The Secret to Creating Powerful Goals You Can Master in One Day

5 easy steps to feeling success and creating the day of your dreams

Have you ever set a goal to establish a new habit and then after three weeks felt like you failed?

If yes, you’re in good company.

This experience is remarkably common, whether it’s a desire to build a writing habit or meditation practice. Or maybe even taking the dog for a walk before work.

Regardless of whether you have all the time in the world or a busy schedule, you can almost guarantee that some kind of resistance will get in the way.

From experience, the idea of going from Zero to Hero in three weeks is a stretch. It’s not impossible. But it does take enormous discipline, focus, and sometimes sacrifice. And if you don’t reach your goal, a feeling of failure can easily creep in.

At these times, try a one-day micro-goal.

A one-day micro-goal is built on two principles:

1. A long-term intent (e.g., I want to be a writer or have a regular spiritual practice), and

2. A simple one-day goal that aligns with that intent.

Aim to create one day as your ideal day. You could even break it down further, by focusing on your ideal morning as an example.

5 easy steps:

1. The night before, visualize how you want the following morning or day to be. Picture it with as much detail as you can.

2. Put in place whatever you need to make the day successful — prepare your breakfast or lunch ahead of time, layout your clothes. The aim here is to build in support and remove any possible distraction or resistance.

3. Allocate a realistic and achievable amount of time to the task at hand, but enough time that you’ll finish it with a sense of satisfaction and success.

4. Upon completion, acknowledge yourself for doing it.

5. At the end of the day, reflect on how the day went because of this change. Notice any positive impacts your action had on other elements of the day.

Doing it with ease and intention

If you’re feeling ambitious, you could follow it up the next day. Or perhaps even just pick one day a week to have as your “best day.” I like to choose Fridays, but it can equally be any day.

It’s less about doing it frequently and more about doing it with ease and intention. The moment it becomes onerous, relax. Enjoy the process of creating your ideal day.

The key to this approach is to fully lock into your body’s muscle memory the feeling of success. So rather than having negative associations with the task you are trying to achieve (meditation or writing), you are creating positive associations.

As you fall more in love with your ideal day, you’ll effortlessly want to create more of them.