We all want to reach our dream goals, to open our own business, to do sports, to learn a new language. But a year or two goes by and nothing happens. Here are some principles, and if you implement even half of them, you won't recognize yourself a year later.

Super goals

At least when you are just starting out, don't listen to people who tell you that you need to set mega goals, that you need to think globally to be motivated. Yes, a big goal will motivate you and you'll even rush to do something, but after a week or two all motivation will fade and you'll fall into an even deeper emotional hole than the previous one. Your path to success should look like this. A ladder with many steps, where each next step is only slightly higher and more difficult than the previous one.

When you have only one major key action, probability that you'll fail is very high, you can spend a year preparing for it and wasting your time on nothing.

If you need a 20-30% increase, then definitely plan 3-5 years ahead. If you want an increase in a few times, don't plan more than a year ahead. Because anything more than that won't be planning, it will be fantasy. Most of your goals will not be achieved in the way you originally imagined.

Straight road

People think the road to a goal looks like this:

A straight highway from point A to point B. However, the real path always looks like this:

The first attempt will take you to point 1. It's closer to the goal, but still not the place you want. Then there will be a second attempt, a third, a fourth. And only on the fifth step will you finally get what you want. Sometimes there will be more such attempts, sometimes a little less. But there will always be a few. It's always a series of mistakes and failures. There is no way to get from point A to point B directly, at least the first time you do it.

Make no mistakes

When we feel we have no margin for error, our anxiety skyrockets and the quality of our decisions declines. But remember yourself at the first date. With a girl or a guy who really likes you. How did you behave? Your thoughts were confused, you acted and talked a little strange. And after the date, you wondered how you could behave like that. But the truth is, anyone in your shoes would have behaved the same way. Anxiety, fear, excessive motivation always lead to a bad outcome.

Yerkes-Dodson law dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. The more complex and far-reaching the task, the lower the level of motivation must be to successfully complete that task. So the recipe is simple. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Stop beating yourself up over when you make a mistake.

First of all, we hate making mistakes so much because it's unpleasant in itself. You wanted to get something and suddenly you don't. Secondly, and this is the main thing, we have been forbidden to make mistakes since childhood. We were told for years, first at school and then at university, that making mistakes was unacceptable. Remember, mankind's greatest inventions were made after a great series of mistakes.

Frustration

Frustration is a negative emotional state that occurs when the results of our actions do not meet expectations. Frustration will always be present when you make a mistake. And the best way to overcome it is to reduce the cost of your mistakes. Shorter deadlines, lower costs and less effort per attempt. If you're a beginner youtuber, film on your phone. You don't need an expensive camera and thousands of dollars worth of lights.

Don't just make one video a month, which won't be successful anyway. Make 10 videos, even if 9 of them won't be popular, but there will be one that will and it will give you subscribers and a sense of progress. The second way to overcome frustration is to realize that frustration has two sides.

The first is disappointment when you don't get what you expected. Then comes the learned response, which is exactly what determines your future. When you think, oh, no, I'm not capable of anything, any obstacle becomes fatal. It's called learned helplessness. But if after one mistake you think, so what, let's try again, then not only are you frustrated, but you will be unstoppable, not even by a bulldozer. Mistakes are a necessary part of progress.

The question is not how not to make mistakes, but how much you need to make mistakes to reach your goal. Millions of people want to create a business. They study for years, they prepare, they take courses. Ask in the comments what book to read. They do everything but the most important thing - they go out and launch a project. The worst thing you can do for your success is to accumulate theory without practice. We will always feel we know too little. And there's a lot more to learn to go from word to deed.

Divide the training into small blocks. Once you have learned the next block, put it into practice immediately. Do not move on to the next block until you have implemented the previous one. Read a book, take a course. But fully apply everything you have learned. It will achieve much more than if you skimmed dozens of books. Download dozens of courses, but do nothing. After all, it's scary, what if you missed something? We understand where this fear comes from. For thousands of years we have lived in conditions of lack of information. But the world has changed, today there is an overabundance of information.

500 hours of new videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute. You'll never watch them all. And you'll never see everything. Hoarding knowledge is the worst strategy they impose on schools. So don't be afraid to start. Don't be afraid to say you're new at something. And whatever you do, don't forget the setbacks. In any business, progress looks like this. First there's a peak, then a plateau. In time there will be another failure and then another rise. These small failures will be inevitable and cannot be reversed. You just have to know that they will happen. And this is normal, they will definitely pass. In fact, a failure is exactly what tells you that you are on the right track. And all you need at the time is to reduce the load by 80% or even 95%.

Wait for the fallout to pass and return to action. There is no need to feel guilty or ashamed. You don't have to blame yourself for lack of discipline. I've been exercising and suddenly I'm not. I used to post 10 videos a month, and then I barely gathered enough material for one. Just wait for the fallout to pass and your results will be better than before.

False information

Everyone has the same needs, more or less. The environment around us is also roughly the same for everyone. But the information in our heads can vary radically. Advertising makes us believe that happiness means consumption. Buy an iPhone, a car, an apartment. If you don't have money, here's a loan. But no amount of consumption brings lasting happiness. Because there is one thing. Hedonic adaptation is the inevitable return of mood to its usual level after any positive and negative changes. The duration will be different, but the result is the same. A credit phone will make you happy for two weeks. A car, an apartment, well, maybe a month or two. And to get a real high in the long run, you need something else. A simple rule to help you figure out what you need to do. Today, tomorrow, a year from now, ten years from now.

Look at the picture bellow:

The green circle represents all the things you know how to do now. And the white canvas around it is the area of stress. When you spend a lot of time in the know-it-all circle, you get bored and life seems to pass you by. When you're outside the circle, you're scared, you're anxious, it's stressful. So you need to be on the edge of the circle. And it has a special name. The zone of proximal development are those skills and tasks that, with the right methodology, you can learn quickly and with minimal stress. Breaking down a large, complex skill into small blocks that are easy to master is exactly what cool teachers and coaches do. Here's what this area looks like on our diagram.

The more time you spend in it, the more you will achieve in life. It's literally an instruction manual on how to build your dream life. We learn something new to stimulate our brains. Using the knowledge we gain, we create something valuable and unique for others. And then we tell as many people as possible about it. This is a never-ending cycle. We are constantly expanding our circle of skills and with it, the area of proximal development grows. Any goal with this approach becomes achievable. It's just a matter of time and number of attempts.

Good friends

Another issue is the environment you are in. As soon as you rise even slightly above the crowd, people will immediately rush in and tell you that you won't succeed, don't mess around beacause something bad will happen. Except those people aren't worried about you. They're worried about themselves. They're scared that you're going to make it. That you'll be more successful than they are. And the more insignificant a person is, the greater those fears. Crab mentality is when your environment, co-workers, family and friends prevent you from making positive changes, fearing that you will succeed and they won't.

This is why alcoholics discourage those who want to quit drinking. And that's why you shouldn't listen when they tell you that it won't work, that no one needs it, that you're the smartest and things like that. And even those who sincerely wish you well are far from always understanding you.

Perfectionism

What you should definitely not have in your job is perfectionism. Perfectionism is the belief that work can and should be done perfectly and the desire to achieve this ideal in practice. Perfectionism is harmful in many ways. We procrastinate, miss deadlines and burn out, even on simple tasks. And there's another not so obvious thing - we constantly want to start over.

Well, because there's no point in continuing a project if something isn't already perfect. While you'll be slashing away at a project, your competitor will slash 50, take all the bumps, gain experience, find customers and ultimately outperform and crush you. Besides, the ideal perfectionist exists only in his head. No one else will understand and appreciate his aspirations, so don't try to do everything 100%. Stop at 70 and for most clients this is overkill.

Yes, in some professions the price of error is high, and there perfectionism is appropriate. Medicine, construction, aviation. But there are a million regulations and protocols for every step. And in creativity and social networks there are no such regulations and protocols. There is no ideal, so don't be afraid to stumble.