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Not knowing how you are going to accomplish a goal is never a valid excuse for not setting the goal. First write the goal down. Then work to figure out how to reach it.
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Written goals also create a scorecard that you can later evaluate and learn from. They help you measure your success and progress in life. Having your goals on paper also increases your self-confidence. Being able to see that you accomplished something you decided in advance will give you a powerful sense of self-worth and will encourage you to set more challenging goals in the future. Your successes will begin to snowball! Writing goals on paper forms an accountability contract with yourself, which automatically strengthens your character and boosts your self-confidence. Remember, in our society we assign a higher value to written agreements than oral agreements. They simply hold up better. So make your goals written contracts with yourself! When people tell me they don’t need to write their goals down because they have them in their mind, I know they are really copping out and eventually will miss out.
2. Highly effective goals are stated in present tense.
I encourage you to state each goal as if its accomplishment were already a fact. For example, “I earn $125,000 this year” or “I lower my golf handicap to 10 by June 25.” Writing goals like this allows you to recruit your mind to help you reach your goals. An obvious discrepancy between where you’d like to be and where you are currently creates what is called structural tension or dissonance in your mind. There’s a gap between reality and your vision for the future, and since your mind hates tension of any kind, it immediately begins to alert you to all sorts of people, resources, and breakthroughs that can help push you toward a goal. In essence, your mind creates a new field of sight. Stating a goal in the present tense communicates that goal to your brain in the most effective format, allowing you to visualize the goal clearly and to believe that it is possible. It signifies to your conscious and subconscious mind that you are not where you want to be.
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If you don’t have specific goals written down for your life, you are mentally malnourished. Your mind was designed to be fed with goals just as your body was designed to be fed with food and water.
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Refuse to state your goal as “I will do this” or “I will accomplish that.” When you use the phrase I will, you mentally push your achievement somewhere off into the vague, distant future. There is less pressure to come up with strategies to achieve your goal and to take immediate action. Using “I will” promotes procrastination, and of course we want to put that off as long as possible!
3. Highly effective goals are stated positively.
One example of a positive goal is “I eat healthy, nutritious foods” instead of “I no longer eat junk food.” It’s important to avoid stating, writing, or talking about your goals in a negative way. Why? Because we think in pictures. Words are simply symbols for thoughts and ideas. Every time you write or say a word, you evoke a vision in your mind. And you can’t evoke a vision of not doing something. You may say, “I don’t eat junk food,” but your subconscious mind only processes, “I eat junk food.” It simply omits the “not” and shows you the “I eat junk food” vision. If you say, “I am not fat,” your brain simply sees, understands, and goes to work on “I am fat.” If you say, “I am not hitting the ball into the water,” all your mind goes to work on is, “I am hitting the ball into the water.” (Now that you know this, you can wreak havoc with your golf friends by reminding them of the water just as they are about to take their shot. And they’ll usually respond, “I’m not going to hit it into the water.” But the reverse is often exactly what they do!) Remember, you will always act consistently with the dominant pictures you allow to occupy your mind. You must state your goal in a positive way so that your mind will understand it accurately and go to work on it. The reason most people state goals in negative terms is that they are much more aware of what they don’t want than what they do want. But whatever you’re most aware of is what you experience. If you’re aware of nice people, you’ll start to bump into more nice people. If you’re aware of your goals, you’ll reach more of your goals. If you’re conscious of ways to serve others, you’ll find those opportunities. And along the way, a lot of people will call you lucky.
4. Highly effective goals are consistent with your personal mission statement.
Your goals should cause you to grow more like the person you were created to become. They should be personally meaningful to you. Many people make the mistake of setting goals that are meaningful to someone else or that will please someone else but that evoke no passion in their own lives. The best way to keep your commitment to reach a goal is to understand why you are striving for it. It’s the why, or the link to your values, that keeps you motivated.
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When you establish and wholeheartedly pursue goals that are consistent with your highest values, you grow more like the person you were created to become, thereby satisfying and fulfilling your purpose.
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Effective goals are best established after you thoroughly think through your values and compose your personal mission statement. Values are those things that are most important to you. They include people, things, virtues, concepts, beliefs, and feelings. Together they constitute your individual philosophy of life, or your personal vision. Goals are intended to help you experience your unique purpose in life. Trouble arises when we set goals without first clarifying what we stand for and who we want to become as human beings. We often accept and adopt others’ values because we’ve never invested the mental effort to determine what’s truly important to us. When we set goals that are not in harmony with our personal values, we may still end up being high achievers, but the achievement will be accompanied by a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of “Is this it? Is this all there is?” Most unhappiness and negative stress come from proclaiming internally that something or someone is most important to us but then acting based on different priorities. Consider these questions:
Am I designing my life around principle-based values?
Who am I becoming by pursuing this goal?
Will accomplishing this goal add to my peace of mind?
Make sure that each of your goals is connected to a particular value or role in life. There should be a deep and obvious connection between your goals and your personal mission statement. In fact, pursuing your goals should force you to become more like the person described in your personal mission statement. For example, if part of your mission statement emphasizes investing quantity time with your children, avoid setting a community service goal that will likely require you to spend many evenings away from home. That will contradict your value of family time. In another season of life, community service may be a completely appropriate goal.
5. Highly effective goals are specific and measurable.
There must be no fuzziness or ambiguity whatsoever in your stated goals. Each goal must be measurable so that you or someone else can evaluate your progress objectively and determine exactly when you have achieved the goal—or if a new course of action should be taken. The more specific your goal is, the more clear you will be about what steps you must take to achieve it, and the more focused you will be. The more you are focused on your goal, the more you’ll be aware of the people, ideas, and resources around you that can help you reach your goal. A clear direction also tends to increase your motivation and enthusiasm. It spurs you to take action.
Often in my coaching sessions clients ask, “How specific do my goals need to be?” I always answer, “Can you be more specific?” If it is possible to be more specific, then you should be. Keep asking yourself: “How can I define this goal more clearly? How can I make it more precise?” Goals like “I want to be happy,” “I want to have a better marriage,” or “I want to earn lots of mo
ney and be rich” don’t cut it. They offer no unambiguous goal to shoot for. Nothing is measurable. There is little or no purpose, and nothing much gets done. Vague and hazy objectives produce diluted results! You’ll find that your creativity will increase as you more clearly define your goal. Creativity demands pressure. Being concrete and very specific provides this pressure.
6. Highly effective goals are time bound.
Deadlines put positive pressure on you to take action. Without concrete deadlines, it’s just human nature to keep putting things off. Strangely enough, we tend to procrastinate on goals that are most valuable to our long-term peace of mind. We keep postponing those actions that can really increase the quality of our lives! We often get stuck in a rut, in the deadly confines of the comfort zone. Comfort is often confused with success, and complacency is the result. To avoid this complacency, make sure your goals are time bound with reasonable deadlines for accomplishment. It’s very important that the time you allow is reasonable! It’s been said that there is no such thing as an unrealistic goal, just an unrealistic time frame in which to accomplish it. Learn from each experience you have with goal setting so that you become progressively more accurate at determining deadlines.
7. Highly effective goals are reasonable and challenging.
Goals should cause you to stretch, grow, and get out of your comfort zone. In order to fully develop your potential, you must be willing to experience discomfort. It’s often been suggested that people set goals with a fifty-fifty probability of success. You want to set goals that are achievable but that also build character by exercising your self-discipline and perseverance.
In order for your subconscious mind to buy into your goal, the goal must have some degree of believability. For example, imagine you’re driving a fifteen-year-old Chevy, but you’ve always had this thing for a Rolls-Royce. Think about stopping at a traffic light in your Chevy and having a Rolls pull up alongside you. Would seeing that Rolls motivate you to take action—to drive straight to a Rolls-Royce dealer? Would it cause you to want to really stretch yourself? Would it be a powerful inspiration? Most likely it would not. The reason? The gap between where you are now—driving the old Chevy—and where you want to go—driving a Rolls-Royce—is simply beyond believability. Your mind just wouldn’t accept the idea that you could own a Rolls-Royce, because it has no consistent prior experiences or beliefs on which to base such an idea. That doesn’t mean there’s no hope for you. Rather, it means that you need to set some intermediate goals that will act as stepping-stones to gradually raise your beliefs and self-concept to that of someone driving a Rolls. For instance, you could first set a goal for driving a low-end luxury car, and then set another goal for driving a top-of-the-line Mercedes. Ultimately, you could drive whatever type of car you desired.
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Your talent, skill, and creativity will rise to meet the level of goal you set for yourself. So think huge!
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Here’s a nonmonetary example of the same idea. Imagine you’ve been thirty pounds overweight for most of your adult life. Even though you’ve worked really hard to lose the excess fat, and you’ve had a goal to get back to your high school weight, it just hasn’t happened yet. Think about being in your car at a traffic light when an extremely fit jogger passes by. Would seeing that obviously lean and fit athlete motivate you to increase your exercise routine and drastically improve your diet? Would it cause you to want to stretch yourself? Would it be a powerful inspiration? Most likely it would not, for the same reason seeing a Rolls-Royce doesn’t motivate the Chevy owner. The gap between where you are now (overweight and out of shape) and where you want to go (becoming lean, strong, and fit) is simply beyond believability. Your mind just would not accept the idea that you could be trim and healthy, because it has no recent or consistent prior experiences or beliefs. This does not mean there’s no hope for you. Rather, it means that you need to set some intermediate goals that will act as stepping stones to gradually raise your beliefs and self-concept to that of someone who is in great physical condition. For instance, you could first set a goal to drop one belt notch or dress size, and then set another goal to lose ten pounds. Ultimately, you could be as lean and healthy as you desired.
The point is to get your mind working with you, not against you. The way to accomplish this is to set goals that push the envelope, that are just slightly outside what you currently believe about yourself. Goals like these activate your natural creativity, supplying you with insights for achievement that otherwise would not have occurred to you. By contrast, goals that are unreasonable (at least at this point in your development) lock up your creativity and tend to act as de-motivators. As you become more of an expert at goal setting, as your confidence grows, you’ll see how simple it is to incrementally strengthen your belief in yourself by setting and then achieving progressively more-challenging goals. You may set goals that have only a 20 or 30 percent chance of success, but that’s better than setting your goals too low. If you’re going to make a mistake, err on the side of aiming too high.
8. Highly effective goals are thoroughly planned.
You should have tangible action steps for each of your goals. You need to compile the details, make a plan, write out all the activities, prioritize them, organize them, and rewrite them as often as necessary to make your plan perfect. Revise it, improve it, plan, and think on paper. It’s also a good idea to consider developing several backup plans, just as a good general would do. Exercise your mind by anticipating various contingencies and deciding how you would respond swiftly and effectively. All great leaders train themselves to be great planners. For smaller goals, developing a plan will be a quick exercise. For huge goals, the planning process may require several hours or even several days.
Highly Effective Goals Are
• Written
• Stated in the present tense
• Stated positively
• Time bound
• Challenging and reasonable
• Specific and measurable
• Consistent with your personal mission statement
• Thoroughly planned
The Goal-Setting Workshop
I’m going to share with you a powerful, practical, and effective goal formula. If you will follow this method, and if you will exercise the self-discipline to put it into practice on a regular basis, your results will be phenomenal.
Step #1: Brainstorm Your Dreams
Take out a pad of paper and a pen or pencil—or, if you prefer, sit down at your computer or pull out your PDA. Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for at least thirty minutes. At the top of a blank sheet of paper write “The Next Thirty Years.” Now begin to brainstorm about anything and everything you have ever wanted to be, do, or have. This is often called unlimited wishing or dreaming, and it’s the first tangible step in becoming goal directed.
Questions to Help You Start Your Brainstorming Session
Remember, no limits!
• What do you want to have?
• What do you want to be?
• Who do you want to become?
• What extraordinary things would you like to do?
• What kind of impact do you want to have on your profession?
• If you were absolutely unafraid, what would you try to do?
• How could you turn one of your hobbies into a business?
• Where do you want to go? Who do you want to go with?
• What would you like the quality of your marriage to be?
• Spiritually, are you headed in the right direction?
• What do you want to share with others?
• What charities do you want to support?
• How much money do you want to donate in your lifetime?
• How could you better exploit your Genius to serve and benefit others?
• Would you like to skydive or scuba dive? What other activities would you like to
try?
• Would you like to have a personal trainer? How about a personal success coach?
• What experiences do you want to have with your children before they go to college? after college?
• Are there any famous people you would like to meet? Who?
• Would you like to become famous? By excelling at what?
• How much passion do you want to have in your marriage?
• Would you like to become a millionarie? How about a billionaire?
• Do you want to work for someone else the rest of your life?
• What would you like your net worth to be when you retire? At what age would you like to retire?
• What new things would you like to learn?
• How involved could you be with your children and grandchildren?
Success Is Not an Accident Page 8