The Power of Setting Breakthrough Goals

Written by Toby Nwazor

The year was 2015, and the month was June. I had sat down and set some goals which I would love to accomplish by the end of the year.

I called them my July – December goals. And as far as I was concerned, they were outrageous. One of them was to become a writer on Forbes. Another one was to make 1.5 million naira. 

At that point in my life, I couldn’t boast of making up to N10k (Ten thousand naira) every month, so 1.5 million naira in six months was a big stretch. I typed out these goals and pasted them on the wooden wall of the room I stayed in back then.

I didn’t stop there though. I wrote down all the steps I needed to take daily and weekly to accomplish my goals, and I equally pasted them there in my room. One year later, when I looked back, I saw that almost everything I had written down had become a reality.

How did it happen?

Becoming a writer on Forbes was not just one of my goals, it was my breakthrough goal. It was the one goal that if accomplished, I would become the person that can accomplish all my other goals. In this article, I am going to show you how you can change your life for good by setting just one breakthrough goal.

What is a breakthrough goal?

Simply put, a breakthrough goal is that one goal that when it gets accomplished, all the other goals in your life can become walkovers for you.

For instance, let’s assume I have seven goals that I want to accomplish before the end of 2021:

1. Attend one of Russel Brunson’s live masterclasses in the US.

2. Go for a three weeks vacation in Dubai with the love of my life.

3. Buy a landed property every two months.

4. Buy a new car for my sister.

5. Go for a full medical check-up.

6. Make 100 million naira.

7. Start a 24-million-naira trucking business.

Seven amazing goals, right?

Out of all these goals, there is one major goal that when accomplished, it will make it easy for me to accomplish the rest of my goals.

In this case, my breakthrough goal is to make 100 million naira.

If I can make 100 million naira, every other goal listed above will be easily accomplished.

Let’s see how it played out for me in 2015

In my own case, my breakthrough goal was to become a writer on Forbes.

I didn’t know it at that time though. However, becoming a Forbes writer would have made it very easy for every other thing I set as a goal to get accomplished.

As a Forbes writer, I could flash my “Hey I am a Forbes-writer” card and easily get accepted by just about any paying client to write and get paid.

As a Forbes writer, I could charge a higher fee.

As a Forbes writer, I would never run out of paying jobs as dozens of paying clients would be running after me asking for my service.

And if I was getting a lot of writing jobs and charging higher fees, making 1.5 million in six months wouldn’t just be possible, I would make a lot more than that.

However, let us take it one step at a time.

The process of accomplishing a breakthrough goal…

The breakthrough goal was to become a writer on Forbes, right?

Oops, I forgot to mention, becoming a Forbes writer isn’t a walk in the park. It meant for instance that I had to develop the muscle of resilience and determination.

It also meant that I had to read a lot of articles and even take writing courses. It equally meant that I started writing a lot of articles on my own blog and a host of other blogs.

At a point, I joined an international community of bloggers and became very active there. This meant I became friends with a lot of international writers, bloggers, and editors.

At a time, I had a goal of reading 10 blog posts every morning and leaving very reasonable (epic) comments that would make other readers, bloggers, and editors check me out.

Roadblocks on the way to accomplishing a breakthrough goal…

I wrote several articles and submitted them to Forbes, but I was met with rejection upon rejection. I kept writing and I kept submitting and I kept getting rejected.

Before the end of 2015, I had the emails of almost all their editors and I was not willing to back down.

Each time I got a rejection email, I would go back, try to improve on myself, write more articles and publish on other blogs, read a couple more of their articles to see what they are looking for, then write again.

Becoming a person that accomplishes a breakthrough goal…

 Honestly, I didn’t know what I was doing at the point.

All I knew was that I was ready to do all I could to become the type of writer that would get accepted to write on Forbes.

Guess what?

Fast forward to December 2015, my goal of becoming a writer on Forbes still hadn’t seen the light of day. The following year, I set new goals for January – June, and I continued trying.

Exactly one year later, in June 2016, I looked back and to my surprise, I was still not a writer on Forbes despite all the efforts I had made.

However, something else happened.

In the bid to accomplish that one breakthrough goal and become a Forbes writer, I had become the type of writer that could write on Forbes even though I wasn’t accepted to write there.

I didn’t get accepted to write on Forbes, but I got accepted to write on other places like Huffington Post, Entrepreneur magazine, and other amazing sites.

I started seeing my articles get published on places like Fox News, MSN, Yahoo News, Fortune magazine, and a host of other places.

I became one of the top writers on Bella Naija and even got a weekly column named after me.

Another website based in California gave me a weekly column to write, and later when I applied to become an editor, they accepted me. I started having a lot of clients reach out to me to write for their websites, and they paid well.

Almost all the goals I had set back in 2015 had become a reality even though I didn’t accomplish my breakthrough goal. I had become a person who could have the things I wanted.

That is the power of setting breakthrough goals.

Sometimes, you may not really get everything you want. But going through the process makes you become the person that can have everything you want.

I’m sure you already know what to do.

Do it!

Toby is the Director of the Volunteers program for Speak Out Africa. He is also the founder of Millionaire Writers. His works have appeared on Forbes, Bellanaija and other top media websites.