Goal Setting Set an (17) goal. Decide on incentives. (18) steps

As you can see, the recipe for a happy life is to maintain a positive attitude and keep setting and achieving your goals. So, whatever your goal, whatever it is that you’re aiming for—a new job, losing weight, giving up smoking, graduation— you need an appropriate (and by ’appropriate’ I mean ’ achievable’ goal). That’s the first step.
    The next thing to consider is motivation. How do you get going? Well, it’s more likely to motivate you if you think of the rewards of success rather than focus on failure, or what you might lose. So you need to establish your incentives. After that you’ll have to work out the various stages and phases that you’ll need to go through along the way and prepare for each one of them. If you’re not naturally motivated, keep the targets small and achievable. But it really is important to ensure you collect the resources to accomplish the various steps. If you have performed that particular task before, you may already have the resources or at least know where to get them from. If not, ask someone who has already succeeded.
    When you have got this far, the next stage is obvious—yes, you have to take the first step. That’s not quite all there is to it though. The final thing to remember is to keep track of what you’ve accomplished; in other words, be sure to maintain a progress log. That way you can look back at your previous small successes and watch your progress along the way to achieving your goal.