GOAL SETTING
The Nature of Success
Schooling does not teach us how to be successful. It does not teach us how successful people work, how entrepreneurs think, and how wealth is earned.
Success has little to do with talent or luck. Successful people have two qualities which can be developed:
- They have a dream
- They stay focused.
On Having Dreams
Having dreams does not mean to "be a dreamer". It means to have a blueprint for reality, a plan, goals and objectives. The more we see a positive future, the more confident we can be in the present. Realistic dreams engender passion and vigour, they inspire us.
(Have you ever been in a state of total absorption? Doing a hobby? Reading a book? That experience is what you have to look for.
How big should our dreams be? Not so big as to be overwhelming and paralysing. It needs to be big enough to do 4 things:
- You need a dream big enough to get you out of bed in the morning.
- You need a dream big enough to keep you up at night.
- You need a dream strong enough to get you to ignore fatigue.
- You need a dream strong enough to get you to push through fear.
Any dream less is too little, anything bigger is a bonus.
How to be realistic – if you can imagine yourself there, it is not too big. If it is so big we are paralysed and don’t focus, then it is a fantasy (at this moment).
Types of Dreams
Practical Dreams: save some money, buy a new car or house, more free time, get out of debt, change jobs, get through school.
Fun Dreams: taking a trip, buying a new stereo, go golfing more,
Memorable Dreams: similar to fun dreams but more memorable. Getting married in Capri, a trip to Hawaii, going on an archeological dig,
Significant Dreams: the most satisfying and meaningful. a doctor volunteering to work in poor countries, creating a multi-million dollar company, leaving a big inheritance for your family.
Dreams are absolutely necessary to provide the motivation, the fuel, that propel us forward. The more clear, palpable, and personal your dream is, the more it will sustain you in the inevitable moments when fatigue suggests you rest, fear suggests you run, and people you know suggest you are crazy.
Goals focus our energy if they are specific, achievable, measurable. They tune us in, change our sensitivities.
Why Don’t People Set Goals?
- FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real) - no use in setting goals because nothing good is going to happen anyway. 77% of self talk is negative. “No” 148,000 times by adolescence. The flea trainer.
- Poor self image - cannot image in our wildest dreams that we will get the ideal mate, have financial success, have career success, get to travel, get that big home, etc. We perform in accordance with the image we have planted in our mind. A positive self-image is crucial - positive thinking will not work if our self-image is poor. (possible – self image – self talk – behavior – self talk – self image)
- We do not know how important it is.
Examples:
Without a goal we are never where we think we should be. The basic problem we face is this - When we are playing we are thinking that we should be spending more time studying. When studying we think of other things we really should be doing. More time with our partner, our family And we say "I never have time for anything!" We are never doing what we think we should be doing. So we are wasting time. One thing about having goals is that we can save time, work when we work and play when we play. We can actually work less, but more effectively. Balance our lives.
Yale University study in 1953. Three percent of their graduating seniors had taken the steps to achieve their goals - identified exactly what they wanted and had written it down, spelled out why they wanted these goals, had specified what obstacles they had to overcome in order to get there, had identified the people, groups and organizations they needed to work with, they had identified what they needed to know to reach the goal, they had spelled out a plan of action to reach the goal, they had developed a plan of action to reach that goal, and finally they had put a date on it, when they expected to achieve that goal. An additional 10% had taken 5 of those steps, but 87% of them had not done that much toward goal setting beyond identifying that they wanted to be a doctor, lawyer, or whatever. In 1973 another study was done on the same seniors, looking at their financial and career accomplishments. The 3% who had set goals had achieved considerably more than the 97% who had not. You cannot make it as a wandering generality.
Everyone has goals. But we really need to get involved with them so we know exactly what we are doing and why we are doing it. This is the only way to get results.
It is not lack of time that prevents us from achieving something, it is lack of direction. Direction literally creates time and motivation creates energy. When we have those days when everything goes wrong. When you're tough on yourself life will be infinitely easier on you. If you do the things you ought to do when you ought to do them, the day will come when you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them. Motivation follows action, motivation creates energy. We confuse activity with accomplishment. People do not have direction. Can you imagine the Chairman of GM being asked how he got there, and saying "Well, I don't know, I just showed up for work everyday and now here I am" or Sir Edmund Hilary being asked how he got to the top of Mt. Everest and saying "Oh, I was just out there walking around…" or the Real Madrid coach - "you know, guys, this Sat. we're playing….they're a pretty tough team and we'd better think of something to do…" - they spend hours and hours planning a game.
On Staying Focused
The difference between wishes, hopes and goals (see Tice).
A dream wished for is very different than a dream worked for. Hopes and wishes are something we long for, but which we don’t think about very much. If it comes true we might consider it a miracle, but not something we caused.
How many people make resolutions and never carry them out? They start with so much good intention and energy and then something happens.
e.g.
buy jogging shoes and never run (the gym example)
buy fitness equipment and never work out
buy books and never read them
intend to learn a language but never attend a class
think of taking action on a good business plan but never get started
think of writing a book but never sit down and write
desire to lose weight but never diet or exercise
desire to effectively manage their money but never change their spending habits
intend to improve their grades but never get around to attending class or studying.
Why People Don't Focus
The primary reason is that people have never been taught the importance and skill of staying focused.
Many parents tell their children they have ability and talent, which helps them grow up feeling confident, but they never teach them that talent and ability only achieve success when combined with focus.
The corporate world and most business schools emphasize business models, management theory, market trends, brand identity, and revenue streams, while providing little or no guidance in how to see projects through to completion.
The ability to achieve focus is what separates the winners from the wishers.(e.g. ABD doctoral candidates).
Staying focused is not a talent or ability, it is a decision. Focus is the simple decision to stay on the task. It is simply doing what you need or intended to do.
Successful people wrestle with the same daily decisions and battles that less successful people do. We assume that successful people are always eager and motivated to do what is necessary to get ahead. They have to deal with the same problems, they simply win more of the battles.
The moment of decision - to do or not to do - occurs when common tasks arise and there is no desire to do them.
- I'd rather not start writing that paper.
- I'm too tired to read my textbook for class tonight.
- There's a good movie on and so I won't take those notes or make that phone call.
- I'm tired. I don't want to talk to that person, I don't want to listen to that problem, I don't want to open that book. I just want to forget it all for awhile and go out to meet my friends.
Successful people respond differently to these battles.
- Successful people say "yes" to their dreams and "no" to distractions.
- Successful people are guided by their focus and not by their feelings.
- Successful people remember their vision for life and ignore day-to-day vicissitudes.
- Successful people know the price of success is discipline…on a daily basis.
Dreams and Focus: The Ultimate Combination
Every day we are faced with many decisions - some minor, some medium and some monumental. The latter can occupy us for long periods of time. However, achieving success is not a matter of making monumental decisions. It is the cumulative effect of small, daily decisions, to do or not to do things, that make for success. This is where having a clear dream comes into effect. It keeps us focused in the small things. "I'm tired, I'll wait till tomorrow, I need some rest."
Goal Setting
Do we really need goals?
What are the consequences of not having goals?
Our system slows down, has no direction. We follow other peoples ideas about what’s good enough and what you deserve. Goals give us a map to follow.
The psychology of goals –
Selective Attention. Making the world problematic, since reality is in part our own construction. The world seems orderly, structured, in place. Everything is "obvious".
It takes a lot of work to maintain the "obvious" and "commonsensical" nature of the world. E.g. What are we doing here? Having a class. How do you know? How would you justify this as a class? The meaning of this situation of personally and socially constructed.
We are locked on to the obviousness, to the conventional, commonsensical ways of seeing things. (certain things about ourselves are “obvious” – “I’m not good at math.” “I will never have a chalet on the beach.”
The Reticular Activating System – locks us on and locks us out. We attend to certain things that are important to us.
We ignore information that is not important.
We are constantly looking for information about what is valuable or threatening. If some event is not important for one of these two reasons we either don’t see it or forget it rapidly. We couldn’t possibly attend to all the sensory information impinging on us. The RAS sees to it that we don’t go crazy.
E.g. buying a new car, having a baby, a house.
Normally this process is working in our best interest. However, it can also work against us. We have been programmed to see things in certain ways.
- If we stubbornly convinced that something is true, we will ignore information that could demonstrate that our reality is false. If we believe there is only one correct way to do something, we will be closed to suggestions that there might be another way to do things.
- If we don’t believe it is in our best interests to do something, then we will find all sorts of reasons not to do it, or will fail when we do.
- If we don’t believe that an adequate solution to a problem exists, we will find all kinds of objections or reasons why nothing will work. “Good reasons” are everywhere, and we block out information which tells us we are wrong. We always believe there is only one truth, one path, one answer and we don’t bother to consider that other things might work. We also find reasons to ignore or discount suggestions by others.
When we refocus our attention, we also open our senses to new information.
At the same time, if we clearly understand what is important to us, then we can use the tremendous power of the RAS. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
Scotoma - the blind spot within the eye's visual field caused by a physical defect or disease. More generally, "anything that keeps us from perceiving or understanding the truth."
Not the truth. This goes against what I was saying before about us being implicated in the construction of reality. Let's say anything that keeps us from opening boundaries and seeing in new ways, with more complexity .
"Scotomas cause us to see what we expect to see, hear what we expect to hear, and experience what we expect to experience." E.g. the father who is convinced that his son cannot keep his room clean.
Scotomas can blind us, but also work to our advantage. They are great concentration enhancers and energy focusers. The locking-on process. A strong commitment to an idea will blind you to distractions and irrelevant sensory input, which allows you to focus intently on your goal or challenge.
Establishing Goals
- Make a Wild Idea Sheet
We need to get some goals that will drive you, some goals that have some power behind them. The way to do that is to realize that you are creating a future that can make a difference for you. You are not just writing words down on a page. Even though you don’t know HOW all this is going to happen yet, if you identify things you want badly enough, strongly enough, and you have sufficient reasons for having them, you are going to find a way.
Once you identify your goals, you have to make them so real in your mind that you believe you already have them. When you get to that point where your brain believes that you already have them, something clicks. Physical changes start to happen and often within a short period of time you realize that goal.
Remember that everything around you at this time started out as a thought, as a goal.
We are going to set goals in three areas:
- Personal development goals – emotional, mental, social, spirituality, giving, physical body. Who are you becoming, or who would you like to become. These are major goals because these are the ones that are going to determine your life-long happiness.
- Thing goals – your chance to be materialistic – some of the things you would like to have, or places you would like to go.
- Economic goals – money plays a major role in people’s states. Even those who say it is not important experience the stress of not having enough.
Personal Development, Thing and Economic Goals
Step 1:
Put your self in a state of absolute total faith, absolute expectation, that anything is possible. Imagine you are a little kid again – they have no problem sitting on Santa’s lap and asking for things. Adults have a harder time! No limits. Get practical later. Get outrageous. Be creative. Let yourself go.
Write as fast as possible, and keep writing.
Print everything you want to be, do, or create (greater concentration) in the next 1 to 20 years. Just get it out of you. Write as fast as you can move the pen. Don’t stop. Abbreviate if you want.
Who would you like to become? what would you like to do? Where would you like to go? What would you like to create? In your life, what would be some skills you’d want, abilities you’d like, some character traits you’d like to develop, what would you like to master? Fears you want to conquer, how do you want to feel emotionally? Career goals, what do you want to accomplish?
What teachers would you like to have, who would you like to study with? Who would you like to meet personally? What would you like to learn? Dance, sing, speak other languages. How do you want to conduct yourself every day? How do you want to treat yourself and other people? How many books would you like to read a year? What books would you like to read? Would you like to write a book? Where would you like to live? What would you like to give in your life, what would you like to build? Would you like to learn to manage your time more effectively? Would you like to manage people, be a leader? When people describe you, what would you want them to say?
Things you want to have, do, be, create. Don’t think about money. Let your imagination go wild, without economic limits. Things that may not have to do with personal development, but be just for fun.
All kinds of economic goals. How much do you want to earn a month? How much do you want your net worth to be? Do you have investment goals? Put down anything related to finances. College fund? Real Estate goals? Retirement account? How much would you need to be economically independent?
Step 2:
Go through this list and put a timeline on each of the goals. Don’t worry about how you are going to accomplish it.
1 – one year or less