Think of your current life goals. How convinced are you that you’ll succeed? What’s stopping you from making that trip, losing that weight, learning that language, or running that half-marathon?

What if someone said you could accomplish your #1 goal in 100 days? That there is a formula that you can use to guarantee success? You can do it if you follow these five steps.

1. Keep your goals
   SMART Your goals need to be tight, focused, and concrete. Above all, they must be SMART.
   • Specific: work on keeping your goal as focused and defined as you can
   • Measurable: keep your goals tangible, whether it’s running 10 miles or writing 60,000 words of your novel
   • Attainable: keep your goal challenging but not impossible (check your emotional response to gauge this – do you feel excited or overwhelmed?)
   • Relevant: Set goals that speak to your heart and will move your life forward. Make them your goals, not your manager’s, or your friend’s or your partner’s
   • Time-bound: scope for 100 days or less.
2. Small Steps
   Keep focused on the small actions and steps that add up to achieving your big goal. Work out what you need to do to get there and in what sequence. Remember that your daily, weekly, and monthly actions all add up to success.
3. Check-in on progress
   You’ll keep your motivation high and your project on course if you take regular progress checks. You’ll be able to see if any aspect of your project is slipping and make adjustments early to get back on track. And when you set your milestones, make sure you include rewards. Keep that positive feedback loop going by celebrating and rewarding success.
4. Be accountable
   Achieving your goal will be easier if you’re accountable to someone else. Ask a friend, coach, or mentor to be your accountability buddy and share your progress reports with them.
5. Don’t give up!
   Commit to yourself that you will keep going to achieve your 100-day goal. Everyone has bad days, and sometimes life can throw you a curveball, but it’s more important that you pick yourself up and stay on course.
   Keep it simple and stick to this five-step formula and you’ll be on your way to accomplishing your goal before you know it! You can also use this approach to complete subsections of your major goal, whether it’s becoming a CEO, completing that triathlon, or building your business. The same principle applies – break it down into smaller more achievable chunks and go for it!