"To Make Serious Money, You Must Know What You Want and Have a Plan for Achieving it."
by Stuart Goldsmith
There is a well-known yet powerful method of achieving everything you want in life. It only takes five minutes. Anyone can do it but hardly anyone does. Imagine - something you can do in just five minutes which can send your income through the roof, improve your relationships and power-boost your life towards total success. Wouldn't you want to do that right away?
I'm talking about the time-honored technique of goal-setting.
It has been proved beyond reasonable doubt that people who set written goals lead richer, happier, more fulfilling lives than people who merely drift through life, rudderless.
Now if you're yawning and thinking "seen it, done it" I challenge you to go right this moment and fetch your own list of goals. If you are able to do this, it marks you out as very special. If you cannot go and get your goal list, right this second, may I suggest you stifle that yawn and take a few minutes to do this exercise?
The great motivator Brian Tracy is fond of recounting how often people come up to him and say something like this: "Brian, a year ago I attended your seminar and you got us to do that goal exercise. Well, I did it, but only because you said so. When I got home, I put that piece of paper in a drawer and forgot about it completely. I found it a couple of weeks ago and you know what? Six out of ten of those goals had been achieved by me without my even remembering I had set them!"
Now since this is so easy why do so few people do it?
Why People Don't Write Goals
For a person willfully to miss out on the staggering advantages of setting goals, there must be a psychological block somewhere. I believe the block is the subconscious realization that every goal has an associated price tag - that it doesn't come free. It doesn't "flow freely from the wondrous bounty of the universe." There is a price to pay in order to achieve each goal. This knowledge evokes fear which triggers inertia and this stops you from taking this important first step.
Of course most people realize this subconsciously, and after a decade of research, I now believe that I have isolated the main reason why people do not set goals.
It is not ignorance. Everybody now knows the importance of setting goals. Thirty years ago, this was a startling new idea. No longer. Goal setting is a powerful and proven tool for success in any field of endeavor. Everybody knows this, but still they don't do it.
Why?
It can't be the difficulty of the task. Writing out ten goals is not a particularly arduous job - in fact it is quite enjoyable and only takes about twenty minutes. And yet 98% of people never write a goal in their entire lives, even though the task of writing out your goals is so easy and the rewards so obvious.
It isn't even the difficulty of pondering what it is you ultimately want out of life - just ease yourself in with some simple goals, say to move up to the next biggest house and to earn an extra ten thousand dollars this year. Leave complex life-goals ("Who am I? What's it all about? Why am I here?") until you are happier with the whole goal-setting process.
No, there must be something else, and I think I have identified it.
To set yourself a goal means to set yourself up for change. Any goal that you can think of, large or small, basically reduces to the statement: "I hereby promise to change in the following way..." We all fear change - it is the unknown. Fear stops us dead in our tracks.
Above everything else, a goal is a written contract with yourself to do something. To achieve even the smallest goal requires discipline, work, and focus; all three in some measure.
How do you think people react when faced with a contract containing the words 'discipline,' 'work' and 'focus'? Why, they break out into a cold sweat. Their hands tremble and seem unable to grasp the pen. They go to sign, then draw back, then go to sign again. Suddenly, they feel faint. The pen slips from their numbed hand and clatters to the floor. They'll sign that contract one-day real soon now - perhaps tomorrow...
I believe this is why people don't set goals.
Until next time...
Stuart Goldsmith
© Stuart Goldsmith
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