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7 Steps – How To Create A Roadmap To Success

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We all want to be successful. 

We all have a hope or vision for how we’d like our lives to turn out.

But of course, figuring out how to do it is quite another thing entirely.

This is where the concept of a roadmap to success becomes invaluable.

When you’re born into this life, you don’t come with an instruction manual for how to succeed.

From the beginning of our existence, we embark upon a grand adventure to find our own way. 

And sometimes this isn’t easy.

Creating your own roadmap to success makes all the difference in the world. 

When I started my journey, I had big plans for how I wanted my life to turn out.

But see, I didn’t just stagnate or drift around in circles. I started writing down my goals—and then I started working hard to achieve them.

Now, I’m happy to say that I’ve more than doubled the level of success I hoped for back when I was 20 years old. 

I’ve literally achieved twice as much as I wrote down on my goal-setting sheet back when I was young.

I’m very grateful and happy for this success. 

But looking back on my life, I can see how none of it came automatically. 

It’s plainly evident to me that the act of setting goals and writing those goals down was the true catalyst for all of my life’s success. 

And all of it comes back to this concept of creating a roadmap to success

So in this post, I’m going to teach you exactly how to do it—in 7 crucial steps.

What Is The Purpose Of The Roadmap To Success?

The purpose of creating a roadmap to success is to give you a series of steps that you can follow to help you increase your odds of creating the life you desire. 

Without a map, even the best ship will drift aimlessly at sea. 

Life is admittedly confusing. Sometimes, the straight path forward towards success isn’t abundantly clear. 

This is the purpose of a roadmap.

When you create a roadmap for your life, you literally craft a plan for success that you can follow on a daily basis.

Not only does it matter, but I believe it to be crucial.

How Do You Create A Roadmap For Success?

https://youtu.be/UKLJO83Nrjs

This is actually the tough part.

The answer to the question:

“How do you create a roadmap to success in your life?” 

…isn’t necessarily automatically abundantly clear. 

A lot has been written on this subject. 

Many philosophers, successful entrepreneurs, and historic figures have left behind wisdom to help later generations figure out how to do this. 

As it turns out, there’s a bit of an art to writing down your goals and pursuing them. 

And in this post, you’re going to learn the seven-step method that I’ve used to help create a legitimate roadmap to success in my own life that actually worked

And I 100% believe that it can work for you as well.

7 Steps For How To Create A Roadmap To Success

1. Figure Out What You Want In Life

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY quote

This is the first and most basic question to ask yourself:

  • What do you really want? 
  • What does success look like for you? 

A lot of people define success too loosely. 

They may say they’d like to:

  • Make more money
  • Get married
  • Own a house someday
  • Be financially self sufficient
  • Have more freedom in life

But these answers aren’t really specific enough to give you the kind of fuel you need to craft dynamic goals for yourself. 

I have one student who got super specific with his goals. 

He started by setting very specific income goals that he tracks on a month-by-month basis. 

He’s also been working on drafting the plans for the house he wants to build. 

See, he’s not even to the point where he could start building the house yet, but he’s already drafting the plans because he’s that sure that his goals will come to fruition. 

He also has a very specific plan for what he’d like his marriage and family to look like in the future. 

He knows, for example, that he wants to have family dinners around a large wooden table in the dining room, and that he wants to be able to sit with his wife and kids in front of his open living room fireplace and talk together, read stories together, etc. 

He has a very specific vision for how he wants his life to turn out.

This, to him, is what success looks like. 

And getting that specific with those goals helps him to craft incredibly detailed plans for how to accomplish them

The more specific you are with your goals, the more efficient your process of achieving them can be. 

So figure out what you really want in life. 

Don’t be afraid to dream big

Also Set Specific Deadlines

It’s also in your best interest to set specific deadlines for your goals as well. 

Of course, these deadlines need to be realistic. But they should also push you to take immediate action. 

For example, I have one student who’s given himself four years to reach the $100,000 income threshold. 

He has also crafted a four-year plan for getting his body into really awesome athletic condition. 

See, he understands that slow and steady wins the race. 

He also understands the need to set realistic goals with specific timeframes that help him to track his results, stay motivated, and adjust as needed.

2. Create A Written Vision For Your Life

abraham lincoln quote

Once again, this speaks to the specifics of what success looks like for you. 

But instead of just figuring it out, this is the step where you write it down

As you dream big and come up with a specific picture of how you’d like your life to be, start writing down a specific vision for what that life will look like

Write down:

  • How much money you want to be making. 
  • What kind of family you’d like to have. 
  • Your specific career goals. 
  • What you’d like your life to look like when you reach the age of retirement. 
  • What you’d like your physical health to look like. 

Whatever you want to achieve for yourself, it’s important that you create a specific, vivid vision of that future, and that you write it down. 

This is so fundamentally important.

Physically Writing Out Your Vision Is Important

Writing it down, in fact, may be the most important part of the entire process. 

Writing down the vision for your life requires you to take ideas out of your mind’s eye (the realm of hopes and dreams) and manifest them as a physical plan in the real world

This is the beginning of the process of turning your dreams into goals, and your goals into reality. 

You really can’t skip the step if you want to achieve success for yourself. 

It’s absolutely in your best interest to create a written vision for how you want your life to look.

3. Determine Your Life’s Purpose

https://youtu.be/e1iQjFMiLuE

Figuring out what you want is one part of the process. 

But figuring out why you want it is another crucial component.

For every individual thing you want to accomplish or achieve in your life, also answer the ‘why’ question. 

  • Why do you want it? 
  • Why do you want to achieve it? 
  • What about that thing or achievement is important to you? 

It’s in your best interest to define the ‘why’ along with the desire so that you can get really clear about your life’s purpose. 

This speaks to how you want to change the world and give back to your community. 

See, life isn’t all about possessions, money, and things. 

It’s also about making a difference, creating a better world, serving others, and leaving a lasting legacy of greatness. 

Every roadmap to success should include a purpose along with the vision. 

Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who achieved incredible things over the course of his lifetime, said that his sixth rule of success was to “give something back.” 

This Is Also An Important Thing To Write Down 

Write down how your vision for your future will also make the world a better place, create happiness and opportunity for other people, and leave a lasting legacy of greatness when you’re gone.

I believe that this is so important.

4. Start Setting Goals To Help You Achieve Your Vision And Purpose

BRYANT MCGILL quote

Now it’s time to start creating the actual roadmap. 

You’ve identified the destination, and you’ve figured out why that destination matters to you

Now it’s time to start making a plan of action. 

What steps will you need to take to get from ‘point A’ to ‘point B?’

As you look ahead to your future, and you visualize what you want your life to look like, you’ll want to figure out a step-by-step plan for how to get from where you are now to where you want to be

This is goal setting. 

Personally, I believe in using SMART goals to help you achieve success.

SMART goals are basically goals that are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time bound

To make it super simple, you can start setting SMART goals by answering the five ‘W’ questions when setting each specific goal, and then writing down the answers. These questions are:

  • What do you want to accomplish?
  • Why is this goal important to you?
  • Who will need to be involved to help you accomplish this goal?
  • Where will you need to be to accomplish this goal?
  • Which resources and/or challenges will you need to work with and overcome?

5. Write Down And Review Your Goals On A Daily Basis

HABEEB AKANDE quote

Creating a plan in life is a great first step in building a roadmap to success. 

However, once again, it’s vitally important to write down your goals

As I said in the previous point, I recommend writing SMART goals for every item on your vision list.

For everything you want to achieve, create a written set of goals that’ll help you to work toward your plans for the future. 

This helps you to structure your days and utilize your resources in the manner that will be most likely to lead you to success. 

However, it’s also important to continue to revisit and review these goals on a day-to-day basis. 

Personally, I believe that reviewing your goals first thing in the morning, every single morning, is a vital component to success. 

This doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t have to take very long. 

Just get out your goal-setting notebook or journal, open it up, and read your goals every single morning. 

Then, write out your daily to-do list, making sure to include plenty of activities that will help you to make progress toward the things you want to achieve. 

Goals are generally best accomplished when broken down into short, medium, and long-term goals. 

You set shorter-term daily goals to help you reach your medium-term goals.

Then, medium-term goals, when added together, add up to the fulfillment of long-term goals over time.

This is how you actually flesh out and complete your roadmap to success. 

It isn’t, however, the final step in the process.

6. Stay Consistent, And Don’t Give Up

Dale Carnegie quote

Writing down your goals to make a plan for success gives you a massive advantage. 

This will set you up for a far greater chance of success. 

According to one study, people were significantly more likely to succeed in their goals if they wrote them down

However, writing down goals is still only half of the process. 

The other half involves actually doing the work to create results. 

This is why it’s so important to stay consistent with your goals, and not to give up. 

Goals should become a daily habit that you honor on a daily basis. 

Stay consistent with it. 

If you mess up and fail to follow through on your goals for a day, make sure that you refocus yourself and return to them the next day. 

If you slack off on your goals for a whole week, or even two weeks, make sure that you refocus yourself and get back on track. 

There’s No Such Thing As Perfection 

We’re all going to make mistakes along the way. 

We’re all going to get sidetracked to some degree as we’re working toward our vision for the future. 

However, the truth is simple. 

The more consistent you stay with pursuing your goals, and the more energy you put towards the things you care about, the more likely you’ll be to experience actual, real long-term success for yourself. 

It’s also important to understand that you’ll probably get discouraged along the way. 

That’s okay. 

Sometimes, you may need to give yourself a little break and rest. 

But if your goals really matter to you, then it’s crucial not to give up on them. 

Even if the going gets tough and your confidence begins to waver, remember that the only real way to fail is to give up.

If you keep making forward progress, you’re bound to keep moving forward. 

That’s as simple as it gets.

7. Review, Revise, Adapt, Pivot

Chinese Proverb

As you pursue your long-term goals, you may come to realize that your plans will change slightly.

For example, one of my students started out with the plan to create a specific type of online business for himself. 

However, a full year into the process, he decided that he wanted to shift his business idea very slightly to cover a different niche.

See, shifting your focus to hone in even closer on the things you care about isn’t a bad thing. 

Sometimes you need to pivot in order to stay true to the vision of your future that you want for yourself, and to honor your passion for what you’re trying to achieve. 

This is much different from giving up. 

As you go about the process of pursuing your goals, you may find that you need to make adjustments. 

You may realize that some of your goals leave you feeling like you’re slamming against a brick wall. 

Maybe your plans need to be changed a bit to give you a better chance for success. 

Maybe you’ve learned that your talents can serve you better if you change directions slightly.

Every situation is complex and different. 

In many ways, there are no two paths or roadmaps that are going to be exactly the same.

Every human is unique. Every human brings a unique set of talents, passions, gifts, and personality traits to the equation. 

For this reason, it’s vitally important for you to find the path that fits you the best. 

In order to do this, you must be willing to be adaptable and flexible as you pursue success. 

To learn more about finding the meaning for your life, read this post: The Meaning Of Life Is To Find Your Gift – Is It True?

Sometimes, it pays to be stubborn and consistent.

But sometimes, it pays to be flexible and fluid. 

Bruce Lee may have described this the best. 

“Be water, my friend. Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

Conclusion

There you have it. 

7 steps for creating a roadmap to success that’ll actually help you to achieve what you desire in life. 

Of course, at the end of the day, it all really comes down to a few simple steps. 

Figure out what you want, turn your dreams into goals, write down those goals, and then review, revise, and keep going. 

The most important thing to remember is that you can do this.

You’re likely far more talented than you give yourself credit for. 

And you’ve got what it takes to create the life you want.

All you have to do is meet that vision with goals and a hard work ethic—and you’ll soon begin to see positive results. 

Now get out there and make it happen. 

You’ve got this. I believe in you. 

Best wishes… 

Jay O’Donnell

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