1. Write Your Goals

First things first, write your goals down. When asked and put on the spot, not many people are able to define and share their goals in life. This is the very first step towards living the life of your dreams. If you don't know what your goals are, how will you ever reach it? Your goals should be written down in detail, including information about what you are going to achieve with locations, deadlines, people involved, etc. The key to formulating an effective life goal is that your goals should be based on your values and purpose in life. This may take sometime, but just like developing a mission statement for a company, it deserves the effort. In the end, it's your life we are talking about.

2. Plan

Wanting something is easy. But actually forming a plan to achieve that goal is something that most people do not do. No matter how impractical your plans might be, it's important that you think, brainstorm and write them down. "Most people spend more time planning a party, studying the newspaper, or making a Christmas list, than they do in planning their lives." Don't sit idle and plan a party, make your life a party and plan.

Note: Both writing you goals down and planning is an integral part of writing a journal. This has been discussed before. Read articles on Morning Rituals, Stoicism and Keeping Sanity. Writing a journal was a top habit of Leonardo Da Vinci himself.

3. Develop a Burning Desire and Persistence

So now you have your goals and planned everything. The next step to living the life of your dreams is to develop a burning desire and persistence to fulfill these goals. Again, the reason why your goals should be based on your passions, vision and purpose in life is that, it becomes much easier to have the desire and courage to be persistent. A good way of developing this attribute is through self-affirmations and visualisation techniques. Below is an amazing story of Dr. John De Martini and the impact of self-affirmation in his life.

Multimillionaire Dr. John De Martini is a resounding success by anyone's standards. He and his wife owns several homes in Australia and spends over 60 days a year together circumnavigating the globe in their $3 million luxury apartments onboard the $550 million ocean liner World of ResidenSEA. He's the author of 54 training books. But John didn't start out rich and successful. At age 7, he was found to have a learning disability and was told that he would never read, write or communicate normally. At 14, he dropped out of school, left his Texas home, and headed to California coast. By 17, he had ended up in Hawaii, surfing the waves of Oahu's famed North Shore, where he almost died from strychnine poisoning. His road to recovery led him to Dr. Paul Bragg, a 93-year-old man who changed John's life by giving him one simple affirmation to repeat: "I am a genius and I apply my wisdom." Inspired by Dr. Bragg, John went to college, earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Houston and later his doctoral degree from the Texas College of Chiropractic.

Excerpt from The Success Principles by Jack Canfield

4. Start Immediately and Take Action

There's no value in gradualness. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an avid opposition to making slow changes. Either we risk or we don't, either we change or we don't. So many of us are great thinkers; thinkers that think and nothing more. Thinking is already done in the steps 1 and 2, the best way to achieve your goals now is to begin. As long as we have our goals and desires in place, our everyday decisions and actions will inevitable bear us towards living the life of our dreams, shaping our destiny moment to moment.