when your tires are misaligned, when you’re positioned squarely in your lane, and when you’re starting to drift onto the shoulder. And, because you’re sensitive to these sensations of alignment and misalignment, you can easily course-correct.
Yet, when it comes to alignment with your goals, too often, you numb yourself from picking up on these vital clues. Sometimes, you even delude yourself into thinking you're not as off-course as you really are. You may downplay the importance of your goals altogether.
In an attempt to protect yourself from heartbreak, you try to pretend that your desires really don’t matter that much to you. Sometimes, you even disregard the importance of your joy and enthusiasm. After all, what does feeling great have to do with achieving our goals, right?
The truth is, every one of your feelings offers you a vital clue as to where you currently are in relation to everything you want. Your emotions are valuable guides. Aligning yourself daily with the goals you want to create begins with listening to your emotions.
You simply have to be willing to allow yourself to feel whatever you feel. Paying attention to your feelings is the first step toward aligning with your goals. Good-feeling emotions like ease and interest indicate you’re right on track. Bad-feeling emotions like frustration or discouragement indicate you have some more inner work to do.
"Staying in touch with your emotions allows you to create deeper connections to your own experiences," explained life coach Michelle Thompson, "and certainly leads to more understanding between individuals. What better way can there be to make ourselves known to others than to know ourselves first, and what better way to connect with others than to show up from a state of compassion and understanding?"
2. They acknowledge the blessings they've been given
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What’s common is to withhold appreciation for yourself and your life until after you've reached your goals. Your mindset is one of, "Once I achieve X, then I’ll be happy." But, in so doing, you do two very detrimental things.
First, you deprive yourself of the life-giving energy of appreciation. And next, you hold the attainment of your goals at arm’s length. Appreciating all that you are and all that you have draws more into your life for you to appreciate. And withholding appreciation until you've reached the goal ensures that you'll never experience the happiness you desire.
Relationship coach Deborah Roth advised, "It may feel difficult sometimes to notice and celebrate all of the countless things you have to be grateful for, particularly when life feels chaotic, uncertain, or downright scary. Maybe it’s a nurturing relationship, a special tree in the park, a grounding spiritual community, or just a phone call with an old friend."
To come into more direct alignment with any goal you’ve set for yourself, simply appreciate all the steps you’ve already taken to get there. Even the fact that you now desire this is cause for some celebration. Why? Because desire is the start of every manifestation. It’s the driving force behind every creation.
Your desire to manifest your goal — when allowed to flow without resistance — will guide you to every resource and opportunity needed to accomplish it. What you appreciate, appreciates. Besides feeling appreciation for the desire itself, there are so many other blessings in your life you can choose to appreciate.
Just look around you! You live in a universe of unending abundance, where all the elements necessary for you to thrive have already been provided. You have air to breathe, water to drink, and the sun to keep you warm. The plants on your planet are irresistibly drawn to the light. The rain continues to fall to nourish your crops.
You can take a deep breath and feel the wind on your skin. Your mind is free to entertain any reality you’d like to experience. You're surrounded, in every moment, by blessings. And to the extent that you let them in and allow yourself to feel them, you're creating alignment with your goals.
Everything that you nourish with the powerful energy of your attention will expand, appreciate, and become more. Think upon your goals with the energy of appreciation, and you will draw them to you with ease.
3. They step into the essence of how they want to feel
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What’s common is to go into situations anticipating that you'll feel better once you get there. You seek out relationships with others, hoping they will make you happy or complete you in some way. You choose friends, forms of entertainment, and even the food you eat based on one thing: You're looking for alignment, and sadly, you're under the impression that you can achieve it from the outside in.
You probably take the same approach to goals as most people. You believe that once you lose the 10 pounds, attract the dream job, or improve that relationship, you'll feel better. In other words, you're looking to the fulfillment of your goals to bring you the feeling of alignment you're really seeking.
The key to fulfilling your goals is to align with them ahead of time before you’ve achieved them. It’s to look deeper than the surface-level improvement and really discern how you’re hoping it will make you feel. For example, if your goal is to take your family on a lavish trip, how do you believe that will feel? What improvements in your relationships do you believe will come from the relaxed environment? Do you anticipate feeling more spontaneous, more lighthearted, or easygoing?
The final step to achieving alignment with any goal is this: Simply decide, right now, to cultivate the state of being you believe the fulfillment of your goal will bring. You may not have the resources right now to book a lavish vacation, but you can certainly choose to be more lighthearted. The same is true for any state of being you wish to experience.
An ordinary person waits for conditions to inspire their mood. An expert chooses their mood ahead of time and, in so doing, attracts harmonious conditions. You’ve attained energetic alignment when the energy of your thoughts and beliefs flows unhindered in the direction of your goals. And when you’re energetically aligned with your goals, ideas for achieving them flow easily and abundantly.
You’re in the zone, firing on all cylinders, and you’re at your most creative and resourceful. Your actions are inspired rather than forced and are far more effective because they’re backed up by your full spiritual power. Alignment is the secret sauce that separates great days from bad ones. It’s what makes a particular moment in time feel either pointless or inspired.
Alignment with your goals is the most critical factor that determines whether you reach them or not. In other words, the state of alignment is really worth striving for!
The benefits of alignment — both internal and external — are huge. Think of the people you know who are the happiest — who have energy, vitality, and clarity. Think of those who have plenty of money, creative self-expression, and loving and supportive relationships. Think of those who easily accomplish what they set out to do.
What you’ll discover is that they aren’t accomplishing these things through hard work or struggle. They are allowing them into their experience through their alignment. They’ve decided to pay attention to how they feel, to feel good on purpose, and to create from that good-feeling place. And the real joy in life is watching as the universe, in turn, responds.
Christy Whitman is an energy healer, transformational leader, celebrity coach, and New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Having It All: A Woman’s Guide to Unlimited Abundance.
