How To Stick To Your Goals

It’s a busy world out there.

Between email, social media, texting, and the internet, it can feel like sticking to your goals is impossible.

And while the internet is all well and good when you’re online shopping or applying for jobs, it’s not so great when it comes to building hard habits.

So how do you stick to your goals when everyone and their mother seems to have something else they’d rather do?

The best way to stick to your goals is to do the required habit daily, but in a small amount in the beginning, so you don’t quit.

Just start by doing one minute of the habit you need to do, but do that daily for two weeks, and then and only then, increase the time you put into the habit so you develop yourself.

Also, you must be willing to cut off everything that slows you down.

If you’re willing to cut everything off for success (from video games to scrolling on your phone to pointless shopping) to stick to your goals, keep reading.

Here is a guide to ten habits I’ve adopted that have made it much easier for me to stick to my goals.

This routine has gotten me from waking up and not having anything productive done to being the most focused person I know.

Habit #1 — Cut Off Every Bad Habit

If you’re stuck in life, it’s not because of what you aren’t doing. It’s because of the things you are doing.

It’s not a lack of discipline.

It’s that you’re too distracted and stimulated by your bad habits, so you can’t even fathom the discomfort it takes to perform the good habits needed for you to stick to your goals.

This means that you must relentlessly cut out every bad habit.

Start with just one habit, but after destroying one and following the other habits on this list, cut off the others.

Bad habits like gaming, excessive shopping, watching social media and TV, and eating addictive food all distract you from your purpose and make it harder to do what’s good for you.

Eating healthily or sticking to your goals is almost impossible if you eat stimulating foods since the brain chemicals they give you keep alluring you.

You only have so much willpower until you give in to your old habits.

So, it would be best if you eliminated your bad habits one by one, so you can gain the power and discipline to build the new habits.

Habit #2 — Surround Yourself With Successful People

Your surroundings have a lot to do with your state of mind.

And the people you surround yourself with are one of the biggest factors in your success.

I used to live by myself, and my only influences were random people who just created entertaining videos.

But, now that I’ve selected a small group of successful people to listen to via the internet, I’ve found that I’ve become more like them.

If you’re a beginner in any subject, you must surround yourself with positive influences.

This doesn’t mean you have to be friends with them.

It just means that you need to hear them.

Honestly, if you’re like me, most of the people around us aren’t who we want to be since we don’t want to be average.

But, if you choose the people you listen to and watch, you’ll become more like them.

If you want to become a billionaire, listen to billionaires.

If you want to be more fit, listen to fit people.

In addition, you must cut off all forms of internet and media consumption relentlessly, so you only listen to positive people.

Two people who’ve significantly impacted my life are Hamza Ahmed and Alex Hormozi.

To become successful, the first step is listening to these two since they’ve already laid out the methods to success.

Habit #3 — Workout Daily

You must work out daily if you want to stick to your goals or be successful.

When I first got into fitness, I would only work out when I felt like it.

I didn’t care if I didn’t work out one day or two because I was too tired.

But, since I relied on motivation, it would be weeks or months before I would work out again.

However, now, I work out every day whether I feel like it or not.

When I began my new workout routine with the sole focus of building the habit, I’d only stretch.

I wouldn’t even workout; I’d just stretch.

This helped me to build the habit of working out every day.

You may need to start with just that in the beginning.

Now, even if I don’t feel like working out, I do it anyway and make it a priority.

The key is to work out daily so you maintain your habit.

If you skip a day, you lose the momentum of your daily routine, and much harder to get back into it.

Your body will thank you after you show up to your workouts every day.

Another benefit to working out is that when you work out, you’re not only helping build muscle, but you’re also improving your physical and mental health.

It’s a simple yet powerful truth: the healthier you are, the more productive you’ll be.

So, start with a one-rep, at-home workout so you can improve your discipline and mental health.

Habit #4 — Cut Off All Pleasurable Foods

Foods that increase your dopamine levels will make you feel good at the moment, but they’ll make you feel worse later.

This is why you want to eat “low-dopamine” or less stimulating foods, like meat, vegetables, nuts, etc.

Unhealthy foods like ice cream, soda, and pasta release dopamine when you eat them, but they make us tired and slow down our productivity.

We don’t want this because we want to be productive, energetic, and healthy throughout the day.

If you want to find out how to do a healthy, low-carb diet, you can look across this website for tips.

But, to stick to a healthy diet, you must relentlessly cut out foods that are only eaten for pleasure.

In addition to eating less pleasurable foods, you must also count your calories.

To do this, search and compare the average foods you eat on Google, and eventually, you’ll learn how many calories are in the foods you eat.

Once you do this, you’ll be able to guess the calories without using Google.

This will allow you to stick to your health and fitness goals since you’ll be aware of how much food you eat.

Habit #5 — Meditate Every Day

At the beginning of my self-improvement journey, I completely doubted meditation and thought it was for hippies and Buddhists.

Little did I know that it has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with focus.

If you want to be productive, your mind must be clear.

The way I clear my mind is by doing daily meditation and living mindfully.

If you’re new to meditation, I recommend trying the Medito app, which is 100% free.

Once you’ve built the meditation habit, you’ll realize that most of the thoughts you get are useless, and you’ll be able to come back to reality when you think about useless things.

This will help you with all your other life goals, like fitness, work, sleep, etc.

Once you’ve built the habit of meditating on a guided meditation app for one month, start meditating without a guide while performing another task.

For example, meditate while you walk outside and focus on the steps and the nature around you.

This will kill two birds with one stone and allow you to meditate and exercise simultaneously.

Being able to meditate and do another thing at once without guidance is a precious skill in this modern age of distractions.

Nowadays, I meditate the whole day.

When I get up, I stretch and meditate.

When I exercise, I realize all the distractions my brain creates, so I return to the present and meditate.

When I’m working, I meditate since I get distracted and then go back to the present moment.

The great thing about meditation is that you can do it anywhere, and it helps with all of your goals.

So, download the Medito app and do 1 minute of meditation every day for two weeks, and then increase the duration of your meditation until you reach 30 minutes every day.

Once you get used to guided meditation, meditate whilst you eat so you can save time by not doing a guided meditation.

Habit #6 — Sleep For at Least Ten Hours a Night

Sleep also helps with your productivity.

When you have a lot of distractions tired, your mind is more likely to make decisions based on emotion rather than logic.

When you have ten hours of sleep, your body is rested and ready to work.

If you want to be more productive, lose more fat, gain more muscle, and be healthier, you need to sleep for at least ten hours a night.

This means sleeping at the same time every day and waking up at the same time every night.

If you cannot sleep at the same time every day, then increase your alarm to account for your missed sleep, so you still get ten hours of sleep.

“But what if I don’t have enough time to get ten hours of sleep?”

Then, you didn’t place enough of a priority on sleep.

Cut everything off that isn’t sleep and get to sleep.

Habit #7 — Do Pushups and Stretching First Thing In the Morning

This is the first habit that will make or break your morning.

To be productive, your body needs to be woken up.

The best way to ensure that your body is ready to work is to perform a few pushups and mindful stretching exercises first thing in the morning.

This will be something productive you do first thing in the morning and help set a precedent for the rest of the day.

This will wake up your muscles, get your blood flowing, and prepare your body to work.

The first thirty minutes of your day shape the rest of your day, so make it count!

*Note: Some of these links are Amazon affiliate links and make me a small commission if you buy from them.*

Habit #8 — Read Every Day

If you haven’t mastered self-improvement in your life, you must be willing to read self-improvement books like it’s your part-time job.

The best way to do this is to commit to yourself that you’ll do one hour of reading each day after you do “x habit,” like stretching.

Piggybacking a habit on top of another habit increases the likelihood that the new habit is performed since you’re reminded each day to do it at a specific time.

If you aren’t reading, you won’t know the mindset shifts you need to take to be successful and will keep failing.

Books that influenced me the most are Think and Grow Rich, The Psychology of Money, The Four-Hour Workweek, The Magic of Thinking Big, and Anything You Want.

I recommend getting these books from the library as you’re more obliged to read them if you know you have to return them.

But, if you can’t find them at your library, then you can find them on Amazon.

In addition to that, for me reading a physical book allows me to focus more.

Once you’ve read around five to ten books, you can lower your consumption of knowledge to just YouTube videos or podcasts whenever you’re doing something else like watering plants, cooking, working out, etc.

Habit #9 — Journal Every Day

You must journal daily.

This will help you track all the other habits, so you can guarantee that you’re executing them.

Journaling is similar to working out, but it might be even more critical.

If you want to be a billionaire, you have to journal daily.

If you want to be more fit, you have to journal daily.

Every time I journal and think back to what I did wrong that day and the previous day, I can learn from my mistakes.

Gratitude journaling also helps to change your perspective over time to think more positively.

And, you don’t need a physical journal to journal.

I walk around my living room or stretch in the mornings while I think about my journaling questions.

The questions you ask yourself will help you realize what you did wrong that day and the day prior.

Below are the questions I use to help address my daily habits.

“Where were we?”

I start with this question to address the unique problem I faced the previous day.

For example, I might say, “We were consuming social media too much and disguising it to ourselves as learning.”

“Where do we want to go?”

This question addresses the problem in the first question and gives a solution.

For example, I might say, “We need to completely cut off the internet and social media unless it’s for entrepreneurship.”

“List three things you’re grateful for.”

This prompt helps you to see the world more positively so you can be more appreciative of all of the great things around you.

The final prompt is to say whether you failed on your habits and if you did, why you did, and how you can succeed or not fall into the same trap in the future.

For example, my habits are strength training, cardio, meditation, productivity, content creation, learning, and socializing.

So, I can think: Strength training: Yes; I did a workout. Cardio: No; I made “x” excuse. Etc.

Habit #10 — Entrepreneurship

After destroying all of your bad habits and mastering the good habits, then and only then is it time to build passive income.

Without the focus, discipline, and mental clarity you get from the other habits, you cannot build passive income since your focus and discipline are too low.

So, it’s vital to get rid of your past addictions, like gaming, looking at social media, etc, before you move on to this step.

There are many ways to build passive income, but you need to provide value in a way where your money isn’t tied to your time.

For example, if you gave other businesses a service, like video editing, you would have to trade your time for money. 

But, if you make YouTube videos or a blog, then you make a post or video once and then it helps people and makes money forever.

In my opinion, the simplest business model is to become a content creator.

This can be a blog, YouTube channel, podcast, etc.

At first, pick one and master it.

But, to get money from your views, you must create an info product that you can sell, like a course on how to do something.

I watched this YouTube video by Hamza Ahmed and just copied his business mindset with the blogging model laid out by the Income School YouTube channel.

The key is that the business must solve a pain that people have with free content.

But, to make money, you plug a paid digital product, like a course, into your free videos.

And the great thing with a business is that you can continue to grow your income over time as you invest back into it through stuff like software, equipment, employees, etc.

You can also automate all of your business so it can run on autopilot if your goal is to relax.

And the great thing with a business is that you no longer have to depend on your income from your job but instead on your passive income from your business.

This is when you are truly living the dream. 

You no longer have to answer to anyone, and you’re creating the life you want to live.

If you’re starting with the content creation business model, I recommend that you watch some Gary Vaynerchuk videos.

He gives a lot of advice on how to create content.

But, in summary, if you post ten pieces of content a day and crosspost the same videos onto multiple social media platforms, you’ll get a lot of views.

All you need to do is answer people’s questions by searching on Google and letting it auto-fill.

And once you start to get some views, you can put a lead magnet on your posts and then sell people digital products, like helpful video courses, on your email list.

But basically, you must create around ten pieces of content a day that helps people and then sell them a digital product, like a course, ebook, etc, on your email list.

And, if you’re a beginner, I recommend starting with a blog, like this website, and then spending as much time as possible in your day working on the business.

In around a year or two, if you follow the Income School or Hamza Ahmed content creation and digital product method, you’ll be able to make a good income in around one to two years.

And once you get some money, invest it back into the business through things like software, equipment, employees, etc, and then keep making more money until you feel satisfied.

Conclusion

I have been using these habits to build myself for the past year or two, and I highly recommend them to you too.

This is the most comprehensive list of habits I’ve ever made.

By starting these habits, I changed my life from being overweight and depressed to being disciplined and happy.

I hope you find this helpful and let this be the spark to cut off the bad habits and create good ones!

If you want to find out how to lose body fat and become healthier, you can read my article here, where I share everything I did to lose 40 pounds on keto and OMAD.

And always remember, do the hard work, especially when you don’t feel like it.