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Success Through Goal Setting
The ability
to set goals and make plans for their accomplishment is the
“master skill” of success. It is the single most important skill
that you can learn and
perfect. Goal-setting will do more to help you achieve the
things you want in life than will anything else you’ve been
exposed to. Becoming an expert at goal-setting and
goal-achieving is something that you absolutely must do if you
wish to fulfill your potential as a human being. Goals enable
you to do the work you want to do, to live where you want to
live, to be with the people you enjoy, and to become the kind of
person you want to become. And there is no limit to the
financial rewards you can obtain. All you have to do is to set a
goal for financial success, make a plan, and then work the plan
until you succeed in that area.
The payoff for setting goals and making plans is being able to
choose the kind of life you want to live. So why do so few
people set goals? According to the best research, less than 3
percent of Americans have written goals, and less than 1 percent
review and rewrite their goals on a daily basis. So the reasons
why people don’t set goals have been of considerable interest to
me. I think that there are five basic reasons why people don’t
set goals.
The first reason is that they are simply not serious. Whenever I
speak with a man or woman who has achieved something remarkable,
I learn that the achievement occurred after that person decided
to “get serious.” Until you become completely serious and
totally determined about your goals, nothing really happens.
The second reason why people don’t set goals is that they don’t
understand the importance of goals. We find that young men and
women who begin setting goals very early in life invariably come
from families in which the importance of goals is emphasized.
The discussion that takes place around your family dinner table
is one of the most powerful formative influences in your life.
If your parents didn’t have goals, didn’t talk about goals,
didn’t encourage you to set goals, and didn’t talk about people
outside the family circle who had goals and were moving toward a
higher level of achievement, then you very likely grew up with
the idea that goals are not even a part of normal existence.
This is the case for most people. And for many years, it was the
case for me.
The third reason why people don’t set goals is because they
don’t know how to do it. One of the greatest tragedies of our
educational system is that you can receive 15 to 18 years of
education in our schools and never once receive a single hour of
instruction on how to set goals. Yet we find that in certain
schools where goal-setting programs have been introduced since
first grade, young people become excited about goal-setting -
even if the goal is only to increase the scores by 5 or 10
percent over the course of the semester, or to be on time every
day in the course of a month. Children become so excited about
achieving goals that by the third or fourth grade, they love to
go to school. They get the best grades. They are seldom absent.
They are excited about themselves and about their lives. So
encourage your children to set worthwhile and realistic goals
from an early age.
The fourth reason why people don’t set goals is fear of
rejection. The fear of rejection is caused by destructive
criticism in early childhood and is manifested, in adulthood, in
the fear of criticism by others. Many people hold back from
setting worthwhile goals because they have found that every time
they do set a goal, somebody steps up and tells them that they
can’t achieve it, or that they will lose their money or waste
their time.
Because each of us is strongly influenced by the opinions of
those around us, one of the first things that you must learn
when you begin setting goals is to keep your goals confidential.
Don’t tell anyone about them. Often, it’s the fear of criticism
that, more than any other single factor, stops you from
goal-setting in the first place. So keep your goals to yourself,
with one exception. Share your goals only with others who are
committed to achieving goals of their own and who really want
you to be successful and achieve your goals as well. Other than
that, don’t tell anybody about your goals, so no one is in a
position to criticize you, or to discourage you from setting
your goals.
The fifth reason why people don’t set goals - and perhaps the
most important reason of all - is the fear of failure. People
don’t set goals because they are afraid that they might fail. In
fact, the fear of failure is probably the greatest single
obstacle to success in adult life. It can hold you back more
than any other psychological problem.
The primary reason why you fear failure is simply this: You
probably do not understand the role that failure plays in
achievement. The fact is that it is impossible to succeed
without failing. Failure is an indispensable prerequisite for
success. All great success is preceded by great failure. If you
wish to fulfill your potential, you have to be willing to risk
failure over and over and over, because there is no way that you
can ever accomplish worthwhile goals until you have fallen on
your face so many times that you have eventually learned the
lessons that you need for great achievement.
In doing research for his classic book The Law of Success,
Napoleon Hill interviewed more than 500 of the most successful
men and women in America. All of them admitted to him that they
had achieved their greatest successes just one step beyond the
point where they had experienced their greatest failures.
A key to succeeding through goal-setting is expecting temporary
setbacks and obstacles as inevitable parts of the goal-achieving
process.
Now, in order to be successful, you need to focus your mental
and physical energy in a single direction toward a predetermined
objective. People who are especially energetic or talented have
a hard time with this. They are the ones who try to do several
things at once and end up doing nothing well.
Setting well-defined goals enables you to channel your efforts
and focus your energy toward something that’s important to you.
Goal-setting gives you a target to aim at and enables you to
develop the self-discipline to continue working toward your
target rather than becoming distracted and going off in other
directions.
Let me share with you five keys that will help you to reach your
goals more effectively. Each of these keys starts with one of
the letters in the word goals. Whenever you find yourself
getting off the track, simply repeat the word goals, and think
about how each letter stands for a key that just might apply to
your current situation. The first letter is G, and it stands for
get to it. Sometimes, the only difference between a successful
person and a failure is that the successful person has the
courage to get started, to do something, to begin moving toward
the accomplishment of a specific goal.
For example, when I was younger, I realized that because of my
limited education, I was stuck in a low-paying job. I began
reading the want ads and decided that I wanted to work in
advertising, especially as a copywriter. I went to an
advertising agency and applied for the job of writing
advertisements. The head of the agency was very polite, but he
told me that I was unskilled and totally unsuited for the
position. He thanked me for coming in and wished me luck.
Now I was back on the street, but I had a goal. I wanted to be
an advertising copywriter. I immediately took the first step,
which was to learn more about how to write copy, so that I would
not be turned down in the future because of a lack of ability. I
went to the local library and checked out books on the subject
of advertising and copywriting. Over the next 12 months, I
checked out and read every single book in the library on the
subject. Meanwhile, I read magazines and newspapers and thought
about how I could improve their advertising. I wrote sample
advertisements and began taking them to advertising agencies.
To make a long story short, at the end of the 12 months, two of
the largest advertising agencies in the country offered me a job
as a copywriter, and I accepted one of those offers. My income
doubled. I had worked at other jobs in the meantime. But I had
never lost sight of my goal, and I had kept on doing the things
that I needed to do to put myself in a position to eventually
achieve my goal.
You, too, may have a long-range goal. In order to achieve it,
you need to sit down and make a list of all the steps that you
will have to take to get from where you are to where you want to
be. Then begin with the first and most obvious thing that you
can do on that list. Complete it, and then start on number two.
Don’t worry about the long term. Just concentrate on the obvious
first step that you can take. Surprisingly enough, everything
else will take care of itself. The Confucian saying, “A journey
of a thousand leagues begins with a single step,” is so popular
in so many languages because it is so true.
The second letter, O, stands for opportunity. Successful people
do not wait for opportunities to turn their goals into reality;
rather, they make their opportunities, because they are
perfectly clear about the kind of life they wish to create. Once
you have taken the time to decide exactly what you want, you
will experience an endless flow of opportunities that will help
move you in that direction.
For example, a young woman worked for me as an executive
secretary. At the same time, she had a goal to be a successful
real-estate agent and investor. So while she worked for me, she
regularly took night courses to get her real-estate-agent’s
license and also to learn how to buy and sell real estate
profitably. Over the course of a year, she and her husband
bought, fixed up and sold three houses. They made more money
from their real-estate transactions than they did from their
jobs. At the end of the year, she passed the test and got her
real-estate-agent’s license.
Within a few days of getting her license, she and her husband
were sitting in a small restaurant, and they got into a
conversation with a woman at the next table. It turned out that
this woman was a very successful real-estate agent who needed an
executive assistant to work with her and learn the real-estate
profession. They got along so well that my executive secretary
was offered the job, where she would be earning double what she
could earn as a secretary and have an unlimited upside
potential.
My secretary did not wait for an opportunity to come to her. She
set a goal, made a plan and went to work to prepare herself for
the opportunity when it arose.
The letter A stands for ability. Many people hesitate to set
high, challenging goals because they lack the ability necessary
to turn those goals into reality. But remember that we all
lacked knowledge and experience when we started out in our
careers or fields of expertise.
Do you remember when you started your first job? You probably
felt a little clumsy, inadequate and unsure about how to do it
well. As you progressed and got more experience, you became more
and more confident, and in many cases, you did an excellent job
without even thinking much about it.
Since you gain the ability necessary for high achievement
through knowledge and experience, if you increase the speed at
which you acquire both of those, you increase the speed at which
you move ahead. The letter L stands for leadership. Leadership
is simply the ability to get results. And you begin to get
results when you accept full responsibility for yourself, for
your job and for the outputs required in your position.
You demonstrate leadership when you refuse to make excuses or
blame anyone or anything for the problems you are having. The
acceptance of the responsibility of leadership enables you to
move ahead and take action.
When you are not satisfied with your job or income, and you sit
down and make a written plan to change it, and then take action
on that plan, without waiting for anyone’s approval or
permission, you are behaving like a leader.
The final letter, S, stands for stay with it - the resolution to
persist in the face of adversity until you succeed. Between you
and every goal that you wish to achieve, there is a series of
obstacles, and the bigger the goal, the bigger the obstacles.
Your decision to be, have and do something out of the ordinary
entails facing difficulties and challenges that are out of the
ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your
ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.
When you look around you, you will see that all achievement is
the triumph of persistence. You will see men and women
everywhere who are struggling with and overcoming adversities in
order to accomplish something that is important to them. And so
can you.
So these are the words and phrases to remember in setting and
achieving goals: The first is get to it! Get started; take the
first action at hand. The second is opportunity. Begin to
prepare yourself now so that you will be ready for the
opportunities that will inevitably arise. The third is ability.
Resolve to learn what you need to know to live the kind of life
you want to live. The fourth word is leadership. Take charge of
your time and your life, and accept responsibility for your
results. And, finally, stay with it. If you stay with it long
enough, nothing can stop you from finally winning through.
About Brian Tracy
Brian Tracy is a leading
authority on personal and business success. As Chairman and CEO
of
Brian
Tracy International, he is the best-selling author
of 17 books and over 300 audio and video learning programs.
Copyright © 2001 Brian Tracy International. All Rights Reserved.
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