Regardless of the goals you’re trying to achieve in your life, there will always be temptations to stray from those goals. Take trying to get through some admin, bookkeeping or bulk social media updates. You’d rather be working on your actual business, but these essential tasks are an important part of making your business reach otger goals, too. Then temptation walks in – a notification on your phone, a phonecall you know will waste an hour of your scheduled time. You know responding to it will mean you are taken away from the work at hand, but someone…temptation seems too strong to resist. Again!
If you’re prepared for avoiding temptation, you can create a plan that will get you through and help you stick to your goals. Let’s look at the ten tips for avoiding the temptation that will help you reach success.
- Know Your Goals
The importance of writingout your goals cannot be stated enough. Train yourself to write down your goals in a precise way. This will cover details such as what you want to achieve and what the success of reahcing that goal will look like. Describe your goal in detail – as much as possible – so that you know what type of work will go into it. - Give a Deadline
Don’t set a goal without noting the time to finish it. Instead, set deadlines for each purpose that you create, and even smaller goals in between the big ones so that you can not progress as it’s happening. - Know Your Why
For the most part, your goals will inform you why. For example, if you have a goal to set up a new website in 90 days, why? Do you need it because you’re having a new launch? If you want to lose 15 pounds this year, how much do you want to miss each week or month and why did you pick that number? Those details will help you. - Be More Self-Aware
This means that you know how you feel and why you feel how you feel. You can note that you’re extra tired, so you better get a healthy snack before you grab a piece of chocolate cake so that you can avoid temptation in the first place. - Keep a Gratitude Journal
It’s hard to fall off a path you’ve set for yourself when you take the time to be thankful for the journey. You don’t have to take a long time. Each evening, just write down three things you’re grateful for and why. - Be Accountable to Your Promises
Most of your promises are going to be to yourself, but some will be to family, friends, or maybe a boss. It doesn’t matter who you have obligations to but it’s essential to be accountable if you fail – and also to be responsible when you succeed. Taking time to accept success will create more success. - Develop Habits
One thing to do about temptation is to develop habits over willpower. For example, if you want to drink more water, set up a system that makes it easy to get the amount of water you want in your body. Then do it the same way daily. After a month or so, it’ll be a habit, and it’ll come more naturally. - Make a Vision Board
It always helps to visualise the possible results of reaching your goals. It will make it feel real when you can see it. - Create a “What If?” Plan
When you know, you’ll be in situations where temptation exists, talk to yourself about it. Craft a plan on what you’ll do to avoid temptation if it happens. - Start Over If Needed
Even if you realise right in the middle that the goal was wrong, or the plan to get there was flawed, it’s okay. You can start over. You can tweak anything and fix it so that you can keep going forward.
Developing your self-discipline is almost all about avoiding short-term temptation to get off the path toward reaching your long-term goals. When you learn to avoid temptation in the first place, you won’t have as much of a chance to fall off the path.
