1) Be Crystal Clear About What You Want From Your Opportunity
2) Focus On The Next Level
3) Don’t Alienate The People You Showed Up To Your Opportunity With
4) Learn to Read Between The Lines
5) Develop The “Necessary” Skills ASAP
6) Avoid Becoming a Self-Help JunkieThe last step is to become a goal-hitter, not just a goal-setter, which is infinitely more important in the long run. I feel I can write about this with supreme confidence because if they could give out awards for goal-setting, I’d be the undisputed champion. I’d go to goal-setting workshops, sometimes several times a year, and write out all these elaborate goals lists, that were supposed to be tied into my deep desires and wind up accomplishing only 1-2% of my list. In my experience, this happens far too often with people who take time out to write out goals. Now I am not saying you shouldn’t write out goals, but it’s important, if you’re going to write them out at all – to write them out knowing you’re going to accomplish them. Too many people write out these goals, many of them aren’t even that important to the person to begin with, and end up forgetting about them altogether. If you’re going to do that, you might as well not go through the hassle of writing them out in the first place.
On the other hand, I am not one of these guys who believes you should write out your goals every single day . . . But, I do think it makes a lot of sense to think and talk about your goals everyday. In fact, I think you should be talking about your goals as often as possible. Now this doesn’t mean you become an annoying braggart who everyone does their best to avoid because you’re an arrogant jerk. I don’t believe you should be be telling everyone your goals and dreams in the first place. Too many times I have done this and have been bombarded by people giving me their uninvited opinions of what I should really be doing with my time. Instead, talk about your goals with your core group of friends and family you feel confident in confiding in. More importantly, think about your goals throughout your day. It’s my belief that you can condition yourself into believing you can accomplish any goal just by keeping it in front of you as often as possible – if you speak things enough, eventually they will come to pass. I have seen it too many times to believe this is just luck or coincidence. I’ve seen people with I.Q.’s much lower than mine, blow me away in terms of lifestyle, life experiences and wealth, simply because they talked a big game, believed it with every cell in their bodies and worked on creating that in their lives whenever they got to work.
It got me thinking, maybe I need to start “feeling” this stuff a whole lot more than just writing it out a few times a year and forgetting about it, only to wind up going through the same process all over again and never accomplishing anything that had major impact. Earl Schoaff, “the millionaire maker” was in favor of writing out your goals once, putting it away and getting to work on them. Brian Tracy favors writing your goals every single day in the morning on a 3×5 index card and carrying it around with you wherever you go. Many other self-improvement gurus have their own spin on what they feel works and what they believe can work for you, and although I won’t go so far as to call my self a “self-improvement guru,” I do have my own process now when I go through my goal achieving process. The first is to change the way you feel about the whole process. “Goal-setting” has been used for so long and in my case, has meant more failure than success, I felt it necessary to give it a whole new label altogether. I refer to it as the “Goal Achieving Process”, versus a goal-setting workshop and it consists of writing your goals out at least once a week and meditating on them once in the morning before you start your day, and at night while you’re falling to sleep. I believe if you do those 3 steps on a consistent basis, you’ll automatically keep those goals in your head, thus, causing you to “feel” like working on them, instead of procrastinating or worse – forgetting about them altogether.
A challenge of the goal-hitting process for most is accomplishing the least important goals and totally giving up on the rest. For example if your goal list had 10 items on it and you only accomplished one thing off that list, but it had the most impact out of all 10 – then that percentage would not really mean so much, would it? But, if your list looked anything like mine, it would have over 1,000 different goals and accomplishing 1% of that comes out to about 10-12 accomplished goals. The problem with that number is that the goals I accomplished had very little overall impact, as opposed to some of the other goals I had.
Now goals are subjective and the value they have is dependent on how the goal-setter perceives them, so with that understanding, some people are going to see their accomplished goals as having deeper impact than maybe an outside objective person would have. In any case, if you have 100 goals (let’s keep a nice round number for simplicity) and you accomplish 10 like:
1) Bought a new laptop
2) Bought a new wardrobe
3) Joined MLM business
4) Read 3 sales books
5) Got my presentation down cold
6) Learned everything about my company’s products and history
7) Took my significant other to their favorite restaurant for our anniversary
Researched the fitness equipment I plan on buying
9) Went to the dealer and drove the car I plan on buying
10) Made a game plan to shed 20 lbs and become healthier
After sitting back and looking at this list of “accomplished” goals, and comparing them to some of the other goals on the list they came from, your view of them might change. For example, some of the other goals on the original goal list might have been:
1) Shed 20 lbs
2) Visit with 30 people in my first 30 days of starting with my new MLM company
3) Earn $2,000 in one month with my new company
4) Take my significant other on a 5 day cruise
5) Save up $5,000 and use that, along with my current car to get my new car
After looking at just 5 other goals off the same list, which list would have looked more impressive to you if both set of lists had been accomplished? So in the end, you want to go for ALL your goals, but you want to keep the most impactful goals in your purview at all times. I think if you mix that idea with the others ideas I shared with you throughout this series, you will find yourself way ahead of your competition, and earning more money, while enjoying yourself – all at the same time.
