How to Achieve Our Goals via Habits
Habits are the tiny stepping stones which will lead you to your goals
Recently, I read a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear, where the author explained how habits can shape our lives.
Here is a small glimpse of it.
As humans, we all have goals to achieve. We work really hard to achieve our goals, but we do miss some important basics about how goals work and how to increase the possibility of accomplishing our goals.
How to Achieve your Goals?
We were all good at setting up a goal and wanted to accomplish it. However, many of our goals will remain a goal until the end.
Why do we leave most of our goals behind as goals themselves?
Lack of discipline, we are highly motivated towards our goals in the initial period. But when we start working towards our goal, we will understand the real process of what it takes to get it done.
When motivation hits you at 2 AM in the morning you start working towards it in the middle of the night, till the motivation stays at its peak. And totally forget about it reset of the time!
Don’t worry still you can change your behaviour.
Goals need discipline, not motivation.
You should do it because it needs to be done. Not because you feel like it or Not because you are motivated towards it.
Discipline and consistency are the two mantras which will get you to your goals.
But it is challenging to maintain it on a daily basis. To overcome this build a system to achieve your goals.
What is Actually a System?
A system is a collection of small habits you follow on a daily basis that will give you minimal results. The accumulation of these small improvements will ultimately lead you to your goals.
If you are a coach, your goal might be to win a championship. Your system is how you recruit players, how you manage assistant coaches, and how often you conduct practices.
Obviously, you may face some failures or blockers along the way, but when you fix it, you do fix it at the system level, not at the resulting level.
Let’s say you have a goal of maintaining your room neat and tidy. Now cleaning your room and maintaining it is your goal.
But after cleaning your room if you throw your unwashed clothes on the bed then there is a problem. Here you need to fix this at the system level, not at the resulting level.
In this case, you need to make sure your clothes are always kept in laundry bags rather than on the bed.
Here the system is a collection of small habits which are,
- always keep your used clothes in a laundry bag
- always making bed after you wake up in the morning
- throwing waste in the dustbin.
If you follow the above system properly then automatically you will achieve your goal of maintaining your room clean.
Similarly, create small habits and maintain them. Then System will automatically get you to your goal of maintaining your room clean.
What is the difference between Goals and Systems?
Goals are about the outcome or the results you wish to achieve. But Systems are about the processes and the improvements which lead to those results.
The major goal in any sport is to win with the highest score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole day staring at the scoreboard.
The only way to actually win is to get better each day. As Bill Walsh said, “The score will take care of itself”.
If you want better results forget about setting goals, and focus on the system instead.
Goals are Useless then?
Of course not, goals are used to set the direction of your travel. The system is to split the journey into different pieces and walk a certain distance on daily basis. It is a way of following the process every day without thinking about goals.
Because simply setting up a destination will not get you there.
You have to start travelling towards your destination slowly to get there.
Losers will have the same goals as Winners
We are only concentrating on people who end up winning and assuming that ambitious goals will lead to our destination the same as theirs.
But we are not noticing that the losers also had the same goals similar to the winners.
Then what makes the winners overcome others and achieve their success?
Every Olympian want to win the goal medal, and all of them worked hard their whole life to win in Olympics.
Then what differentiates winners from losers?
The goal was always there, it was only how they implement the system of small improvements that lead them to achieve a different outcome.
Conclusion
Don’t underestimate the Power of habits, a good habit would take you 3 years ahead of your lifestyle, and at the same time, a bad habit would take you 3 years backwards.
Start creating Your Own System and maintain it properly, if you take care of your system it will take care of your results.
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