How to Achieve your Big Hairy Audacious Goals…And Easily Too.

I used to trek long distances as an undergraduate who decided to pay his tuition himself.

Looking back now, those distances were insane!

But they appeared easy for me then because I used to start by counting the bus stops, and it in fact gave me “bus stop crossing” goals to achieve, ending up giving me a sense of big goal achievement and fulfillment when I got to my final destination.

This brings me to expose to you the reason why you struggle to get results…whether it is in weight loss, building a business, growing muscles, writing a book, becoming proficient in playing a musical instrument, or perhaps in learning a new language.

It is very simple

You struggle to achieve your BHAG because you are putting too much pressure on yourself to achieve one BHAG!

If you didn’t know, a BHAG is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

Don’t get me wrong, it is awesome, even recommended to have such a goal, but its achievement should be incremental.

Indeed, Rome, or any other empire for that matter, was not built in a day.

So, what do you do?

10 millimeters makes one Centimeter

10 Centimeters makes one Decimeter

10 Decimeters makes on Meter

1000 Meters make one Kilometer.

You must be familiar with that primary school rhyme if you attended a decent primary school in Nigeria.

Imagine someone had to trek for one kilometer and decided to take it on without breaking it down into bits, before you know it, the person would soon give up.

Ultimately, every big goal is made up of lots of little goals.

No matter how committed you are, you cannot evolve from being a skinny or fat person to becoming a muscular person in a day, or a week.

The muscles need to grow, therefore, you have to build them one day at a time.

Instead of trying to achieve your BHAG in one fell swoop, fail, and give up like most people do, do these:

1. INTRODUCE A FUN ELEMENT TO IT.

So, let us take weight loss as an example.

You don’t need to lose 10kg in one month.

Simply buy a fitness watch that counts your step, gives you a sedentary reminder, and checks your heartbeat.

The fact that you have such an amazing device on would inspire you to not only be self-accountable (as your watch will always remind you to take a walk, and tell you how many steps you have taken for the day), you will also have fun while at it.

This is the reason why, as kids, we were able to achieve a lot.

We found a way to infuse a fun element into it.

Most military recruits would probably not survive the rigorous training regime they are put through if not for the way their commanding officer or training officer was able to infuse some fun and camaraderie into it.

As a teenage footballer with the Nigerian Football Academy some 22 years ago, the training exercises we did, and the length of time we did them in, and the conditions under which we did them were only a breath away from a military drill.

The competition for spots in the team made us train our behinds off, but we were able to look forward to another day of near training cruelty because of the fun that was brought into it then by our trainers then.

2. SET A SMALL (RELATED BUT SEEMINGLY UNRELATED) GOAL

(In this case, 8000 steps per day)

This way, you trick your brain into believing that you are not trying to lose weight. You are only trying as an efficient, effective, and productive human, to meet a “steps” goal.

When you do this, you suddenly realize that you are looking for excuses to walk to the printer, walk down the stairs, walk to buy your lunch yourself, walk to the bus station, etc.

All those chores that seemed inconvenient earlier on suddenly become appealing because every movement from one point to the other gets you closer to achieving your 8000 steps per day goal.

And while you are enjoying trying to meet your daily walks target, and getting the rush at the end of the day when you meet your target, you burn calories, and do what else?

Lose weight.

3. GET AN ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER.

This is somebody whose job is to keep watching you while you go about your target for the day, and checks in occasionally to know if you met your target for the day.

This person may be a colleague, sibling, spouse, or friend. Ensure the person is someone you would not like to disappoint.

Note that the person’s job is to ensure that you put in the daily little walks and achieve your daily goals of 8000 steps.

And over time, the law of consistency and momentum would kick in and you begin to achieve the BHAG which is to lose weight.

This strategy can be applied to any sphere of life or any goal.

Simply pick the goal you want to achieve and do the following:

1. Introduce a fun element to it;
2. Set a small related but seemingly unrelated goal;
3. Get an accountability partner, and give it time.

I promise you will be amazed.

Good Luck.