Recently I did a presentation to a group of coaches on setting and then accomplishing big goals. I think it is equally applicable to my fellow warriors in their divorce battle. I will show you with a step-by-step guide how to accomplish significant goals in the context of a divorce battle, demonstrate how to establish the goals for your divorce and how to take massive action to make them happen. If you aren’t in a divorce battle, you can follow these 7 steps to manifest anything in your life, and get to where you want to go.

Step 1: Discover your goals

Take a blank sheet of paper (or a computer screen) and give yourself exactly 10 minutes to answer these questions:

• What do you want to do with your life?
• What do you want to create?
• If you were to dream, what would the dream have you accomplish?
• What are your “must haves” in your divorce battle?

Avoid the urge to edit or doubt. Just let it all flow out of your brain onto the paper.

Step 2: Categorize your goals

Read the list you created in step 1, and highlight the top 2 or 3 goals. Can any of the other goals fit under these categories?

For example, you may have the goal of residential custody. Goals that could fit under this category are supervised access, blanket travel consent, and drug monitoring every 3 months.

Perhaps you have non-divorce goals like creating a 6-figure business. Many of the goals within your list can fit beneath this heading such as taking a course to re-educate yourself, setting up a home office, shadowing a similar business, and creating a website.

Step 3: Pick 1 major goal to focus on

Maybe your 3 major goals are:  lose 50 pounds, start a business, and gain full custody. I would recommend that you start with 1 goal only and go all in. The meta skills that you will learn in accomplishing this goal will help you achieve other goals over time.

Step 4: Deal with the Drama

Your brain is going to offer you every reason why you cannot achieve this goal. That’s what brains are designed to do. They run a default program called “What is going wrong right now“. This program dates back to the caveman times when leaving the cave meant possibly being eaten by a bear. It was designed to keep us safe, but is no longer necessary.

Write down all of the obstacles that your brain is feeding you. Beside each obstacle, I want you to write down a counterargument or strategy to overcome this.

Here’s an example for an epic goal of gaining full custody:

Obstacle: The law favours 50/50

Strategy: The law is for normal parents, and my ex is anything but. I can demonstrate the danger of 50/50 for my child.

Step 5: Start taking Massive Action toward your goal

Write down at least 25 actions that you can take to accomplish your goal. This includes even small things like reading an abuse recovery blog post weekly, self coaching daily, finding a therapist for your child, start collecting affidavits from old neighbours, doctors, educators, setting up a spreadsheet to document access, doing yoga 3 times weekly, starting therapy or weekly coaching, taking at least 1 hour each week to focus on your legals. Allow your brain to dream about all the things you can do to make achieving your goal inevitable.

Step 6: Calendar 14 days of massive action at a time

Take this list of actions and put them in an order that makes sense. Rome was not built in a day. Put each action on your calendar with a reasonable time frame to accomplish it. This includes even small things like calling the pediatrician to book an appointment.

Step 7: Honour thy calendar

Expect that when you see the task on your calendar you will not want to do it. Expect your brain to come up with a million excuses to do something else or hop on facebook. There is no need to negotiate with your toddler brain. You have decided ahead of time who is in charge so just do it. Focus on the long term gratification vs instant gratification.

Honouring your calendar has 2 great impacts. First, it gets you taking productive steps toward your goal. Second, it strengthens your relationship with yourself. By honouring your calendar you are valuing your commitment to your future self.

There is no goal failure until you quit

Many of the steps or actions you take may not work, and that is both expected and totally fine. It helps to refine and redirect our path toward achieving the goal. This is not called failure, this is called learning. The only possibility of failure only exists when we quit before achieving the goal. Follow these 7 steps to accomplishing your goals and prepare to blow your own mind.