You are very excited, as you have just decided to achieve your long-time dream to run your first marathon. You also decided that you want to reach this goal yourself and without any help.
As you start planning your exercising routine, you are pumped with energy: “I’m going to crush that race” you think to yourself.
However, at some point you hit the plateau and can’t seem to make any progress. In fact, you have to slow down your exercising, because there have been some issues with your right foot.
As the race day becomes closer and closer, you are facing more and more motivational issues. “I never realized that reaching this goal was so hard” you admit to yourself.
Thoughts of quitting on accomplishing your goal become stronger as the days pass by. And until you can find a way to fix the situation, you’ll just have to cancel your participation in your first marathon race.
Are you trying to do everything by yourself?
We have probably faced these feelings ourselves when we were trying to reach a goal. And although the plan wasn’t necessary to run a marathon, it was still a big goal that meant a lot to us. However, when some obstacles were thrown in our way we felt like quitting.
But as you look at our example guy, can you spot one particular thing, which could have caused his feelings? You are right: He was going to reach the goal by himself.
Now this is an issue that many people might not realize: Although we set our personal goals, they are rarely something we can reach by ourselves. Quite the contrary, we reach the goal with the help of others.
Take all of these famous people like Richard Branson (founder of Virgin group), Sebastian Vettel (four-time Formula 1 world champion), or Felix Baumgartner (world record for skydiving an estimated 39 km/24 mi); do you think they made all the decisions or reached their goals themselves?
Of course not, they needed the help of others to get them where they wanted to go.
The same thing applies to you and me as well: As soon as we let others help us, we’ll reach our goals more likely that way than trying to do it ourselves.
If you think its weakness, you are wrong
Our guy thinks he can reach the goal himself and doesn’t need anyone else’s assistance.
Unfortunately, this attitude is doing him a disservice rather than helping him to reach his destination.
The core reason for his attitude can be fear-related. He is afraid that he is seen as a weak person if he asks for help.
Also, he may feel that he is asking self-explanatory questions related to his goal. And if he does that people might laugh at him.
Unfortunately, with these limiting thoughts our guy is missing the fresh views and opinions of others as he has decided to reach his goal alone. These thoughts are also preventing him from moving closer to his goal.
Gather a team of people to support you
If you allow yourself to be helped, you multiply the chances for success.
All you have to do is to gather a team of people to support you. Since these people own special expertise, they make your journey to your goal easier.
Now, does it mean that you have to hire the most expensive coaches or mentors in order to get where you want to go? Absolutely not!
You can start gathering this support group from the people close to you (your family, friends) and expand your team from there.
And remember, as soon as you allow yourself to be helped, this saying becomes reality: “When a student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
Join forces and make your goal a reality – here is how
To reach your goals and dreams faster, use these steps:
1. Time for a reality check. When you set your goal, take a reality check first: Where are you now and where do you want to go?
There is a gap (sometimes a huge one) between those two points, and if you want to reach the other point faster you need a team to help you out.
2. Allow the help. This is another important component of this process: Allowing yourself to be helped.
Just keep your mind open and admit that this is a team play – even if you take the steps to your destination by yourself.
3. Gather a team of specialists. When you start working on your next big thing, plan out the potential team members that you might need during your journey.
For instance, my goal is to start a profitable online business and the core part of it is to run a blog.
I can’t do all of the blog-related stuff myself, because I’m not able to focus on everything. Instead, I have hired other people to do certain things for me, since they do those things faster and better.
I have a coach who helps me see the bigger picture of things, I have a web developer and designer who creates additional components and designs the layout for my blog, I have a proofreader who checks my written content before it goes live, and I also have technical maintenance guys who keep my blog up-to-date.
4. Be accountable to your mentors. Hiring mentors and coaches is not enough; you want to keep yourself accountable to them.
This way they can see your progress and they can help you out if you are stuck. You are also motivated to do your part of the work when you are accountable.
5. Feel grateful of your team. Be grateful for your team. Appreciate the fact that you are blessed with people who are willing to help you out.
When you feel grateful towards your team members, it makes the whole journey much more enjoyable.
In fact, you could have a gratitude journal, where you write down all of the great things about the people around you. It takes only 5-10 minutes to do this on a daily basis.
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Timo Kiander, a.k.a. Productive Superdad, helps entrepreneurs improve their online business productivity. With 18 co-authors (like Pat Flynn and Corbett Barr), he wrote a book about how to build an online business and get stuff done – even when working from 9-5. You can visit his website here.
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