The Ingredients of the 3 to Succeed Recipe

To achieve more in the next few weeks of your life than ever before, just focus on doing three main things every single day that will move you at least a little bit toward your goals. It’s simple, but most people have no idea how to properly set goals and, most importantly, how to achieve them in a day.

So starting today, every day, I want you to set three SMART goals you can accomplish before you go to sleep at night. The word SMART is actually a mnemonic memory device to help you remember how to properly focus your goal setting. SMART stands for:

S—Specific
M—Measurable
A—Action-Oriented
R—Reachable
T—Time-Sensitive

One of the biggest mistakes people make when setting goals is not following the above formula. Most people’s goals are so vague they have no idea what they should be doing... or when they’ve actually accomplished their goals! Let me give you an example...

How many people do you know who have set the goal to make more money? (Maybe you’re one of those people.) It’s a perfectly fine goal, but here’s the problem: if your goal is just to “make more money,” what does that mean? If I give you one more penny than you previously had, isn’t it true you made more money? That really isn’t what you would want, is it? One more penny isn’t going to negatively or positively affect your life in any way.

You have to be crystal clear on what you want to achieve. Be specific. Words like “more,” “better,” and “soon” don’t have any meaning. You don’t want to make “more” money; you want to increase your monthly income by $250. You don’t just want a better GPA; you want at least a 3.5. Make sense?

Arel Moodie is widely known as America's Top Young Speaker. He has spoken to over 65,000 students in 39 states and 2 countries on the topics of student success, student leadership and student entrepreneurship. He is a leading authority on helping students of this generation succeed in school and in life. He is also the best selling author of the book Your Starting Point For Student Success. To find out more about Arel's book, go to www.startingpointbook.com. To find out more about Arel's speaking please go to www.arelmoodie.com.