SOURCE: THECREATORMIND.

COM

When youre trying to accomplish something big, you have the why but rarely the how. The path to achieving your goals is far from obvious.
You have no clue how youre going to do what you want to do.
According to some scholars (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887618516300469), fear of the unknown might be the
foundation of all other fears. In order to avoid the unknown, most people bail on their dreams.
Heres how you can find the clarity and understanding to achieve your biggest goals.

1. Embrace the unknown.

Its a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you dont keep
your feet, theres no knowing where you might be swept off to. J.R.R. Tolkien

When you experience the unknown, what is your emotional experience?

Most people perceive the unknown as threatening, signifying a low tolerance for ambiguity. But some people are more open to the unknown.
Interestingly, researchers have found (http://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/17135.short) that children generally have a higher tolerance for
ambiguity than adults. Children are often more willing to accept murky conditionssituations where the likelihood of winning or losing is
unknown. As you get older though, your desire for surety and security keeps you safely protected in your comfort zone.

Research has found

(https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kleanthis_Katsaros/publication/241598457_Tolerance_of_ambiguity_and_emotional_attitudes_in_a_changing_business_en
that the more satisfied you are with your work, the higher your tolerance for ambiguity. In other words, if you enjoy and believe in what youre
doing, youll take on the emotional discomfort of the unknown 2 . Bill Walsh, former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers says, If your why is
strong enough, you will figure out how!

2. Find clarity quickly.

Its settled then: If you want to achieve big things, your path will be unclear and hazy. The emotional need for clarity and fear of the unknown
leads people to abandon their dreams for more straightforward pursuits.
Having goal clarity (http://www.success.com/article/rohn-4-tips-for-setting-powerful-goals) is essential to motivation. Consequently, in order to
get motivated to achieve your big dreams, you need clarity. But this does not mean you have it all figured out. It means youre clear on the next
step or two.
If youre at mile marker 1 and your dream is at mile marker 50, you just need enough info and support to get to mile marker 3 or 4. Once you get
there, youll need further instructions. But you have no clue what those instructions will be, because you dont currently know what you dont
know. When you get to the next step, youll be able to ask better questions. Youll be able to better assess who can help you get to mile marker 5,
6, 7 or 8. What got you here wont get you there.

Youre on a treasure hunt and youre finding clues and guides along the way. This is the process and emotional experience of pursuing a big
dream (http://www.success.com/article/7-steps-to-achieve-your-dream).
Heres what you need to move forward right now:
1. A clear checkpoint (so you actually know what to do)
2. A hard and fast timeline
3. The right tools and systems
4. A support structure

Related: Do These 5 Things to (Actually) Stick to Your Goals (http://www.success.com/blog/do-these-5-things-to-actually-stick-to-yourgoals)

If you have these four things, youll have enough clarityand thus enough motivationto move forward. Youll be stretching, growing and moving
while other people are overwhelmed by the distance between mile marker 1 and 50. While theyre staring at the forest from a distance, youre
winding your way through the trees. And soon enough, youll be on the other side.
With this backdrop, heres the most effective way Ive found to getting just enough clarity to continuously move forward.

3. Learn with a purpose.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in
information? T.S. Eliot

When you seek learning (http://www.success.com/blog/10-ways-to-find-your-ideal-mentor), it should be purposeful.

As an executive coach, Im surprised how many people seek my advice without knowing what they want. I cant make someone elses decisions
for them. And no one can make my decisions for me.
But when people seek my services for a very specific reason, and its clear Im the right person to help them get from point A to point B, things
work out marvelously. Because when you know what you want to learn, you can then decide who can help you get there.
Only you can decide the direction of your training. Research has found (http://www.koreascience.or.kr/article/ArticleFullRecord.jsp?
cn=DJTJBT_2015_v13n9_11) that self-directed learning is highly correlated with learning satisfaction. Thus, what you learn should clearly
connect with your interests and goals. As Albert Einstein said, That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such
enjoyment that you dont notice that the time passes.

4. Focus on context-based learning.

How the Mormon church trains their young missionaries (http://www.npr.org/2014/06/07/319805068/lessons-from-the-language-boot-campfor-mormon-missionaries) to speak foreign languages so efficiently has garnered lots of attention. When an 18- or 19-year-old enters the
Missionary Training Center (MTC), they enter something of a language learning boot camp. Students at the MTC learn in a few weeks what takes
most college students three to four years.
Many universities have applied the MTCs methods to their language learning curricula. The U.S. Military has also studied and teamed with the
MTC to better understand how to efficiently train their soldiers. As a result, the Armys Intelligence Brigade, based in Utah, draws on former
Mormon missionaries to fill their ranks.
So what are some of the MTC methods?
Primarily, the MTC uses context-based learning. They start by reciting a phrase and working on the pronunciation. Once the student has a basic
grasp, they are put into groups of two to role play real-world scenarios. Role plays make up approximately 70 percent of learning at the MTC
learning while doingwith a teacher standing by to individually coach when needed.
The system is simple:
Learn a concept.
Practice and use that concept in a real-world scenario.
Get coaching and feedback. (http://www.success.com/blog/feedback-take-it-or-leave-it-but-dont-defend-yourself-against-it)
Repeat.
Get coaching and feedback.

Interestingly, researchers examined (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00050069008260009) the effects of role playing on the selfconcept of shy adolescents. One group of adolescents received traditional discussion-based training while another did role play based training.
The group that did role plays experienced a significant positive change in their self-concept, which has a significant impact on their behavior.
In our digital world, simulation trainingbased on role playing real-world scenariosis becoming increasing popular. Additionally, research has
found (http://pear.accc.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/JKNSR/article/view/4756) that getting consistent feedback is essential to effective learning.

5. Apply context-based learning.

If you want lasting change, youve got to give up this idea of trying something. Youve got to decide
youre going to commit to mastery. Most people dabble. They say, Id like to change my body, or Id
like to make my relationship better. These people dont have enough detail to follow through.Tony
Robbins

I define learning as a permanent change in cognition and/or behavior. In other words, true learning involves a permanent change in how you see
and act in the world. The accumulation of information isnt learning.
If you want to learn something quickly (http://www.success.com/podcast/ep-12-how-to-learn-something-new), you need to immerse yourself in
that thing and immediately implement what youre learning.
The fastest way to learn Spanish, for instance, is by immersing yourself in a Spanish culture. Flash cards for 15 minutes a day will eventually get
you there. But youll make deeper connections with a few days fully immersed than you would in months of dabbling.
You need enough clarity to have high motivation to move forward. (http://www.success.com/article/top-of-mind-7-ways-to-boost-selfmotivation) The more clarity you have of the path set before you, the higher your motivation will be to go down that path. So rather than trying to
motivate yourself, your goal should be to clarify the next few steps ahead of you.
Heres how.

6. Get a teacher.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready, the teacher will
disappear. Lao Tzu
1

When you move beyond dabbling to full commitment, youll want to learn quickly. So, youll need a teacher. Someone who can help you take the
next few steps.
This teacher can be in the form of a book (http://www.success.com/article/25-books-for-success) or an online course. Or it can be an actual
person. The benefit of a real person is getting immediate, relevant feedback and direct answers to your questions.
Recently I hired someone to help me learn software for my online business. I wanted an immersion-type experience. Turns out, he lives seven
hours away from me. So I drove down to his house and spent two days straight with him. I slept on his couch in my jeans and T-shirt.
In these two days, I learned more than I couldve learned in six months on my own. My teacher could quickly assess where I was. I was able to
ask him questions. (http://www.success.com/article/the-power-of-asking-questions) On an easel board, he would explain the software and how
it worked.
After explaining the concepts and answering my questions, he would immediately have me apply my learning. This exposed the true gaps in my
understanding. Being able to apply something, after all, is the difference between knowing something and understanding it. Napoleon Hill says,
Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action.
Related: The Art of Mentorship With Kevin OLeary (http://www.success.com/podcast/ep-29-the-art-of-mentorship-with-kevin-oleary)

7. Repeat until your learning becomes unconscious.

While implementing what I learned, my teacher would watch me from a distance. He let me struggle as I tried to remember what he had just
shown me.
The first time applying what he taught took a lot of time and effort. So we did it again, and again, and again. Over time, I became competent and
confident.
Learning something new (http://www.success.com/article/rohn-how-to-start-a-new-discipline) is all about memory and how you use it. At first,
your prefrontal cortexwhich stores your working (or short-term) memoryis really busy figuring out how the task is done.
But once youre proficient, the prefrontal cortex gets a break. In fact, its freed up by as much as 90 percent
(https://nicspaull.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/spaull-2015-essa-sept-conference-orf.pdf). Once this happens, you can perform that skill
automatically, leaving your conscious mind to focus on other things.
This level of performance is called automaticity, and reaching it depends on what psychologists0 call over-learning or over-training.
The process of getting a skill to automaticity involves four steps, or stages:
Repeated learning of a small set of information. If youre playing basketball, for example, that might mean shooting the same shot over and over.
The key here is to go beyond the initial point of mastery.

Make your training progressively more difficult. You want to make the task harder and harder until its too hard. Then you bring the difficulty back
down slightly, in order to stay near the upper limit of your current ability.
Add time constraints. For example, some math teachers ask students to work on difficult problems with increasingly shortened timelines. Adding
the component of time challenges you in two ways. First, it forces you to work quickly, and second, it saps a portion of your working memory by
forcing it to remain conscious of the ticking clock.
Practice with increasing memory loadthat is, trying to do a mental task with other things on your mind. Put simply, its purposefully adding
distractions to your training regimen.

Essentially, you want your understanding of something to be fluid and flexible. You want to be able to apply your learning in different contexts
and for different purposes. You learn your skill in and out.

8. Set specific goals with a hard timeline.

Inevitability thinking is thinking and acting as if what you are doing is a forgone conclusion because
you set up the conditions for it to happen.Eban Pagan

Once the training is complete, you need to take it into the real world. You do this by setting huge goals (http://www.success.com/article/10steps-to-achieve-any-goal) requiring you to use the knowledge youve just acquired.
Just before leaving my teachers house, we set goals together. Although the goals seemed overwhelmingly big, I felt confident I could achieve
them because I now had clarity.
The timeline to achieve my goals was three months. At the end of those three months, Id be back at his house for more training. We were on
each others Google calendars and I paid him in advance for our next immersion learning experience.

9. Tracking and accountability.

When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and

reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.Thomas S. Monson

Clarity is what creates motivation.

Tracking is what creates awareness.
Reporting is what creates accountability.
Having these three will help you progress quickly.
If youre not tracking your daily behaviors, you are undoubtedly doing worse than you think you are. For example, most people have no clue
where their money goes because they dont track their expenses.
According to research (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2005.00202.x/abstract), self-regulation is the psychological
process that detects inconsistency between your goals and your behaviors. It is the ignition of your motivational forces helping you get from
where you are to where you want to be.
Specifically, self-regulation works in three ways:
Self-monitoring determines how well you are currently performing.
Self-evaluation determines how well you are performing comparative to your goals.
Self-reaction determines how you think and feel comparative to your goals. When you feel dissatisfied with your performance, self-reaction pushes
you to reallocate your motivation resources.

Beyond tracking, research has found (http://www.papersearch.net/view/detail.asp?detail_key=01310424) that accountability improves

performance. When you report your performance to someone, particularly someone you respect, it adds external and relational motivation to
succeed.
During your accountability sessions, you can get coaching and feedback on where you can improve (http://www.success.com/article/rohn-13ways-to-improve-your-life).
Striving to accomplish big goals is not easy. Most people will give up on their dreams in order to have a clear path to lesser goals.
If you want to move quickly toward your big goals, youll need to become proficient at acquiring clarity for the next few steps of your journey. The
best way to do this is through context-based and immersion-style learning.
The deeper and wider your clarity, the bigger your goals can be. In order to ensure you achieve those goals, youll need to track your behaviors
daily (http://www.success.com/blog/5-daily-habits-of-highly-successful-people) and have an intense accountability system in place.
Its all in the setup. When you set up the conditions effectively, you make the achievement of your goals inevitable.