by Brian Tracy
BACK-FROM-THE-FUTURE THINKING
In your thinking, start from a visualization of your goal as already accomplished and work back to the present. Project yourself forward in your mind to your completed goal, and then look back to where you are today. Imagine the steps that you would have taken to get from where you are now to where you want to be in the future. This process of planning backward from the actual achievement of your goal gives you a special perspective on what you will have to do to achieve it. “Project forward, look backward” is a powerful technique that enables you to see possibilities and pitfalls that you might otherwise miss. It sharpens your perceptions and gives you insights you can get in no other way.
Step seven: Make a list of all the obstacles that stand between you and the accomplishment of your goal. Wherever great success is possible, great obstacles exist. In fact, obstacles are the flipside of success and achievement. If there are no obstacles between you and your goal, it probably is not a goal at all, merely an activity.
When you have listed every obstacle you can think of, organize the list in order of importance. What is the biggest single obstacle that stands between you and your goal? This is your “rock.” On your pathway to the accomplishment of anything worthwhile, you will experience a series of obstacles, detours and roadblocks. But almost invariably, there is one big rock or major obstacle that lies across your path and blocks your progress. It is this rock that you must focus on removing before you get sidetracked dealing with smaller obstacles and problems.
Your main obstacle, or “rock,” may be internal or external. It may be within yourself or within the situation. If it is internal, it may be that you lack a particular skill, ability or attribute that you must have to achieve your goal. You must be completely honest with yourself and ask, “Is there anything about myself that I will have to change, or any ability that I will have to develop in order to achieve my goal?”
Your major obstacle may be external. You may be in the wrong job, or with the wrong company or in the wrong relationship. You may find that you need to start over, doing something else, somewhere else, if your goal is to be achieved. What is your personal “rock”?
The second question you must ask yourself in identifying what might be holding you back is, “What is my limiting step?” What part of the process of moving from where you are now to the achievement of your goal determines the speed at which you reach it? If you are in sales, and your goal is higher income, your limiting step is the size and number of the sales that you make. Your limiting step to more sales could be the number of new prospects that you generate. It might be your ability to ask for the order.
In almost every case, there is a limiting step. This bottleneck determines how rapidly you move toward your goal. Your job is to identify your limiting step and then do everything possible to relieve it. Sometimes the alleviation of one chokepoint, if it’s the right one, can do more to move you forward than any other single thing you could do.
Step eight: Identify the additional information you will need to achieve your goal.
We live in a knowledge-based society, and the most successful people are those who have more essential information than others. Almost all mistakes that you make in your financial life and your career will be the result of having insufficient or incorrect information. One of your responsibilities is to learn what you need to know, so you can accomplish what you want to accomplish.
If you do not have the knowledge or information yourself, where can you get it? Is it a core skill or ability that you need to develop yourself through study and practice? Or can you hire someone else with this knowledge? Can you employ someone temporarily, such as a consultant, or a specialist, with the knowledge you require? Who else has achieved success in your particular field, and could you go to him or her for advice?
Make a list of all the information, talents, skills, abilities and experience that you will need and then make a plan to learn, buy, rent or borrow this information or skill as quickly as you can. Determine the most important information that you lack. Since 80 percent of the value of the information that you need in any area will be contained in 20 percent of the information available (the 80/20 rule), what is the most important information or ability that you will require to achieve your goal?
Step nine: Make a list of all the people whose help and cooperation you will require. This list may include your family, your boss, your customers, your bankers, your business partners or sources of capital, and even your friends. To accomplish anything worthwhile, you’ll need the help and cooperation of many people. Take this list and organize it in order of priority. Whose help is the most important? Whose help or cooperation is the second most important?
THE LAW OF COMPENSATION
The law of compensation is a special variation on the Law of Sowing and Reaping. It is a restatement of the Law of Cause and Effect. It has its counterpart in physics in a law that states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It states that, for everything you do, you will be compensated in kind. You will get out what you put in.
This law also states that other people will help you achieve your goals only if they feel that they will be compensated for their efforts in some way. No one works for nothing. Everyone has his or her own personal motivation. This should be your starting point in gaining the cooperation of others. Ask yourself the question, “What are you going to do for them to get them to help you?”
THE LAW OF RECIPROCITY
You must continually tune in to each person’s favorite radio station, WIIFM, “What’s in it for me?” Our social and business relations in America are all based on the Law of Reciprocity. The Law of Reciprocity states that people are internally driven to be even, to reciprocate for anything done either to or for them. They will be willing to help you achieve your goals only when you have demonstrated a willingness to help them to achieve their goals.
The most successful people in our society, in all fields, are those who have helped the greatest number of other people to get the things they want. They build up a reservoir of goodwill and create a propensity in others to help them, to reciprocate for having been helped in the past.
The Law of Overcompensation is triggered by the habit of always doing more than you are paid for. Successful people and successful businesses are those that always exceed expectations, who always do more than is expected of them. And the only part of the equation of compensation and reciprocity that you can control is the amount that you put in. The amount you get out is determined by yourself. Because this is part of the Law of Sowing and Reaping, if you take every opportunity that you can to help others, others will eventually give you all the help you need.
Your returns in life come back to you as a result of your contributions to others. If you contribute hard work, helpfulness and honesty, you will get back riches, rewards and the respect of other people.
If you want to increase the quantity and quality of your returns, your rewards, you need but to increase the quantity and quality of your service. By always doing more than you’re paid for, you’ll eventually be paid more than you’re getting now. By putting more in, you’ll get more out. By “overcontributing” you’ll end up being “overcompensated.”
The principle of organized effort, working together in harmony with other people toward mutually agreed upon goals, is the basis for all great accomplishment. Your willingness and your ability to cooperate effectively with others, to help them achieve their goals so that they will help you achieve yours, is indispensable to your future success.
Step ten: Make a plan. Write out, in detail, what you want, when you want it, why you want it and where you are starting from. Make a list of the obstacles you must overcome, the information you will require, and the people whose help you will need. With answers to steps one through nine, you have all the ingredients of a complete master plan for the achievement of any goal.
YOUR MASTER PLAN
A plan is a list of activities
organized by time and priority. A list organized on the basis of time starts with the first thing that you have to do, in order, through to the last task that must be completed before your goal is achieved. Many activities can be worked on simultaneously. Other tasks have to be done in sequence, one after the other. Certain activities have to be done continuously from the beginning of the process through until the end.
A plan organized by priority lists activities in their order of importance. What is the most important thing that you have to do? What is the second most important thing? Keep asking this question until you have listed every activity based on its value to the completed goal.
Some years ago, the chairman of a large company for which I was working offered me an opportunity. He had been approached by a Japanese automobile company and offered the distributorship for their vehicles for a large geographical area. He asked me if I would like to do a market study with a view toward taking on the distributorship. This would involve setting up several dealerships, and then importing and distributing the vehicles through them.
Not really thinking about it too much, I accepted immediately. But there was just one problem. I did not have the slightest idea of where to start or what to do. So I immediately went out and did two solid months of research on the importation and distribution of Japanese automobiles. I visited every dealership selling similar cars. I asked everybody I could find for help and advice. And I got lucky. One of the consultants I spoke to had been hired four years earlier by a large corporation to do a complete feasibility study on automobile importation from Japan. Nothing had come of his study, but he still had all his notes.
I asked him if I could take a look at his notes and he showed them to me. Among his notes, I found a list of forty-five things that a company had to do to import and distribute Japanese vehicles through a network of dealerships. It was a blueprint for the business.
I took a copy of the list and used it as my road map. I carried it with me day and night. I began with item number one. Within three months, I had completed every item on the list and the first vehicles rolled off the ship from Japan. We went on to set up sixty-five dealerships and sell $25 million worth of vehicles. The division earned millions of dollars in profits for the company.
It was not easy. There was a tremendous amount of effort and ability involved in sales, service, parts, promotion, people, financing and administration. But the starting point was a detailed list of what needed to be done from beginning through to completion.
A good list gives you a track to run on and dramatically increases the likelihood of your achieving your goal. It is the essence of all personal planning and individual effectiveness. And all it takes to start is a pad of paper, a pen, a goal and you.
IMPROVE THE PLAN AS YOU GO
Once you have a detailed plan of action, get started. Accept that your plan will have flaws in it. It will not be perfect the first time out. Don’t worry about it. Avoid the temptation of “perfectionitis.” If every possible obstacle must first be overcome, nothing will ever get done.
One of the characteristics of superior men and women is that they can accept feedback and make course corrections. They’re more concerned with what’s right than with who’s right. Keep working on your plan until you have all the bugs out. Each time you hit a roadblock or an obstacle, go back and review your plan and make the necessary changes. Eventually you will have a plan that will work for you like a well-oiled machine.
The more detailed and the better organized your plans, the more likely you are to achieve your goals on schedule, and exactly as you have defined them.
Inc. magazine recently reported on interviews with the presidents of more than fifty corporations. They found that there was a direct relationship between the amount of detail that had gone into preparing their business plans and the level of success that the businesses had achieved.
But, in almost every case, the business that developed was different from the original plan. According to the study, it was the process of planning itself, of thinking through every single detail in advance, that led to ultimate success. It was having a well-designed plan to which modifications could be made, as they got feedback from the market, that ensured their sales and profitability.
The development of a detailed, constantly revised and finely honed personal plan is essential to the achievement of your major goals, as well.
Step eleven: Use visualization. Create a clear mental picture of your goal as it would appear if it were already achieved. Replay this picture over and over again on the screen of your mind. Each time you visualize your goal as accomplished, you increase your desire and intensify your belief that the goal is achievable for you. And what you see is what you get.
Your subconscious mind is activated by pictures. All your goal setting and planning up to this point has given you the details of an absolutely clear picture that you can feed repeatedly into your subconscious mind. These clear mental pictures concentrate your mental powers and activate the Law of Attraction. You immediately begin attracting to you, like iron filings to a magnet, the people, ideas and opportunities you need to attain your objectives.
Step twelve: Make the decision, in advance, that you will never, never, give up. Back your goals and plans with persistence and determination. Never consider the possibility of failure. Never think about quitting. Decide to hold on, no matter what happens. And as long as you refuse to quit, you must eventually be successful.
Develop the ability to persevere in the face of the inevitable obstacles and difficulties you will face. Sometimes, your ability to persist is what it takes to overcome the most difficult obstacles. Goal-setting begins with desire and comes full circle to persistence. The longer you persist, the more convinced and determined you become. You finally reach the point where nothing can stop you. And nothing will.
There are many poems on persistence and determination, and here is one of the most helpful that I’ve ever come across:
DON’T QUIT
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
For life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won if he’d stuck it out.
Success is just failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt.
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far.
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit,
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit!
—ANONYMOUS*
CONTINUOUS ACTION TECHNIQUE
Once you have clearly established your goals and plans, and you have made the decision that you will never give up until you achieve them, you begin to use the continuous action technique to maintain your momentum toward your objectives.
The continuous action technique keeps you on track toward your goal. It is based on Isaac Newton’s physical principles of inertia and momentum. These principles state that a body in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. They also state that while it may take a large amount of energy to get a body from a resting position to a state of forward motion, it takes a smaller amount of energy to keep it in motion at the same speed. This is one of the most important of all principles underlying great success.
The principle of momentum also has emotional and spiritual dimensions. You feel it in the sensations of motivation and excitement you experience as you move toward the achievement of something you care about. You have more energy and enthusiasm. You move faster toward your goal and it seems to move faster toward you.
Many peo
ple launch themselves toward a goal and then allow themselves to slow and stop. Once they stop, they often find that getting themselves going again is so difficult that they can’t do it. Don’t let this happen to you. The maintenance of momentum, once you’ve begun, is essential to great success and achievement.
You maintain your forward momentum by taking continuous action toward goal attainment. You keep up the pressure. You define your goals in terms of the activities necessary to accomplish them, and then you discipline yourself to perform the activities. You do something every day to move you toward the achievement of your major goals.
“Nothing succeeds like success.” You must develop the success habit by doing something every single day to move you toward your goals. Review them every morning and think about them every day. Always be looking for something you can do to contribute to their achievement.
It may be major or minor, but for you to maintain momentum and keep yourself positive and motivated, you must be continually taking actions consistent with what you hope to achieve.
Use the continuous action technique every day until you become a perpetual-motion, goal-setting and goal-achieving individual. Make sure that you mark each day with an accomplishment of some kind, the earlier in the day, the better. Remember, fast tempo is essential to success. The more things you do and try, and the faster you do and try them, the more energy and enthusiasm you will have and the more you will achieve.