In the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day, we often lose sight of the bigger picture—our mission, our purpose, and our long-term goals. These 10 tips will help you refocus your attention on your purpose and goals in life.
Ritualize
The use of both morning and evening rituals is one of our favorite practices. Making your morning and evening rituals part of your daily routine is one of the simplest ways to focus on a particular goal or your long-term goals or purpose in life.
Whenever you wake up and every time you go to sleep, you will be reminded of what is important to you.
Visualize
This goes hand-in-hand with ritualizing your goals.
Also known as “daydreaming”, the “envision film” or just visualization, you want to think about your goals and get as much sensory detail as possible. This means seeing, hearing, feeling and touching, tasting, and smelling.
You want to soak in every aspect of your goal as if it were real in front of you right now. This will help you align your focus, your body, and your attention on what it is you’re working towards, making it both possible and real to you.
Remind Yourself
Write down your goal on a piece of paper, in a mind map, on a post-it, or in Evernote, and carry it with you.
Whenever you have a spare moment—waiting for a train, bus, or people to arrive—pull it out and take a look at your goal and remind yourself that it’s important to you.
Align
If you align your primary focus with your goals and purpose in life, you get to reap the benefits of spending most of your time actively engaged in the pursuit of your goals.
This is also known as “living your goals” and is a very powerful way to get to where you want to go without too much effort.
Filter
You can get what you want faster by either working towards it or by clearing any obstacles that are in the way.
Make a list of all the things that you’re doing day-to-day that doesn’t align with your goals, then make a decision to eliminate, delegate, or refine them into manageable processes. This can be things like laundry, cleaning the house, or even spending one to two hours of cooking a day.
Streamline your activities so that your attention is really focused on what is important to you—your goals.
Do it Daily
“Success is the accumulation of small advantages over time”
This tip is simple enough—spend 30 minutes every day working towards your goal.
Thirty minutes is not that long and something that almost everyone can set aside. It is, however, long enough that over time, it will make a considerable difference, so block off some time and commit to it.
Mentally Deconstruct
This was a technique taught by a rags-to-riches business mentor who shall go unnamed.
What he used to do was as he went to sleep every night, he would deconstruct his entire business from beginning to end: where he sourced his product, how it moved through his logistics chain, and all the way until its delivery to his customer. By doing this every night, he learned and understood his business inside and out.
We can do the same with our goals. Start with the end, and work out way back to the present day (and perhaps even in the past), seeing the steps we’ve taken towards achieving them.
Physically Deconstruct
Just as you can mentally deconstruct your goals, you can also physically deconstruct them into smaller pieces.
How does your goal relate to shorter-term milestones and actions? How does it relate to what you have planned for this year, this month, this week, or even today?
If you systematically break down your goal into smaller and smaller outcomes that are readily actionable and easy to attain, you’ll be guaranteeing that your goal is within reach and just a few steps away.
Make Room
Sometimes, we have so much other stuff going on in our lives that it’s harder to see the bigger picture. If you have an overflowing inbox or lots of small two to five minute tasks to complete they need to go. Either dump them if they’re not important or spend one or two days just clearing through all of them.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll have more energy, attention, and focus to place on your goals.
Ask the Right Question
A great question to ask yourself is this: “Is what I’m doing right now taking me towards or away from my goal?”
This is a quality question that filters out all the noise, excuses, and anything else that can otherwise distract you from achieving your goals. Ask yourself this question at least once a day, if not more.
