by Zig Ziglar
As you set your long-range goals, let me urge you not to attempt to overcome all the obstacles before you start. Nobody, but nobody, would ever attempt anything of significance if all obstacles had to be removed before they started. If you had called the chief of police before you left for work this morning to inquire if all the lights were on green, he would have thought you were “under the influence.” You know perfectly well you deal with the lights one at a time until you arrive at your destination. As you deal with obstacles of any kind in the same manner, one day you will arrive at your destination. Yes, you just go as far as you can see, and when you get there you can always see farther.
NUMBER THREE—GOALS MUST BE DAILY
If you don’t have daily objectives, you qualify as a dreamer. Dreamers are fine, provided they build a foundation under their dreams by working daily towards realizing them. The late Charlie Cullen expressed this idea in a meaningful way. He said, “The opportunity for greatness does not come cascading down like a torrential Niagara Falls, but rather it comes slowly, one drop at a time.”
Frequently the difference between the great and the near great is the realization that if you expect to make it big, you must work toward your objectives every day. The weight lifter knows that if he is going to accomplish a big objective, he must strengthen and expand his muscles every day. The parent who would raise a disciplined, loving child of whom he can be truly proud knows that character and faith are built by daily injections of teaching by example. If the “more” way of life is your purpose, then your daily objective should include an honest effort to be better prepared today than you were yesterday. If you expect to improve your circumstances, you must change and improve yourself. It’s true that you’ve got to be the right kind of person and do the right thing before you can have all life has to offer.
The daily objectives are the best indicators—and the best builders— of character. This is where dedication, discipline and determination enter the picture. Here we take the glamour of the big, long-range goal or dream and get right down to the nitty-gritty of foundation building that will help make certain that your dream becomes your destiny. The chapters on habits in the next segment will be especially helpful in building daily habits that build a solid character foundation which supports all significant long-term success.
NUMBER FOUR—GOALS MUST BE SPECIFIC
Earlier I used the phrase, you had to be a “meaningful specific” and not a “wandering generality.” Here’s why. Take the hottest day the world has ever known, the most powerful magnifying glass you can buy in a store, and a box of newspaper clippings. Hold the magnifying glass over the newspaper clippings. Even though you magnify the power of the sun through the glass, you will never start a fire—if you keep the glass moving. However, if you hold the glass still and focus it on the paper, you harness the power of the sun and multiply it through the glass. Then you can start a roaring fire.
I don’t care how much power, brilliance, or energy you have. If you don’t harness it and focus it on a specific target and hold it there, you’re never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants. The hunter who brings back the birds doesn’t shoot the covey; he selects one quail as a specific target.
The art of goal-setting is to focus on one specific, detailed objective. A “lot” of money, a “nice” or “big” house, a “high-paying” job, “more” education, “selling more,” “doing something more for the community,” or being a “better” husband, wife, student, person, etc., is too broad a goal. In general, they are not specific enough.
For example, instead of a “big” or “nice” home, your goal should be spelled out in minute detail. If you don’t know the exact details, then start accumulating magazines with pictures and floor plans of the homes that appeal to you. Combine ideas and concepts that are presented when subdivisions open or when builders or realtors hold an open house. Inspect a lot of “open houses,” but don’t mislead real estate agents into thinking you are a “now” prospect so they will spend a lot of time showing you the different homes. That’s not only unfair, it’s dishonest and will slow you down in your quest for the details of your goal.
Take this assortment of ideas for your home and commit them to paper. How many square feet, what size, type, and kind of lot, location, number of rooms, style, color, etc.? Then get a local artist to make a sample drawing (an art student can probably handle it for a minimal fee). This is particularly important as you will discover in a later segment of the book.
I hope you fully understand that you must take the general information on goal-setting and specifically apply it to your own situation. Later, I will give you a number of specifics that will apply to your situation. Whatever you want—if you expect to reach full effectiveness—must be specific in detail.
ANSWERING THE UNASKED QUESTIONS— CAN GOALS BE NEGATIVE?
The answer is emphatically “Yes.” “Goals can be negative if one of three conditions exists. First, your goal can be negative if you don’t accept the fact that you must be the architect of accomplishment and that “luck” is not involved. Second, your goal can be negative if it is unrealistically big. It must be out of reach but not out of sight. Third, it can be negative if it is outside your area of interests or was set to please someone else.
Let’s deal with the biggest problem of them all—the too big or unrealistic goal. Many times the “too big” or unrealistic goal is deliberately set so the individual can have a ready-made excuse for failure. The individual who does this is instinctively planning for failure and is actually seeking the understanding of others by knowing they will not “blame him” for failing to do the impossible. The young man in this story could have had that problem.
Several years ago, when I was speaking in Detroit, Michigan, a young man in his twenties, poorly dressed and with a limited education, approached me with a startling statement. “Mr. Ziglar, you’ve turned me on, so I want to shake your hand and tell you what you have done for me today.” Naturally, I encouraged him to continue (I couldn’t have stopped him if I had wanted to). “What have I done?” I asked. He enthusiastically replied, “You made me a million dollars.” “Well, that’s fantastic,” I responded. “I hope you will be willing to share it with me.” Looking a little annoyed, he said, “No, seriously, I’m going to earn a million dollars, and I’m going to do it this year.”
Now I was faced with a small problem. Should I take a chance on killing this enormous enthusiasm now, or let him go on laboring under the illusion of an improbable goal and suffer complete defeat? I say improbable because a million dollars in a year is nearly $20,000 per week. This is a considerable sum of money for a broke, unskilled, and uneducated young man to earn in one year, especially since he didn’t have the $2,000 necessary to buy the initial inventory to start his new business. Now, in just one year, his goal was to earn 500 times that amount.
Let me further illustrate the magnitude of the task. Had he taken just three weeks to raise the $2,000, he would already have been $60,000 behind schedule. Conservatively speaking, I figure if he had been unable to raise $2,000 in 25 years it would probably take him three to six weeks longer to accumulate the money. In six weeks he would have been $120,000 behind. By then he would have been subjected to the laughter and ridicule of his friends and relatives. He probably would have already thrown in the towel and might well have tried to stop the world in order to step off. He possibly would feel foolish and defeated. Then he could honestly say, “Everybody is laughing at me,” or “Everybody is against me.” This same thing can happen to each of us when we set goals that are unbelievably and overwhelmingly big.
If the goal is unrealistically big, and you miss it by a ridiculous amount, the size of the failure would have an emotional impact for future accomplishments that could be extremely negative. It could even affect a person to the degree that he would no longer really make an effort of any kind. For this reason it is wiser to set the goal high but not out of sight.
A goal w
ill also be negative if it is out of your field of interest and you are only trying to please someone else. If someone else is directing your goal-setting, it is likely you will lose interest, become bored, or resent the fact that someone else has charted your course of action. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to reach those goals.
Another indication of a negative goal is the belief that luck is involved. (Substitute the word “pluck” for “luck,” then I’ll buy it 100%.) Successful people get to the top because they identify their objectives, use their talents, and constantly sharpen them by dedication and hard work. Their “breaks” come with commitment and objectives—and so will yours.
CHAPTER 12
Setting Your Goals
WHERE ARE YOU?
By now your question should be, “How do I set goals? You’ve convinced me I should set them, but you haven’t told me how, or what kind.” Good point. Actually, as you will discover, it’s easier to reach goals than it is to set them. A goal properly set is partially reached because it is a strong statement of your belief that you can and will reach it. As I stated earlier, success is easy after you believe.
Goal-setting and goal-reaching involve the same procedure, whether the goal is to lose weight, get a raise, buy a new car, raise positive kids in a negative world, make more sales, become an honor roll student, a better parent, or anything else you can think of. I encourage you to keep in mind that a balanced success is what you’re seeking. By “balanced,” I mean success in your personal, family, and business lives, as well as in your physical, mental, spiritual, career, and financial lives. I’m going to use a specific sales example in this chapter because the same process works on all of your goals.
As a salesman, if you want to sell more effectively you must set your goals. It’s helpful if you have some working experience with your present company. However, regardless of your experience, you’re going to need some records to set a big but sensible goal. The most complete map in the world won’t take you anywhere unless you know where you are. You need to have a starting place. Records will help you establish that starting place. Keeping records a few minutes per day for 30 days will enable you to get a true picture of your production capability, your work capacity, and the effective use of your time. You will discover that you will produce more the last 15 days than you did for the first 15 as a direct result of keeping records. For this 30-day period you need to be brutally honest. After all, you’re dealing with your future. This record is for your eyes only.
There are several steps you must take in order to keep an adequate record. First, keep a record of when you wake up, when you get up, and when you get into productive work. Second, keep a record of personal time you use during the day for lunch, coffee breaks, personal phone calls, and attending to other personal matters. Third, keep a record of phone calls for appointments, unexpected drop-ins, service calls, reference calls, demonstrations, time spent in eyeball-to-eyeball contact with the buyer, and the sales volume you generate. Finally, keep a record of your “twilight” time. This is the time spent in outer offices, the last 30 minutes of that sales call, the extra time you spent shuffling your prospect cards, etc. The first few days this will be tough, but it gets easier when it becomes habit and your production starts to climb.
Once you have established your pattern it’s easy to make improvements. By studying your past records, you can find your best day, best week, best month, and best quarter. Compare your best record with your new efficiency schedule. You’ll probably see that you can take your best quarter and duplicate it only once and still have your best year. This will obviously vary a great deal according to your product. “Low ticket” items will not produce the daily, weekly, and monthly variations “high ticket” items produce (brushes or cosmetics as opposed to a comprehensive training program and commercial real estate). Make your goal specific and in most cases bigger. But remember, it’s better to revise a goal upward in a month than to have to dramatically reduce it.
A built-in competitiveness is often extremely helpful, so let’s look at a “challenge” system. First, the don’ts. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Don’t challenge the champ at the outset if you’ve been an “average” producer. Second, do challenge the person in front of you. That’s a good procedure, especially if you make it a “double” challenge. A double challenge is one to beat the man ahead of you as well as your own best. With this approach you won’t win any victories by “fluke” or default. Each victory will make you stronger for the next challenge.
Regardless of how many people are currently in front of you, if you are constantly striving to “beat your best,” you will be making a lot of progress, a lot of sales, and a lot of money. Obviously, if you continue to beat the one in front of you it will be just a matter of time before no one will be in front of you.
WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT?
Let’s look at the physical, mental, spiritual, personal, family, career, and financial goals. Here are some rules that will enable you to more accurately zero in on those goals. Of necessity, you should remember these rules must be quite general in nature. Obviously, you must take these examples and translate them to fit your own situation.
You should commit to paper the things you want to be, do, and have. You might well say, “It will take me three days to write down all of these things.” You’re going to be surprised to discover it isn’t going to take you nearly as long as you think. Write them down and list them in the order of their importance. Obviously, you will be working on several goals at the same time. You might have a goal of being the club golf champion, the company sales leader, the president of the PTA and a lay leader in your church or synagogue all at the same time. In this event, you’ll have to decide the order of their importance to you because each one requires time and will require adjustment as you work. You might have to compromise and settle for acquiring an 8 handicap instead of becoming club champion, and being active in the PTA instead of president. At any rate, in order to accomplish these objectives you’ll have to be organized.
“STEPPING” OR “STOPPING” STONES
Once you’ve arranged your goals in the order of their importance, you should list the obstacles that stand between you and your objectives. If there wasn’t something between you and your goals, you would already have everything you want. After you’ve listed your obstacles, you can formulate a plan to overcome them and set a time schedule. Most management authorities believe that when you properly identify a problem you have it half solved. You’ll be amazed how much faster you overcome the obstacles once you identify them. As you overcome the obstacles on your way to one goal, the obstacles on the way to other goals will fall more easily.
In the preceding chapter I discussed a young man who had set what I considered to be the unrealistic goal of earning one million dollars in a single year. My advice to him in goal-setting was, instead of challenging for the financial championship of the world that first year, why not approach it on the same basis a fighter would approach his quest for the championship of the world? When a man enters the professional ranks as a fighter, he starts by challenging the man above him. After each success, and as he gains confidence and experience, he moves up the ladder. Many promising fighters have destroyed their careers by getting in over their heads against competition that was too tough before they had gained the necessary experience.
“In reaching and achieving your goals,” I advised the young man, “take it on a more gradual basis.” In essence, I advised him to find out what the top man was earning. This would enable him to know what his target actually was. Then I urged him to research the average earnings of the people within his company. I further advised him to select a figure slightly lower than the average and set this as his goal for the first month. I felt he could do better, but I wanted him to have the initial confidence that goes with reaching a first objective. Confidence is the handmaiden of success. Once success to any degree is yours, it’s easier to achieve greater success (do
something well, then it’s easy to excel). I then urged him to select targets within the organization and start beating the man above him. Following this procedure he would eventually be the number one producer and could then set much higher monetary goals. To accomplish this he had to lay out his schedule on a daily basis.
Whether or not he would have reached his target of $1,000,000 in a single year is academic. With the proper approach to goal-setting, I’m convinced the young man will go farther, faster and be happier in the process. Having said these things, let me remind you that I did not say his goal was impossible. I have a certain amount of courage but not enough to place an absolute ceiling on the potential of a dedicated individual.
THE CONFIDENCE OF IGNORANCE
Several years ago in Columbia, South Carolina, a young cookware salesman sat in my office. It was in early December and we were talking about plans for the next year. I asked him, “How much are you going to sell next year?” With a big grin on his face he said, “I’ll guarantee you one thing, I’m going to sell more next year than I sold this year.” My comment and question were, “That’s wonderful. How much did you sell this year?”
He smiled again and said, “Well, I don’t really know.” Interesting, isn’t it? It’s also quite sad. Here was a young man who didn’t know where he was and had no idea where he’d been, but with the confidence that generally goes with ignorance, he knew where he was going.