How do you attain your goals?

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I have so much of a life planned... how do I reach it? All I'm concentrating on is managing to survive this next year and a half or so of high school until I graduate, then making it out there... you know...

I just have SO MUCH i need to do! just in life. anyone feel that way? I have no idae how i'm gonna get there!

just a thought... react as you may hehe

Well, I believe I have some sort of executive dysfunction which hinders my ability to set realistic goals for myself. (Don't know what percentage of fellow aspies share this.) So in my case structured environments with parameters I can work within have always been conducive to my greatest success. I'm a high school dropout so setting a goal of becoming very knowledgable in a particular area or learning a language seems nearly impossible unless I have the structure laid out before me in which I could thrive.

I have been employed the last seven months (you could probably say underemployed since it's a low level job that underutilizes my intellectual abilities) and have achieved up to my potential in my position because of the structure; I know the expectations well by now, so I am attaining a goal of saving money and getting off disability income.

If you have a family who cares about you, I'm sure they'd love to help you figure out some short and long term goals.

Well iamlucille, one way to look at your extremely planned life is to take steps in increments to reach your big goals. This would help goals that seem immense and impossible actually attainable in your mind, and so your confidence would be higher. This method has helped in some goals of mine, except these weren't humungous life goals, but medium-size goals (but still seeming impossible). If you look at things as if they are impossible and huge, then your mind gets all overwhelmed with worry that you won't reach your goal, and then you might not reach it because of your mindset. It's like running a foot-race: If you look at the race as if it's 5 miles the entire time, it will be more overwhelming; but if you look at the race as 1 mile at a time, then it seems smaller, and you could race a bit better because your mindset isn't set upon the entire distance, but small goals that you set for yourself to attain that huge goal. In this illustration, it would be the race. Anyways, hope this helps.

I've accomplished a few cool feats before. I wish I could tell you how I puled it off. For some reason, It has always looked like I was going to find myself screwed before I somehow pulled it off.

one way of doing it is to work backwards. sounds mad, but here's the technique. it's a sort of creative visualisation thing - works for me, so i thought i'd share it.

an awful lot of the time, working out the first step is the hardest - "where do i start?" - and then "what do i do next?". start with imagining yourself having achieved your goal - in detail. then go to what you had to do to get [/i]there[/i] - the day before, for example. then the day before that, etc., etc.

a simple example: "i want to eat chocolate cake". imagine yourself eating it. what did you do before? cut a piece and put it on a plate. so, you need a knife and a plate, and a cake. before that, you had to take it out of the wrapping (sounds daft, but bear with me). before that, getting in from buying it (i'd mkae it myself, but that's a different story); before that, actually buying it - imagine yourself at the shop paying for it (you have to remember money). before that, choosing it, and then, in reverse order... getting to the shop, leaving the house, getting ready to go out.

might sound silly, but it also means you get all the preparation you need - knife, plate, money, coat if it's cold, car keys/walking shoes, etc.

hope that's helpful. if it's confusing, ask me about it.

I do things one step at a time.....

Small steps are the most productive ones.

However, if you find you have a hard time in planning, get someone else with some good organization skills to help you work out your goals and timeline.

There's no shame in asking for help. Unless you're an Aspie of course. But, seriously, if you're having a hard time, ask someone to help you organize your goals so that they're attainable.

you go around asking people smaller parts of your larger plan, even if it seems unlikely they'll know the answer, by asking them you get a feel for how people feel about the parts of the plan and can refer to you paths you may've not thought of.