Do you set goals?

goal, goals, set goals, goal setting, written goals, measure, weight loss, fitness, vitality, rel;ationship goals, relationship goal

Make your goal as big and grand as you can.

When talking to clients, I notice many don’t. I do, and I’ve only set my goals properly over the last few years after my coach drew my attention to the importance of goal-setting in any success strategy. Given that coaching is about personal development success, it naturally follows that setting a series of achievable goals would be an important aspect of out personal development success.

Okay, we’ve got that bit clear. Now, the next stage is how we go about finding our goals. I’m not going to talk about this today because it’s a subject that needs to be covered over a couple of issues of this newsletter. I will talk about two important things you need to consider when you think about your goals.

Firstly, for your goals to become real, you must write them down and you must visit them regularly. By visiting, I mean you have to say them out-loud (yes, that’s with a real voice, not a whisper) twice a day, preferably in the morning, just after you get out of bed, and in the evening just before you go to bed. You can say them at other times of the day as well, it’s just that morning and evening are the most important, and I think, convenient times. When we write our goals and say them out load we are sending a very strong message to our consciousness that we want the brain neurons concerned with the goal connected and permanently wired.

The second thing about setting, writing and saying our goals is that we need to give our consciousness all the help we can to make them a reality. We need to ensure they are measurable and that they are not ‘moving away’ goals. Let me talk about ‘moving away’ goals in a minute.

What do I mean by measurable? Well, it’s not good enough to say “I want to be fit and healthy” or “I want to be wealthy”. Those statements are values, not goals. Your goal will look something like “I am happy and grateful I have $1.25 income on or before 30 June 2014″. Notice this has a date and a figure that is measurable and achievable.

Okay, now for the last thing we need to consider. If we set a goal such as “I am happy and grateful I am 70 kgs on or before 1 January 2011″ or “I am happy grateful I have given up smoking on or before 1 October 2011″, we’re immediately triggering a ‘moving away’ response in our brain. The response looks like this. There we are working away with our goal and we have no image of what life will be like without that weight or that smoking habit. It’s just too hard for our brain to successfully visualize life without that habit. And what normally happens is we sabotage ourselves, the goal dissolves away and we fail.

This is why we need to invent what I call torrid goals. Goals that have a passion to them, that don’t allow us to fall into the failure trap. We find descriptors that help us identify our goals as something that will make us feel good as we’re going for them. Let me give you and example. I have a goal at the moment that looks like this:

“I am so happy and grateful I feel effervescent, vital, fit and healthy in my MEDIUM sized clothes on or before 30 June 2012″.

Have another look at it. It’s very achievable, it’s measurable (I don’t use scales, I use my belt buckle to measure how I look and feel), and it’s a torrid goal. It’s easy to be passionate about it and I’m not likely to sabotage myself.

Call to Action.

Your call to action this week is easy. Identify a couple of goals, write them out and go for them using the tips above.

You’ll love yourself for it and you’ll be able to tell people you’re a goal setter and that you achieve your goals.

More on this next week.

Have the best outstanding week.

Andrew

 

PS I’m just off to the bakery to buy a cream bun for my fitness and vitality.

 

 

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