Are You Planting the Seeds for Your Success?

7 Steps to Attain Your Personal Goals

Spring is planting season. Have you planted the seeds for your personal success? While you aren’t your job, you need to take proactive steps to accomplish the goals you believe are important to have a satisfying life. Regardless of what you’ve done until now, you’ve the power to achieve this personal victory. The catch is that you must plan for your success, regardless of your age. The harsh reality is that you must take control of your destiny and work to do the things that will challenge you to do your best and bring you satisfaction.

Here are seven steps to help you plant the seeds to attain your personal goals regardless of your current commitments. The key is to have a direction and a path to get there. (Unfortunately, Google Maps can’t plot the trip for this destination!)

  1. Plan your garden. Just as a gardener lays out his plantings to know how they’ll look as they grow, consider what your goals are.  When it comes to personal achievement, don’t limit yourself to your business or career objectives. Establish targets across the different aspects of your life including family, personal relationships, finances, physical condition, education, spiritual needs, and outside interests (such as hobbies). Plan for different time horizons such as one year, three years and five years. If you have longer term plans, that’s useful to direct your activity. (Most people have trouble just getting to three or five years.)
  2. Get the right tools. Depending on the size of your garden and the type of plants that you’ll grow, you need to have the right tools. To get on track to attain your personal goals, you not only need the right tools such as a computer and smartphone, but also educational and reference resources.
  3. Line up the appropriate support. While an individual can handle most gardening, there are plots of land that require additional work before you start. For example, you may need to fertilize the soil, cut down a dead tree or remove other debris. Similarly, assess whether you need to build your network.
  4. Remove the weeds. For a gardener, getting rid of weeds is a never-ending task. To keep you on track to achieving your long term goals, remove the clutter and distractions that’ll keep you from focusing your efforts.
  5. Plant your seeds. Assess your land’s soil and weather conditions to pick plants that’ll thrive there. For your objectives, follow your plan to take small incremental steps towards your targets.
  6. Document your garden’s progress. Once the seeds are sowed, many gardeners place the seed package nearby to keep track of the plants. Some take this a step further and monitor weather and other conditions over time. Similarly, track your progress to your goals. While, on a day-to-day basis, you may not see any advancement, keep a record to show you what’s working and what’s not.
  7. Carefully prune your plants as needed. It can be helpful to cut your plants to keep them healthy and strong. In terms of your long-term goals, look at your progress and assess whether you’re on track to achieve the results you’re looking for? If not, how can you adjust your strategy to accommodate your experience and outside events beyond your control?

Contrary to what most people think, luck can be planned. Start to take control of the areas of your life that you want to change and see how your life changes.

Do you set goals for yourself and assess whether you’re achieving them? If so, what are some of the secrets to your success? If not, what are the roadblocks that have held you back? Please share your experiences in the comment section below.

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen


If this topic hits home, you may want to check out Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow. (Affiliate link)

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Photo credit: Jen_Rab via Flickr

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