I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s a little habit I have that keeps me going every day.

Each night before I go to sleep, I visualise what my life will be when I achieve my personal goals. I imagine the house I’ll live in, the car I’ll drive and even the wall paper in my office.

When I’ve imagined my life, I’ll move on to the reason why I’m successful, the business I’ve got, and how each part interacts. It sounds hugely detailed but when you do it every night it only takes a few minutes to visualise everything.

There’s two reasons I do this; a) because it gives me an end point to aim for and b) because it reminds me of why I’m doing this. By visualising my goals every night it keeps me on my toes, and prepares me to jump on any opportunity to get closer to them.

In life we have a lot of distractions to take us away from our goals. There’s TV, kids, social lives and hobbies to contend with and if you let them before you know it they can send you off down a path that you don’t want to be on.

That doesn’t mean your goals can’t change, but unintentional shifts in direction need to be regained in.

If you know where you are going you can easily evaluate the things you do to understand if they are contributing or hindering your progress towards your goals.

I’ve talked earlier about not planning too far ahead, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have an end point in your head.

The trick is not to define too much how you achieve your goals, just what they look like. Furthermore you should keep your goals realistic.

It’s no good to visualise a huge mansion in a far off land. You need to actually pick the house you want; make it a real place you can touch.

Everything in my goals is real. In fact, the house in my goals I did buy in the end.

Every time you achieve one of your goals, you need to move your boundaries a little bit to keep challenging yourself. If you set your goals too far off then they will never be achievable and as such can demotivate you.

Realistic goals can motivate you when you achieve them and keep you focused.

Chapter Summary:

• Set goals that are real and you can touch
• Visualise them every day in your head as if you were living them
• Don’t focus on how you get there, but what they will look like
• Goals keep you grounded and help you avoid unintentional diversions.

Read our next blog post “Being creative isn’t a genius thing”.