SELF-HELP
At the Living Success Network, a goal-oriented path to life
Some people make lists of resolutions for the New Year:
Lose weight. Quit smoking.
Start the small business you’ve been dreaming about.
But many find themselves repeating what they did last year — running out of steam and falling short of the goal.
Want to stick to the New Years’ resolutions you made just a couple of weeks ago?
Shaun Maddox of Living Success Network has some advice: “I help people take baby steps from knowing to doing.”
A landlord who runs his own property management company, Maddox also owns the Living Success Network, a three-year-old service that helps people achieve personal and financial success.
Maddox also runs classes on goal-setting and offers “fun-shop” seminars instead of workshops.
“I think everybody was meant to be successful,” said the 39-year-old. “I’ve gone to a lot of seminars. People get a book and a kit to start a business, and a lot of times it sits on the shelf and collects dust,” he said.
His job is to show people how to set goals, the importance of setting goals, and what has to be done to achieve them.
“It’s one thing to motivate people but another to get them moving,” he said. “The key thing is action. For many people the problem is just getting started. The older we get, the more limitations we place on ourselves.”
Instead of boundaries, people should clarify what they want, write them down and give them deadlines, he said.
His mantra for succes is a variation of an old saying, knowledge is power.
“I would change that to say applied knowledge is power,” he said.
With that, the first step in his goal-setting system is knowing what you want out of life.
Secondly, he stressed the importance of writing down goals.
“Writing it down crystallizes it,” he said. “A goal that is not written down with a deadline is merely a dream or a wish.”
Then put a deadline on it. “All goals need to have deadlines,” he said. “Every day break it down even further. [Ask yourself] what do you have to do to get to the next weekly goal?”
The fourth step is to write down what needs to be done to achieve the goals.
“What do you need to do this month to put you on track for your yearly goal?” he asked.
Put that list in order of what you have to do first. Then commit to taking some form of action to move closer to the goal.
The seventh step involves knowing why you want to achieve the goal. The reasons can be to make more money, to have more freedom, or leave something behind for family.
The last step is to review your goals every day, he said.
As you go along, don’t focus on the problems and the obstacles that get in the way.
Instead, he said, “Focus on where you want to go. Believe you can do it and then taking baby steps to achieve it.”
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