This is a series of 5 practical articles, which will teach you my method of achieving any goal in record time.

In Step 1 I told you about the importance and power of setting a vision and precisely defining a goal.

In Step 2 I told you about the difference between your internal goals (your motivation) and external goals and why you need to define both.

In Step 3 we were talking about creating a map with detailed steps and milestones while at the same time ensuring that you consider your internal and your external focus.

Once you have your external goal (the target for your automatic navigation system) and your internal goal (your motivation or your fuel) set and have come up with a plan or map that tells you ways to achieve your goal, you are finally ready to hit the road and start taking action.

Step 4. Moving: Taking Care of Your Steps

A Dream Is Just A Dream

Okay now you've prepared your bags and are ready to go - the cab is waiting in front of your house. What would happen if instead of getting out of your house into the cab (and later on the plane, etc.) you would stay inside and keep on looking at your travel map, the catalog of the hotel and your plan description? Even if you continue to envision how exciting it would be, the cab driver outside would get rather annoyed if you don't move your ass and get it in the cab, the airline would also get annoyed of you and would take off without you.

You see it is bizarre to prepare everything and then don't take the steps. Yet, it is precisely what we all have done so often with our goals. We had dreams and visions, but we never took the first step. Unless you are willing to take action on your dreams, you can envision and plan your dreams in as much detail as you like - they ain't gonna happen.

Walking and Talking

This is the crucial step - as long as you are not willing to start your journey it is all talk (or writing or dreaming) - but you need to walk your talk. The rubber needs to hit the road to get your car and yourself going.

It's not your dreams, aspirations or ideas that define you - it's your action - and only your action.

Don't Look At The Map While Driving

Besides taking the first step, there is also another very important point here. Once you get going (i.e. you start taking the steps towards your goal) it is important NOT to have your focus on the goal.

Wait a second you might say, but I've heard it all so often - always keep your eye on the goal, always focus on the vision.

It is critical to understand, that the vision of the goal is like a map. You prepare your map to know where you are going, but once you move forward on the journey your focus is on the steps you take.

What happens if while traveling you would only look at your map? Well, you could miss directions, you could get run over by a car, you could miss opportunities, you could struggle. It is the same with your goal journeys.

The Map Is Not the Territory as they say in NLP. Use the map to install direction within you but while traveling focus on the steps and on the journey.

Now don't get me wrong - you will use your map (occasionally) for checking that you are on course - but this is part of the next step. Just like walking along a street - walking and checking direction are separate phases of a journey.

A Paradigm Shift: Caring About Your Steps

Part of this paradigm shift is also that once you get going, you focus on the steps and care about the steps. Caring means, that you ask yourself how you could make these steps even better, more enjoyable, more effective. If you care about your steps, you will lose the pressure of being overwhelmed by the far-away goal.

You need to get that Zen-like state of "All that counts now is this one step, this one activity."

How would a mindset of "I need to get through this to reach my goal?" be different from "How can I make this exercise as good and as enjoyable as possible?" when it comes to doing the necessary exercises to come closer to a weight loss goal? Forget about your goal during the sessions and care more about doing the exercise, doing them better and enjoying them. Try to make them a little better every time - that is the power of KAIZEN - the constant drive to improve things.

There is a time for everything - planning and checking, but NOW is the time for moving!

If you shift your focus from your goal to taking care of your steps, you will experience a state of calm relaxation. Very often looking too much at your goals installs a state of frustration combined with panic within your subconscious because you realize every time you look at your goals, that you are not there yet. This creates frustration and while you need a little of that frustration to build the tension up to get you going in that direction too much of that frustration will lead to apathy. That is why very often too much goal setting will ensure that you won't achieve them. Your subconscious feels too much stressed by the total effort. So you need to take away that pressure from your subconscious. It is not about the zillion things that need to be done in the future - it is only about the one thing that needs to be done now.

If you would be focusing on your thousands of steps ahead of you during the current day and not on the next one that will lead you just 1 meter from your current position, you wouldn't leave your bed at all. Get yourself a pedometer (that is an instrument that counts how many steps you take during a day) and you will see that you walk several thousand steps a day (even if you are a couch potato). So taking thousands of steps isn't hard for you at all - you just don't take them all at once - you take them one by one. No wonder that we mastered walking - now master reaching your goals.

Take Care of Your Steps!