Welcome to the guide on mastering the art of setting goals & establishing self-discipline. These two subjects are crucial to establishing a proper foundation to your success and achievement.

Regarding setting goals, Zig Ziglar is noted for saying, “When you set goals, something inside of you starts saying, “Let’s go, let’s go,” and ceilings start to move up.”

Setting goals begins the process of getting our minds to move forward. Whether your goal is a short-term goal or a long-term goal, your mind begins to focus on your future.

By the way, writing down your goals is a sure way to keep them fortified in your mind. Also, sharing your goals with close friends makes you accountable to reaching our goals. No one wants to fail on their goals is others know about them.

Along with goals, you will need discipline to move forward. Discipline is crucial for any success in life. Success, in whatever field or area of life, requires five things:

1. You need to wait for it.
2. You must persevere through the many different challenges and setbacks you are bound to encounter.
3. You also must put in constant effort. Success usually doesn’t happen the first time you try.
4. You will need to keep trying. In fact, in many situations, it requires several tries. You must constantly put in the effort even through speed bumps along the road.
5. Finally, success requires putting up with adverse conditions. You must keep at it regardless of what you’re feeling, regardless of how many people discourage you, and regardless of whether you feel that it’s time or not. You must do it.

Success requires all of these and these all involve discipline. Jim Rohn is attributed to saying, “discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”

So, what’s the problem? I’m sure it’s obvious, but let’s talk about it anyway.

Modern life and values aren’t exactly very friendly towards discipline. In fact, our modern world and the principles behind it seem to actively work against self-discipline. If not handled properly, this unfriendliness towards discipline will find its way into many different areas of your life.

There are many factors one may let into their life to allow discipline to take a back seat.  

First, we want everything to be quick and easy. I’m not just talking about products and services; I’m talking about relationships. I’m talking about education. It’s as if we’ve developed a sense of entitlement that life must be fair, quick and easy.

Many people look to achieve their goals without the constant effort needed. Many want a quick, easy success without taking the proper steps and putting in the hours of hard work.

Given this reality and these principles, it is no surprise our attention span, collectively as adults, has shrunk dramatically over the past few decades and it’s continuing to shrink. You only need to ask the nearest millennial to know what I’m talking about. (Personal Note: I am not disrespecting millennials, just making a general statement about the newest generation.)

People’s time horizon, as far as the “good things in life” are concerned, is very short. People don’t have the time nor the patience. They don’t have the discipline to wait around, deal with all sorts of adverse conditions, and put in constant work.  The lack of discipline is a quality need to push through the hard times and to keep moving.

They don’t have the patience to stick with trying situations until the thing that they’re working on pans out. The lack of patience one may have in dealing with difficult situations will cause people to give up and leave a project (or projects) unfinished.

If you want to achieve success, you need to set up proper goals and pursue those goals. You can hope and wish all you want, but big victories in your life are not going to materialize out of sheer luck. You must plan, and you must work your plan. In other words, you must set goals and implement them. Again, there goes that word: discipline is required.

Self-discipline is essential, but effective goal setting also requires clarity of purpose, proper structuring of your goals, and finally, proper measurement of your success. If you’re able to do all of these and you have the proper level of self-discipline, success becomes a habit.

Have you ever spent time with people who make a tremendous amount of money seemingly effortlessly?

Have you spent time with people who declare their big plans and the next time you check with them or check with people who know them, those plans worked out?

Well, those people are not magical. They are not some sort of mystical alien creature race. They simply picked up on the right habits. Simply, people who succeed easily just make it look easy.

Believe it or not, it took a lot of falls, stumbles, overcoming doubts, challenges as well as potential humiliation to get to where they are now. While the road make look easy, it was not smoothly paved.

If you were to sit and talk with them, you will hear the background work that no one sees. You would learn of the foundation that was laid to achieve their success. You would even learn of the failures along the way.

The good news? Success is a habit you can learn.

You might be thinking that successful people look, behave and sound so different from you. You might even be thinking that they are a completely different race of people. Well, don’t let appearances fool you. On the surface, it may seem like they’re completely different from you, but understand they’re just working out of certain habits. You don’t have to be born with those habits. You don’t have to be lucky. You just need to commit to learning it.