Most goal setting strategies include laying out a written plan, determining intermediate and short term goals, and implementing changes in our daily routine that will either help us be more efficient in reaching our goals, or avoid problems that will hinder our progress.

Nevertheless, there is one key ingredient most goal setting strategies lack. And it is not about changing your outer circumstances. It is all about switching your mindset from possible failure to doubtless triumph.

You see, it’s not easy to implement changes in our lives. Before we change anything on the outside, we first have to challenge those thought patterns that are responsible for our current lifestyle in the first place.

That is why most goal setting plans fail.

Although we always start out full of enthusiasm, soon our old mindset will try to pull us back into the lifestyle it is used to. After all, you’ve been living this way for years and years. Your thought patterns will not change overnight.

But there is an extremely powerful way to change your mindset that will guarantee success. It is the Word of God—the Bible. If you are willing to commit to search for God first and leave your own agenda aside, you will obtain the success you are yearning for.

The Bible states that if you first strive for His kingdom and His way of doing things, everything else–every other area of your life–will be taken care of (Matthew 6:33).

As you read God’s Word you will get to know Him better and you will start thinking like He does. And He does not speak the language of failure! God always plans for victory, no matter what. So it’s always good to flow with His program.

Vision is everything. It gives you a dream to pursue and a goal to achieve. It helps you overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and keeps you holding on when the going gets tough.

But not everybody has a dream that gives them a vision for life. Many of us are living our lives as on a never ending treadmill and are barely able to keep up with the pace.

Difficulties, setbacks and disappointments take their toll until people just give up trying to excel and settle for a lower level of life.

But there is a way out. It’s not because you should or could do it, but because it is already part of you now!

You were placed on this earth by a loving God who designed you with a unique combination of gifts and talents to walk in a plan He has already predetermined for you!

All you have to do is reconnect with Him and find out what that specific plan for your life is.

Once you do that, God’s supernatural wisdom, power and strength will follow you and lead you on an exciting adventure of walking out His plan for your life!

It is said that a goal is a dream with a deadline, so each goal we achieve takes us one inch nearer to that dream we have in our heart.

Although this is plain common sense, most endeavors fail in this area. The problem lies in really achieving our goals in the time frame we planned to reach them. Distractions, procrastination and daily unforeseen obstacles are the reasons why we never get to where we want to go.

And suddenly we stand there and realize that we have hardly moved an inch since we started to pursue that dream. Frustration and discouragement can eventually lead us to abort the entire project and settle for less in our lives.

But there is help at hand: A good accountability partner. This will catapult you forward like nothing else can.

Three Key Steps to Successful Accountability:

• Write down everything you want to achieve together with your accountability partner for one whole week. Don’t plan too much. In the beginning it is better to have smaller goals and be successful at reaching them, than planning too much and experiencing failure instead.

• Break up each weekly goal into smaller steps and plan to achieve one of these daily. Before doing anything else each day, force yourself to accomplish that one little step. This will automatically lead you to accomplish a small part of the big goal. One small action done consistently has a way of expanding on its own.

• Meet with your accountability partner again each week. Tell him what you have achieved and analyze why you did not accomplish some things. This will help you improve your goal setting for the next week.

“Obstacles are the things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal” E.Joseph Cossman

There are times when all of us want to quit and are tempted with just giving up. Sometimes it’s because all the odds seem to come up against us, sometimes it’s because we’re just plain tired…and most often it is because we are trying to force things to happen.

Let’s face facts, we live in a world that wants instant results. Our entire Western lifestyle is centered around making things as easy, fast, effortless, and painless as possible.

When things don’t happen fast enough, we lose hope and stop trying.

We need to realize that the secret dream God has put in our hearts won’t be achieved quickly. It will happen in God’s timing.

Just like in the natural, harvesting fruit requires plowing the field, sowing the seed, watering and weeding, and…waiting.

What Not To Do When You Feel Like Giving Up:

- Keep doing the same things over and over and expect different results

- Make decisions you will regret afterwards, because you want to get rid of the pressure

- Question God’s will of abundance and peace for your life

What To Do When You Feel Like Giving Up:

Having said all that, here are a few suggestions for keeping on keeping on:

- Don’t focus on the obstacles, focus on your goal.

- Remember and revive that dream God put in your heart

- Imagine how great it will be when harvest time comes and you reach that goal

- Stick close to God and read His promises for the good life He wants you to have.

“I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Psalms 27:13)

• Life is hard, with a few happy moments.

• Life is a blast, with a few difficult moments.

You can choose in which of these two categories you will live for the rest of your life by not allowing yourself to get off track.

Here are 7 warning signs that describe a person who is falling into the “That’s life” trap:

• Loss of vision and purpose for life

• Feelings of being caught in the rat race

• Problems of getting up in the morning.

• Seeking refuge in overeating, or, even worse, alcohol

• Hypochondriacal tendencies

• Hopelessness and melancholy that can lead to depression

• Financial disorder, living from paycheck to paycheck and hardly getting by

A “That’s life” attitude is a perpetual state of mental laziness. If we just accept whatever comes our way and somehow cope with it the best we can, circumstances will dominate us and we will easily lose the grip on our life.

How to protect yourself from living on an inferior level:

• Cling to God, He is smarter than you are
• Adopt a proactive attitude: work towards your goals, one little step at a time
• Exercise your brain daily.
• Develop your unique gifts and talents
• Get rid of negative thought patterns
• Stop looking back, you cannot change your past, but you can change your future…as off today!
• Realize that God has already designed a perfect plan for your life, you just have to determine to walk in it:

“For we are God’s (own) handiwork (His workmanship), recreated in Christ Jesus, (born anew) that we may do those good works which God predestined (planned beforehand) for us (taking paths which He prepared ahead of time), that we should walk in them (living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live)”

(Ephesians 2:10; The Amplified Bible)

Instead of struggling to keep your head above water, why not walk on the water instead? With God, everything is possible!

I’d like to invite you to go for it! Visit http://www.Self-DirectedLearningForSuccess.com for tips and tools for successfully developing your talents by creating and growing in your own learning process. Learn how to teach yourself in my FREE e-book: “The Power of Self-Directed Learning”, and my FREE e-course: “Seven Steps to Consistently Change Your Life.”

But are they really that detrimental to our lives?

Human beings are not perfect, therefore they are prone to commit mistakes continually.

Then why do some people seem to be so successful, and others don’t? Do they make less mistakes?

No, they don’t. Successful people make a lot of mistakes.

The difference is that they know how to handle them.

You see, society has dictated that mistakes are bad. When you stumble, you have failed miserably. After a sequence of errors you get labeled: failure!

It’s your accepting this label that will bring you down.

Successful people refuse to believe that lie. They learn how to cope with their errors.

Here are 7 ways to deal with mistakes in life:

1.- Say no to perfectionism. Some people are so afraid of making mistakes that they never do anything.

2.- Try humor. Laugh over your mistake. It will help you focus on your goal, and not on your mistake.

3.- If an error consistently reappears, then you might be trying to do something you are not talented for. That’s okay. None of us is superman. What about outsourcing in that area and sticking to what you are good at?

4.- Instead of bawling and squawling over the mistake, learn from it. That is what mistakes are for. They are the most powerful learning tool there is.

5.- In those difficult moments you will need faith to overcome. God is bigger than your mistakes. He is a Restorer of hopelessness. Stick close to Him always. That way you will never lose hope of reaching your goals.

6.- God will also heal you from past mistakes and restore your self-image. This will lead you to view your life with a victim mentality. If you are constantly saying, “These things always happen to me,” then it is high time you read what the Bible says about you!

You see, God does not create failures. If you have given your life to Jesus, you are redeemed from a cursed life, and you are automatically marked for success. In God’s eyes, you are more than a conqueror (Romans 8:37).

7.- Allow yourself to dream. Dreams are powerful. Every great achievement of humanity started with a dream. Great things come to pass because somebody dared to step out and pursue that dream without ever letting anything stop him or her.

Even if your mistakes are tempting you to deny it, God has created you with a unique combination of talents and gifts to accomplish a special assignment here on earth. He wants to bless you with a life of abundance and fulfillment, and He expects you to develop those talents and to reach those goals to be a blessing to others!