Here's The Secret To Achieving Your Goals This Year

AmazonSetting goals for the year? Here's how to make sure you succeed in achieving them.

It's the first full workweek of 2015 - and there's a good chance you're in the process of setting new professional goals for yourself.

But there's an even better chance you'll fail to achieve them. 

"Most employees will start the year with great intentions to increase their happiness with their jobs or to change their approach to get better results at work," says Cy Wakeman, a New York Times bestselling author and executive HR coach. "Many commit to not only surviving, but thriving again at work."

But, unfortunately, she says, these goals often fade quickly.

Many peoples' intentions are doomed from the start "because they are based on a false premise - that their reality will change as well," Wakeman explains. "Their commitments are conditional: 'I will meet project deadlines as long as the work I am given is appropriate and everyone else does their fair share and if I have enough time without having my priorities change a million times a day.'

"The premise," she continues, "is that, 'Yes, I will change, be better organized, meet deadlines, stop my negative attitude - as long as my circumstances are perfect and everyone else follows my lead.' But what are the odds of that happening in reality?" 

Not great.

That's why the most effective approach to achieving your goals is to commit to succeeding in spite of the circumstances; to quit wishing your reality was different and to change the way you view that reality, Wakeman explains.

"Accept that your circumstances are not the reason you haven't been succeeding. Rather, your circumstances are the reality in which you must succeed," she says. "Get rid of your conditions and commit to change and to be happy and successful in any reality. This mindset will make you less dependent on your circumstances and make you 'bulletproof' in the workplace."

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