I talked a lot about vision or a vision statement in this month’s blog series, but I also want to talk about achieving your goals before the series ends.

Achieving your goals is crucial to your overall vision. Within a vision, there can be a couple or dozens or hundreds of goals to meet before you reach it. You’ll be proud when you can say your vision is a reality, but there is a long road ahead paved with the goals you need to achieve before you can get to where you want to be.

The Reality of Goal Achievement

According to Inc.com, only about 8 percent of us actually achieve our goals. That’s a miserable number when you think about it.

Less than 1-in-10 are getting the little things done that will lead to realizing a vision.

Tips to Achieve Your Goals from Inc.com

Here are some techniques recently shared by Inc.com to help you achieve your goals. Have a look. You may find them helpful.

1. Aim High, Start Slow; Recognize Success, But Keep Going

Let’s say your vision is for your 12-year-old daughter to attend an Ivy League college. No matter how smart she is today, she’s not going to be accepted tomorrow. She has to do well in her eighth-grade classes, so she’s put into the challenging classes in high school. In high school, she has to do well in each class and graduate at the top of her class to have a chance at getting into any Ivy League school. While you can’t control what happens during her senior year of high school before she's even in high school, you can help her take care of what’s in front of her and build on it, keeping the vision of the Ivy League school acceptance in mind.

2. Don’t Let Others Set Your Goals

When you let other people come in and usurp your goals by tweaking them or changing them entirely, you give up all power, and it severely affects your ability to achieve them. You may allow people to be involved in helping you set goals by providing feedback, but make sure their suggestions do not harm your ultimate vision.

3. Define Success

If you don’t know what success looks like, how will you know it when you reach it? Let's say your vision is to be the leading provider of vegan hamburgers in the country. First, you'll need to know who your competition is and what the current numbers are. If you don’t, you’ll never reach your vision. Your goals can be as simple as finding out who currently leads in vegan hamburger production. However, until you know certain things, you won’t know when you’ve reached your goals, which will keep you from achieving your vision.

4. Why is This Important?

You may want your son to have a relationship with God through whatever religion you practice. Why? If you can’t answer that question, what could you possibly say when he asks you why it’s important? The same is true in most situations. If you’ve got a vision upon which you’re developing goals, it is crucial to understand why particular goals must be set. Whether it’s getting your child confirmed as a Catholic or having your Jewish child reach their bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, it’s crucial to understand the importance of your goals.

5. Track Your Performance

How do you know if you’re on the right goal path?—you regularly take stock of where things stand. If you’re looking for sales to rise 20% this year, and you’re planning on ramping up by 5% each quarter, you’ll want to pay close attention to the numbers. If your first quarter only went up by 3%, you'll need to find out what must happen in future quarters to close the gap? Knowing where you are when trying to reach your goals is a critical part of the process in achieving the overall vision.

Recap

This blog brings to an end this month’s series on vision and goals. If you’ve missed any of the entries, you can catch them at the following links.

• "Leading Your Team With A Vision Statement"

• "Developing Your Long-Term Vision"

• "Vision and Goals: What's The Difference"

I urge you to read them in order. A vision is a bold thing that few people create and even fewer achieve.

Some Final Thoughts

We become so bogged down in day-to-day life that we often forget to look at the long-term picture. Consider setting a vision similar to the way you invest for retirement. You may be 30 years away from retiring, but it’s smart to put a little bit away every week or month now because, in 30 years, you’re going to need that money. If you wait 10 or 20 years to start saving, you’re not going to be in the same place financially as you’d be if you started today.

The same thing is true for vision.

• What do you want out of life?

• What do you want for your family?

• What do you want to see happen for your business?

• What do you want to see happen for your personal health?

There is no better time to begin your long-term journey toward a bold vision than today. I wish you luck and hope you’ll share with the vision statements you create.