Imagine there are two teenage boys, both of whom are dreaming of becoming professional basketball players. Both of them have the same end goal - to one day play basketball in the NBA. One of them decides that in order to reach this goal he will continue practicing and playing and do everything he can to get better. The other however decides to break his main goal into smaller goals. He aims to make the high school team. He aims to score so many points/rebounds/assists per game. He aims to improve his vertical leap by so much each year. He has many more smaller goals which he aims to reach that will bring him closer and closer to his end goal.

I am willing to bet money that the second person is more likely to succeed than the first. Don’t get me wrong, there are many people just like the first guy who will end up beating the odds and making it anyway. But they are few and far between. There are many, many more who will get disheartened long before the finish line and give up.

You see there are many children who have dreams and lofty ambitions of what they would like to be when they grow up. But unless these kids formulate goals to make their dreams become reality they will only ever live out their dreams as, well, dreams!

The importance of setting goals is seen in almost all areas of life. Many famous sports people, politicians and business people admit that they had to set goals to reach their levels of abnormal success. The reason is simple. Without setting specific goals your success is only by chance. And that chance, is a very small one.

For too long I have been focusing on simply doing as much as I can in the hope that one day I will find something that will work and can start reaping the benefits. I already have the big goal - to build a successful business online. But what smaller goals am I aiming to achieve to reach this huge goal?

There are thousands of ways to make money online, what way am I choosing to make it? If I have chosen a method, what steps am I taking to reach this goal? The point is that the ones of us who set small, challenging yet realizable goals that are all in line with reaching one main goal, are the ones who will most likely succeed. For the rest, their goals will simply remain as dreams.

Moving forward I am planning on choosing one task which I must have completed each week. Along with this will be other tasks which I may or may not work on. As readers I encourage you to do the same. If you do not have a full time job you can of course choose more than one main task, but for those of us who do have a full time job there is a need especially at the onset to KISS.

Stop dreaming about your goal and start working to achieve it!

P.S. Look for my upcoming post in which I will write down my goals and translate them into tangible results. After all, it is not until you write down your goals that the rubber starts to hit the road.