Both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs have a desire to succeed and along with this desire they develop life skills and plans to act as route markers to the top. It is essential that we learn from successful people to understand how we can apply their winning solutions to our lives and in so doing, also fulfil our dreams.

Whether you are working towards business achievement or personal fulfilment, the strategies are the same and a focussed sense of direction must be nurtured. For things to change in our lives, we have to change!!

Firstly for you to succeed you have to take responsibility for your future and the successes and failures along the road.

Success comes to those who learn to believe in themselves and set realistic goals but most importantly to those who plan and set SMART goals.

• S - Specific
• M - Measurable
• A - Achievable
• R - Realistic
• T – Time bound

Planning and goal setting.
The following extract from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People written by Stephen R. Covey, depict the influence and impact of goal setting in your life.

‘The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity. It is also the essence of our growth. Through our human endowments of self-awareness and conscience, we become conscious of areas of weakness, areas of improvement, areas of talent that could be developed, areas that need to be changed or eliminated from our lives. Then as we recognise and use our imagination and independent will to act on that awareness – making promises, setting goals, and being true to them – we build the strength of character, the being, that makes possible every other positive thing in our lives.

It is here that we find two ways to put ourselves in control of our lives immediately. We can make a promise – and keep it. Or we can set a goal – and work to achieve it. As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater that our moods.

The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness.’

Written by:
Norine Victor
1st Solutions
www.1stSolutions.co.za