Sometimes in life it can be difficult to be 100% honest with ourselves when it comes to our actions. In any self development plan this occurs if you get ‘faked out’ and pretend to yourself that you’re taking the correct actions when you actually aren’t. In the following article there are some powerful methods to make sure you’re not faking the facts to yourself but, instead, are moving forward towards your goals.

Tracking your progress is an important technique to introduce in order to increase your chances of following through on your goals. Tracking can be done simply by making a chart which you can fill in and tick off the actions you’ve taken. If you’ve decided to do 15 minutes of reading every night from books designed to improve perfomance at your work then it is good to have it on record so you can see, over a period of time, whether or not you’re taking the necessary actions to succeed.

It’s of the utmost importance that you be honest with yourself and don’t try and deny reality and the facts. Some ‘gurus’ in the personal development industry advise the use of affirmations to get your actions to improve, however, it’s important not to mistake saying the affirmations for following through and taking the actions you know you must. With or without affirmations, you still take action to achieve the outcomes you desire.

Self help material can be a fantastic source of inspiration and lead people on to great achievement, but, at the other end of the spectrum it can lead to delusion and people continually consuming material but not actually applying any of it. It’s really important to evaluate the self help resources that you are reading to improve your life and make sure they are full of solid actionable principles that have worked for lots of people for a long time and aren’t just hyped up drivel which will leave you disappointed.

Be honest about the conditions you’re faced with and the opportunites that are available. For example, if you are now 45 years old and just starting in business then to set a goal to get in the Forbes 100 Richest List would be a poor target and almost impossible. However,if you set a goal to take the company to seven figure in revenue within 5 years you’d have a target which was realistic but still very challenging and exciting.

It’s a good idea to get a friend who’s also setting goals and doing positive things with his/her life. If you can pair and help each other as well as monitoring each others’ progress then it can be an extremely powerful influence on both of your lives. It’s important in this sort of relationship that you don’t let each other slip up and fall into bad habits.