The formula for life success in 2024

Thomas Edward Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia as he’s better known, said, “All people dream, but not equally.”

Dreaming is essential to achieving what you want, but it is just the first step of many. There are four other steps to complete before you can succeed; this is known as the Formula for Life Success, and here’s what it looks like:

Dreams x Goals x Planning x Learning x Action = Success

If you want to implement success in 2024 and achieve your goals, read on to discover how the formula of life success works.

How does your current life success rank?

To determine your current life success ranking, try completing the below exercise:

Score yourself out of 10 in these areas (1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest):

• Dreams – How clear are your dreams? Do you take time to dream?
• Goals – How specific are your goals to achieve your dreams?
• Planning – How clear is your plan to meet those goals?
• Learning – How focused are you on learning?
• Action – How good are you at taking action?

On a calculator, multiply your scores together: Dreams x Goals x Planning x Learning x Action and click equals. Then, divide your score by 100,000 to get your current life success percentage.

For example, if you scored yourself 6 in dreams, 6 in goals, 8 in planning, 7 in learning and 7 in action, it would look like this equation:

6 x 6 x 8 x7 x 7 = 14,112 ÷ 100,000 = 14%.

Based on the above equation, you have an 86% opportunity to improve your life success and here’s how you can do it…

The Formula for Life Success:

How to discover your dreams

As mentioned, the first step to achieving life success starts with your dreams. But how do you discover your dreams?

To identify your dreams, you need to think about the life and lifestyle you want. Here are our tips on how to discover your dreams:

• Focus on a feeling you have and try to articulate what actions will create that feeling.
• Create a vision board to help you visualise what you want (collect some images from magazines and cut out the ones you connect with, then group them into topics to create your vision boards.)
• Write down your ideas and thoughts and keep coming back to them to clarify exactly what you want from your life.

The clearer your dream, the better, so use your time to really delve deep into your aspirations. But remember, you don’t need to define your dreams in one day; take your time to determine what you want in your life. Your dreams will constantly evolve and change as you grow as an individual.

How to set your goals

How is a goal different to a dream? A goal is a desired future outcome that you aim to accomplish over a long time frame (usually between three and five years).

A goal is a broad statement focusing on the desired results; for example, your goal could be to ‘grow more turnover’, ‘become an industry thought-leader’ or ‘visit five new countries’.

Here are our tips on how to set your goals and make them more likely to happen:

• Make them SMART: That means make them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, and Time-Bound, which ensures your goals are achievable.
• Write down your goals so you can check your progress and identify what else you need to do to achieve them.
• Share them with other people who care about you. The easiest person to let down is yourself, so by sharing your goals, you’re ensuring you receive that accountability.

Remember, your goals shouldn’t only be business or financial ones. Why? Because life success isn’t only based on these areas, consider other areas when setting your goals, such as relationships, health or family.

How to develop a plan

The next step in the formula of life success is to develop a plan. Detailed plans clarify what you need to do and when, enhancing your focus and success rate.

Here are our tips on how to develop a plan:

• Break your goal into small steps; your goal is focusing on where you will be in five years, so what steps do you need to take to get there? These smaller steps are your shorter-term goals or objectives. Make sure you write down your objectives to track and measure your progress.
• Once you’ve created your objectives, you can create daily plans with specific tasks you need to achieve each day – remember you can always delegate tasks along the way! It doesn’t always have to be you.

When you’re developing your plan, keep in mind flexibility. You don’t know what might happen in the future, so allowing for flexibility is essential.

What do you need to learn to make your dreams a reality?

To achieve your goals in the future, there will be learning required on your journey. Right now, you may not have the knowledge or skills to achieve your dreams, so you will need to add to your knowledge to achieve your goal.

Here are our tips on how to learn what you need to make your dreams a reality:

• Look at your plan and determine what skills or knowledge you need to achieve your goals and objectives. For example, you might need to practice your existing networking skills to help grow your business, or you might want to learn a new skill, such as AI, to automate processes within your business and life.

• Use various learning resources and find which one engages you the most. There are plenty of ways to learn new information or skills, such as reading books, taking a course, listening to podcasts or finding a mentor, so experience them all and see which way you enjoy learning.

Remember that you don’t always need to learn new skills to achieve your goals; you might already have the skills but need a refresher on applying them; as they say, practice makes perfect.

It’s time to take action

The final step in the formula of life success is to TAKE ACTION; now you’ve written down your dreams, set your goals, developed your plan and are learning the skills and knowledge you need, it’s time to put it all into action.

The work starts here; you must execute your plan and implement everything you’ve learned. Here are our tips to help you stay focused:

• Read your goals every day to remind yourself why you’re putting in all the hard work. Keeping yourself focused on your goals can help motivate you and ensure you think positively (even when times are tough). You may even decide to put your goals on your desktop wallpaper, on the wall above your desk or in your notes app.
• Reframe failure into a life lesson. If you encounter a hiccup in your plan, don’t think of it as a failure; instead, reframe it as a learning curve and a lesson you can adapt from.
• Redevelop the plan when necessary. Your goals might change, or you might have to adjust your plan if something unexpected happens, so be prepared to redevelop and refine your plan if needed. You may want to do this monthly, quarterly or annually.

Don’t forget to be resilient and adaptable; not everybody achieves their dreams first time around. Success isn’t easy, but if you really want your dreams, you’ll find a way to make them a reality.

Once your hard work has paid off, you can enjoy your success and start dreaming up new possibilities. But before you start working towards new dreams, it’s a good idea to do positive reflections, see what you would do differently next time, and consider your successes and learnings.

At Bill Squires Business Coaching, we’ve shown hundreds of clients how the Formula for Life Success works. If you are stuck with clarifying your dreams, developing these into goals, creating a detailed plan or you’re struggling to take action contact us for a no-obligation chat to see how you can achieve your goals in 2024.