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 Post subject: Tip # 3: How To Accomplish Your Goals No Matter What
PostPosted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 9:59 am 
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How To Accomplish Your Goals No Matter What

by André Vatke


A wise man once said, “Success is goals and all else is commentary.” Indeed, success in any area of your life, be it business or personal, starts with a goal. Your ability to set and achieve goals will provide you a sense of direction and is the master skill of success.

In this article I’m going to share with you some amazing facts on goal setting and a simple ten-step formula for increasing the likelihood of actually achieving your goals. The bottom line is that if you want success you can have it. It does not matter where you are now, how much success you have or do not have. The only thing that matters is your attitude and your willingness to do the things it takes to become successful. The truth is that an average person with clearly defined, written goals will run circles around a genius without them.

Your ability to become a continuous, systematic, professional goal setter will do more to contribute to your success and happiness than any other skill you could ever acquire in life.

Why Goals Are Vital

Change is the single most factor affecting our lives today. Things around us are changing at an ever increasing rate. In fact change is so continuous, persistent and relentless that we are often unaware of it’s affect on our lives. Goals help us to not only deal with that change they allow us to direct it. Clear, specific goals are a must for every area of our lives.

A major cause of the change around us is the information explosion. A person living today must make many more decisions in a single week than our ancestors had to make over the course of their lives. This is all do to the exponential increase in existing knowledge. In fact existing knowledge is doubling every 2 to 3 years. If you took all the knowledge available today (books, files, etc.) and put it in a pile it would probably cover the downtown area of your city to the height of about a quarter mile. Now imagine in 2 to 3 years another pile of equal size being stacked right next to it. By the end of this decade it’s been estimated that existing knowledge will double every year. This means that the rate of change will continue to increase far into the future.

The only way to deal with this increasing rate of change is by understanding goals and how they can direct your life. Goals enable you to control the direction of change. They allow the change that affects you to be self directed or positive rather than random or negative. Keep in mind that you can’t get away from change. But you can decide whether is controls you or whether you control it.

By learning to effectively set goals you will become more confident. Working toward goals will raise your self-esteem and self-respect. As you move toward accomplishing your goals they will give you a tremendous feeling of personal pride and accomplishment.

3 Key Principles of Goal Setting

Before we set out on our goal setting journey it’s important to understand some of the foundational principles that will help us set better goals for ourselves.

The “Acres of Diamonds” Philosophy: In Russell H. Conwell’s famous speech, he tells the story of a Persian farmer who went to look for diamonds. For years he searched with very little success. Then at the verge of giving up he returned to his farm to find that it was literally covered with diamonds. The problem with diamonds is that they don’t look like diamonds in their natural state. They look like ordinary rocks. Likewise many of our best opportunities come disguised as hard work and our best opportunities, like the “Acres of Diamonds” story, are probably right under our own feet – figuratively speaking.

In order to make the “Acres of Diamonds” philosophy work, you must be willing to move out of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid to take a chance. When you get an idea or opportunity, move on it quickly. The more things you try, the more likely it is that you will eventually triumph.

Find your Area of Excellence: You will never be truly successful and happy until you become absolutely excellent at doing something that gets you the kind of results that you want and that earns you the kind of money that you deserve.

It’s only when you become truly excellent at something that you will excel and succeed. Find your area of excellence, for once you do your possibilities become virtually unlimited. Goals founded on something you are excellent at will have a dramatically higher chance of success.

If you know you need to be excellent in an area you are currently not, make an effort to become so. What do you need to do now to become excellent in a vital area?

Determine your Major Definite Purpose: Your Major Definite Purpose (MDP) is the one goal that you want to accomplish more than any other single goal. It’s the one goal that can help you achieve more of your other goals than any other. This is the goal that you desire with a burning intensity and that you absolutely believe you can accomplish if you work at it long enough and hard enough.

Your ability to think through your life and to settle on a MDP is the key to unleashing your full powers and to unlocking your true potential. When your MDP becomes your mission you will find it to be a driving force in your life and all that you do.

In order to be effective your MDP must be clear, specific and measurable. It must be time bounded and committed to paper. It must be accompanied by a plan to achieve it. It should be the central focus and key measure of most of your activity. Once you have decided on your MDP and begun to move toward it, you whole life will begin to change.

Remember that a plan is critical to the success of your goals. Any plan is better than no plan at all. Clear, specific goals combined with a realistic and workable plan will create a complete and integrated system for success & achievement.

10 Step Formula For Increasing Goal Achievement

Decide exactly what want in each area of your life.

How much do you want to earn? What kind of home do you want to live in? What kind of car do you want to drive? What kinds of activities do you want to be involved with? What about your health, kids school, friends, etc.?

Be clear in setting your goals. 80% of your success hinges on how clear your goals are. The clearer and more specific your goals the better. If you don’t know what your goals are, set a goal to decide what your goals should be.

Write down your goals on paper.

Write you goals in clear, specific and measurable terms. Writing down goals takes them out of your imagination and crystallizes them into the physical world. It takes them from being a wish to a place where you can see them and touch them each and every day. By writing down your goals you instantly jump into the top 3% of all people. Only 3% of all adults have written goals. Yet those 3% accomplish more than the other 97% combined!

In 1979, Harvard Business School did a study of their MBA graduates. They interviewed the graduates and asked them among other things if they had clear written goals with plans for their career when they left the school. Only 3% had clear written goals with plans. 13% had goals but they weren’t written down and did not necessarily have a plan. 84% had no goals at all.

In follow-up interviews conducted 10 years later the 13% who had goals were earning on average twice as much as those with no goals at all. The eye-opening part was that the 3% who had written goals were earning on average ten times as much at the other 97% put together!

Writing down goals combined with daily action toward achieving them works virtually without exception. It unlocks your potential and subconscious mind to allow you to see and recognize opportunities (“Acres of Diamonds”) in all areas of your life. Even though this works so well, it’s very difficult to get the average person to sit down and decide what it is he or she really wants in their life. The average person will spend more time planning a trip to the grocery store or a family vacation than they will spend on planning their life.

Set a deadline for achieving your goal.

The subconscious mind responds very well to clear specific deadlines. Setting a deadline deepens and intensifies your desire for the goal. It will increase your belief that you can accomplish your goal.

On big goals, break it apart into smaller goals. For example break a one year goal into 6 month, 3 month, 1 month and even 1 week segments. This will make it easier to accomplish your goal and will provide your with a very detailed plan of what you need to do right now to reach the next step of your goal.

A deadline acts as a forcing system on your subconscious mind which drives you toward your goal and as you begin to meet your deadlines it will build your motivation to overflowing levels.
Deadlines also seem to attract the people and resources into your life that you need to accomplish your goal. This is because once your set a deadline your subconscious mind begins to see your own “Acres of Diamonds.”

So what if you miss a deadline? Simple, set another deadline! There’s no such thing as unrealistic goals, only unrealistic deadlines. A deadline is really just a guess based on current knowledge. If your knowledge changes to a point were you need to change a deadline do so, but don’t give up on the goal.

Stephen Covey recommends that when setting a deadline you, “start with the goal in mind.” Start with the goal and then work back to the present. This technique allows you to work with greater clarity, precision and effectiveness.

The primary reason people don’t set goals is due to a fear of failure. They are afraid that they will feel bad about themselves if they don’t reach their goals. But consider this: If you don’t set goals you simply won’t achieve very much. So don’t set yourself up for guaranteed failure by not setting goals.

Identify the major obstacles.

Identify the obstacles that stand between you and your goal – specifically those that stand between you and your Major Definite Purpose. Make a list of everything that could be blocking you. Ask yourself, “Why am I not at my goal already?”

80% of the reason you are NOT achieving your goal is contained in yourself in some way. What is going on around you that is holding you back? What is the bottleneck – the biggest reason – that slows you down? Once you figure this out focus all of your strength and energy on removing that key choke point. Many times removing the number one obstacle can do more to help move you forward than any other single activity. Whenever you can identify a major obstacle or problem, swarm all over it and take it out.

Identify the knowledge, skills, abilities and additional information you will require to achieve your goals.

All forward movement requires the acquisition and application of new ideas or information of some kind. Keep asking, “Why am I not at my goal already?” What is the missing “key piece” of knowledge that is setting the speed of how fast you achieve your goal? There is always something that you lack that is holding you back. Make an effort to continually find the missing puzzle pieces.

What one skill if you developed and did it consistently and in an excellent fashion would have the greatest positive impact on your business? If you don’t know the answer ask your sponsor, upline, coach, mentor or even Leaders Club directly. You MUST find out. It’s the key to acceleration, leverage and multiplication. In order to achieve a goal you have never achieved before you have to apply a skill or ability you never had before.

The good news is that anything anyone else has learned and become excellent at you can become excellent at as well. No one is better than you and nobody is smarter than you. If someone is doing better than you they have simply worked at it longer than you, just as an athlete who has spent years at a certain discipline will be much better than someone who just got started. But remember that anything someone else has done you can probably do as well.

Identify the people, groups and organizations whose help, assistance and cooperation you will need to achieve your goal.

You can achieve little goals by yourself but it takes teamwork to achieve the really big ones. Make a list of all the people in your life (friends, family, coworkers, people with special skills, etc.) that can either help you or hinder you in the attainment of your objective. Once you have that list organize it by priority.

You have probably heard the saying, “The devil is in the details.” The most successful people in this world are those who are the most meticulous and careful about the details in their lives. They tend to think on paper. They check and double-check everything. They leave absolutely nothing to chance. The average or mediocre performer trusts luck, is too lazy to write things down, continually forgets, and misses countless opportunities as a result.

Once you have a list of people who can help you, think about how you can help them in advance to gain their support. Everyone needs a reason to do something. Most people only respond to one question, “What’s in it for me?” What benefit will the people who help you receive for do doing so?

Make a plan.

Create a plan to accomplish your goal based on the first 6 steps you have already learned. List every detail you can think of. As you think of more items add them to your plan. Keep working until your plan is complete. This will undoubtedly take some time but once complete you will have created a powerful springboard for your own success.

Be sure to prioritize your plan by priority and sequence. The most important steps should be completed first. First remove your major obstacles, then gain the skills and knowledge you need followed by the other more specific tasks.

A person with a plan and goal will run circles around someone without one. The man or woman that knows what they want, writes it down and makes a plan to accomplish it, is a stronger, far more definite and determined person than someone who is vague or unsure.

Take action on your plan.

Action is perhaps the most readily identifiable quality of highly successful people. Action is critical for the success of your plan. This is why you hear us at Leaders Club harping on “getting into consistent action” so often. It’s vital to do something every day that moves you closer to your goal.

Develop the momentum principle of success. The momentum principle of success simply states that although it may take a tremendous amount of energy to get started toward a goal, once in motion it takes much less energy to keep moving. If you stop completely it takes a massive amount of energy to get going again. This is why all successful people are action oriented – constantly moving toward their goals. It’s also why you should be actively working toward your goal on a daily basis.

Visualize your goals as a reality.

Imagine what your life will be like once you accomplish your goals. Your mind cannot tell the difference between something that you vividly imagine and what is real.

When you vividly imagine your goals as accomplished your subconscious mind will begin to recognize and attract all the resources you need to make your goal a reality. This is because your mind tries with all it’s might to make your words and actions consistent with your clearly imagined goal. The more real or vivid your visualization, the better or more effectively this works.

4 Keys To Visualization

Frequency – Visualize your goal as attained as often as possible. Whenever you have a spare minute close your eyes and see your life as if your goal where already accomplished. The more your visualize the deeper the imprintation on your subconscious mind. The deeper the imprintation the more your subconscious mind will push you and the faster you will begin to see results.

Intensity – The more you can emotionalize your goal – get the feeling of excitement, pleasure and satisfaction that would accompany the attainment of your goal, the deeper it becomes imbedded in your subconscious.

Vividness – The clearer you goal is in your mind’s eye, the more power it will have on your subconscious mind. When your every detail of your attained goal becomes absolutely clear in your mind you will be very close to achieving it.

Duration – The longer you can hold an image of your attained goal in your mind the better.

When you combine all of these four keys you begin to activate all of your subconscious powers to move you, drive you toward accomplishing your goal. These methods are extremely effective and are used by top performers in business, sports and even politics.

Never give up.

Make a decision right now that you will never give up on your goal. A New York study revealed that 95% of those people who wrote down their goals and made plans eventually achieved them. The one key requirement was that they did not quit when the going got rough.

_________________
In Liberty,

Nomen Nescio
http://www.nitesquad.org

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