The reason why most people fail to achieve their goals is because they try and set goals that are too big.

They set goals such as losing a stone in weight, finding a new job or buying a new car.

By just looking at the size of the goal, most people get frightened.

The most successful people in the world achieve their goals because they break them up into small and manageable pieces. They set their main goals up into 20, 30 or even 40 mini-goals and see the completion of a mini-goal as a percentage of the completion of the main goal.

This has many advantages. Firstly, as the goal is smaller, it looks less intimidating. When people set big goals, they try and achieve them by taking massive action. For the next few days, they do nothing else but try and achieve that goal. If their goal is to find a new job, they will spend as much time as possible searching for all of the jobs available. Successful people, however, break their goals up into small mini-goals that are easy and manageable to achieve. If their goal is to find a new job, they will break it down into a small task of finding five possible jobs per day that are worth applying for. Small and consistent action towards achieving a goal is easier to manage and more effective than spending several hours doing something once.

Secondly, if you break a goal into mini-goals, there is less risk if something goes wrong. As fear is one of the main reasons why people do not go after their goals, by reducing the risk, and the fear attached to it, you will automatically feel more motivated to go for your goal.

Most importantly, by setting mini-goals and achieving them, you will be motivated at how quickly and easily you are speeding towards the completion of your main goal.

What goal did you start the year with? What new year resolutions did you set yourself? If your goal was to stop smoking, did you succeed? What if you had set your goal to smoke 1 less cigarette per day by the end of January and then one cigarette less for each month thereafter, do you think you would have achieved this? How can you reset your goals for the year so that they are more manageable and easier to achieve?