Smart Emmanuel: The Many Blessings of December 31st, 2022

In 2021, I achieved a lot of the goals I set regardless of the set back I faced. It was tough, sometimes hopeless, but the goals were achieved. I’m going to share some of the tricks that worked for me and I believe could work for you too.

Realistic Goals 

One of the biggest problems people have is setting unrealistic goals. It’s not impossible to make $100 million in 2022 but the real question is if you have the required skill to achieve this goal? When we set goals because they seem “nice to achieve”, we set ourselves up for failure and frustration. Our goals should be realistic, yet audacious; the kind of goals you know will stretch you but you know in your heart that with discipline and focus, you can achieve them. Delete all the unrealistic goals and focus on the realistic and audacious ones.

It’s not how many things you do right 

I’m working on a book that discusses this at length. 2021 taught me that sometimes, it’s not enough to want to do the right thing, it is also ensuring you do not do the wrong things. You want to finish top in your school, this isn’t the year to get someone pregnant or get pregnant. You want to invest $10 every month, this isn’t the year to buy things on impulse. You want to be admitted into an Ivy League school, this isn’t the year to drown yourself in movies all day.  

The ‘how’ is your miracle

To achieve your dream, you must also set realistic plans. You don’t really need to write down your plans all the way, or do the entire breakdown of how you want to move in 2022, but you must, at the very least, write down the basics.

Determine if you need the support of mentors, friends, Google and courses. Do you need to speak to someone who has achieved the goal, especially someone who took intentional steps? Do you need to read books – and what kind of books? You may want to Google the areas that seem unclear. Do whatever you have to do to find the ‘how’, and draw up a plan. If you want to get admitted to a school with an acceptance rate of 3%, you have to learn from the 3% who have been accepted. If you want to raise money in an industry where less than 1% of startups raise money, you may want to find out the trick of the 1% – you want to understand their patterns, relationships and ethics. You want to sell to more people, it’s important you study those who have done this successfully: their structures, their language, relationships and reward system. When you find your how, you have found your miracle.

The ‘why’ is your insurance

The truth is you will have bad days. You will have good days. The bad days will trick you to believe you have never had good days and also convince you that there are no good days ahead. It’s a lie; there are good days ahead, plenty of good days. It’s on bad days that you need your insurance – your ‘why’. Why do you want to achieve these goals? For some, it’s for their family. For others, it’s for money, legacy, God, and so on. Your ‘why’ will, on bad days, keep you walking through the darkness and on good days, keep you focused on the goal.

Accountability 

You need someone and/or a goal statement that can keep you accountable. It helps that there’s someone who can remind you of the goals you set. We get distracted easily: you may meet a new girl that takes all your attention and you forget the goals you set; it may be a nice new movie series that steals you off for a week; your new friend; an event that makes you forget what you set out to achieve; a promotion at work. When you stay accountable to your goal statement and carve out a daily to-do list, it’s easier to stay focused. Finding an accountability partner is not as hard; it could be your parents, spouse, friend or lover. It could be your room wall sheet where you have written your goals. It stares at you all day as you slip away from your goals, you return home and it stares at you and forces you to focus and keep working towards your goals because it is important to you that on Saturday, December 31st 2022, you count the achievement of your goals as one of your many blessings.

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