There are so many ways that I could start this and let me start by saying, great news… achievement is all about YOU!  However, that is not where I am headed with this one.  It’s not a self serving, self righteous statement that it is all about me or you or any individual.  Achievement, at it’s core is all about two things – MEASUREMENT and  EXPECTATION.  That’s right… it is all about M.E.  Let’s start by first defining achievement, it’s a noun, not a verb – it is not a action believe it or not ACHIEVEMENT IS A THING!

Achievement is a thing done successfully typically by effort, courage or skill.

It is getting to a goal, it is defining your destination and then going after it, putting forth the effort – TAKING THE ACTION TO GET THERE – wherever “there” may be.  Keep in mind, any time you set out to achieve something, any time you go after a goal you always succeed in an achievement.  You just have to change the way that you look at things, you ALWAYS succeed in achieving an outcome.  Even though your outcome may not be the goal you began with, it is an outcome none the less.

Here is the first part of the ME… MEASUREMENT.  Measurement is the effort involved, it is the skill that you have to develop to achieve success.  You have to measure your result, regardless of what the outcome is or was, whether it is where you wanted to get to or not, you have to measure the result.  Only by measurement can you make the decision of where and when to adjust so that you have better opportunity to hit the goal you have laid out for yourself.  This may be a simple concept for some, let me tell you one of the toughest parts of measuring your result is complete and brutal honesty of where you are at.  You will almost always be either ahead of your goal or caught behind it (Thanks David Fournier!), you will almost never be exactly on target,  in which case you have to adjust.  Simply because of the measurement you either adjust how hard you are working, or the things that you are doing – OR – you may be ahead of your projection, in which case to achieve more, you may have to adjust the goal… upward!

Here is my second element to the ME concept – EXPECTATION.  Expectation is the courage, this is that force that keeps you going until… (not until what, just… until…)  Expectation is all about belief.  It is having the deep rooted passion to really believe that you will accomplish what it is you set out to do.  This is the 4 minute mile, it’s the top of your Everest, it’s believing man can fly (while you ponder the fly statement… let me remind you that we have airplanes now).  There is almost no way to effectively explain expectation, true expectation.  It’s the fuel of belief and passion ignited and burned in the imaginary torch of your mind.  This is quite literally the things that dreams are made of.  When people, when you, have the kind of desire, the expectation that I am talking about here – you can’t help but hit your goal, you go after it full force with very few check points along the way to measure your result, adjust and then keep going again.  Expectation is the fuel of each goal at hand.

Success at any task does take, by definition effort, courage and skill.  Before any of that, it starts with you and action.  There it is then, achievement is all about you, the things you do and your belief or ME in this case.