Every year we enjoy watching the Tour de France, especially when fellow Austinite Lance Armstrong is racing. The Tour de France is a grueling race that lasts for days. The racers travel around the French countryside as well as climbing through two mountain ranges. While the goal my be to win the “yellow jersey,” on any given day there are a multitude steps that the riders must take  just to stay in the race. The lesson here is that success doesn’t depend upon the ultimate goal–it’s contingent on a multitude of actions the riders take each day. While winning is the goal, in order to win, the riders must stay focused on the steps in the process.

The same is true for your real estate business. When you focus on the process rather than the outcome, you greatly increase your likelihood of success. Your success or failure in the long term will result from the actions that you take today.

If you want to make your goals a sweet reality, the following five steps can help you do so.

1. Clean out your goal list completely. If you have had a goal for more than one year and have not reached it, declare it complete no matter how much or how little you actually accomplished. To do this, write each goal on an individual slip of paper. Next “clean the slate” by burning the slips of paper in the fireplace, burying them in the back yard, or ripping them up and throwing them in the trash. Be creative. Cleaning out your list of goals opens the door for new things to come into your life.

2. Write down five activities that supported you to feel great about yourself during the last six months. What really worked for you? Be specific. Keep these activities alive during the coming year because they work.

3. Eliminate at least one activity that doesn’t support you to feel great. We all engage in behaviors that help us cope in the short-term, but have detrimental effects in the long term. An example of this may be eating a chocolate bar when we’re depressed. Unfortunately, this behavior often results in guilt. Many people use guilt as a strategy to change behavior. “I know I shouldn’t eat this chocolate bar.” A better approach is to be honest with yourself and take responsibility for your choice: “I am choosing to eat this chocolate bar.” Notice there is no guilt or explanation. It’s simply an acknowledgement of the choice. When you say that you are choosing this behavior, surprisingly, it becomes easier not to choose it.

4. List your goals for 2009 and then eliminate 50-75 percent of them. If you find yourself resisting this strategy, look carefully at your past to determine how many goals you actually set and then what percentage you actually achieved. Setting too many goals can reduce your overall success since your energy is scattered in too many directions. In contrast, when you keep your energy focused on achieving two or three core goals, success occurs more easily. Once you reach or discard your current goals, add new ones.

5. Make small changes over time. Achieving goals is easier when you work with small steps over time. Instead of setting a goal to save $10,000, it’s usually easier to take a series of small steps. For example, “I’ll use coupons at the grocery store since it can save me up to $20.00 per week and I will put those savings in my bank account.” It is easier to take action when working with small changes than when working with big changes. By reducing the number of goals you have and by making small changes over time, your likelihood of experiencing success increases dramatically.

Finally, celebrate your wins everyday, no matter how small. This helps you to stay on track for the bigger goals you set. As Lao Tzu once said, “A journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step.”

Posted by Bernice Ross, CEO, www.RealEstateCoach.com

Follow me on Twitter @bross or visit our luxury blog at www.LuxuryClues.com