How to set goals and achieve them
How to set goals and achieve them.
Let’s talk about setting goals and how to achieve them. Goal setting is one of the areas of personal development, self-help, etc. most commented. And it’s also one of the things that people do the least. Everyone has heard, you need to set goals, you must set goals, set goals and you will achieve them, but most people don’t. Well, I think there are a couple of reasons we don’t set goals, and I think there are a couple of simple techniques that we can use to set goals and achieve them.
Why don’t we set goals for ourselves? If we know they are so important, why do we avoid them? Well, there was a book written several years ago called Stop Setting Goals If You Prefer to Solve Problems, and it is a book by Bobb Biehl. In the book, he talks about this idea that most people are not motivated by setting goals. Kind of like 80 percent of people when you say set goals, their eyes go glassy and they say, “That doesn’t sound funny at all.” But if you say to them: “I have a problem. Can you help me solve it?”, “Here is a list of problems that we must solve” or “Can you find some of the problems that we can solve?” these people go into action. They love to solve problems. They don’t like setting goals; they like to solve problems. And so maybe only 20 percent of us are really motivated by goal setting. So if we just recognize that many of us would rather solve problems than set goals, that releases a lot of energy because we say, “Okay, it’s not just about setting goals. There are more ways to look at this.” So it’s a one-way way of looking at it.
Another reason people don’t set goals is that they just don’t know how. They never learned the technique of setting goals. And I’d like to introduce you to a goal setting technique right here that I think you will find very valuable. When instructed to set goals or to list all of their goals, what most people do is take out their pencil and paper, sit down and look at the paper, and say, “Okay, I want to be happy,” or “I want to earn some money” or “I want a raise” or “I want my wife to stop scolding me” or whatever, and they are not really in the reality of what would happen if they created a vision for their life, if they created a result that they can see clearly, and then they made it possible. They are not in touch with all the other implications that that would have on their life.
A much better way is to use this powerful tool called the brain and mind, and use them to help you set goals. Before you take the pen and paper and actually write down your goals, it is very important to use this vast tool again that you have to imagine what your life would be like if you had or achieved certain things, or had relationships with certain people. people. If when I say “Okay, give me a list of all your goals”, instead of pulling out a pencil and paper, writing a big list and saying “What do I want?”, You just stop and close your eyes and start imagining different scenarios in your mind. What happens if I achieve this result? What if you were in a relationship with this person? What if you could achieve this? What if I have this in my life? And then ask, what are all the other things that would happen next? What would that lead to? What would that trigger? If I imagine that this is a domino in my life, what other domino would it automatically knock down?
And what you will realize is that if you think about it for a while, and only use your imagination, using your power to think big, you will come up with great goals to achieve. Most people just try to go straight to “I have to write down the goal I want. I want a new car,” and then somehow it will happen automatically. It’s not about that. It’s about asking, if I get a new car, what will happen in my life? And when you ask me if I have a new car, what you might realize is, well, I’ll buy a new car. I’ll get into that. It will be a pleasure to drive. I will be able to show off to other people. I’ll enjoy it.But then you realize, a month or two later, I’m going to get used to my new car and I’m going to make a payment for the bigger car. And you know what, I’m going to lose the thrill of having it, and it’s not really going to mean anything to me except spending more money. The car I have is fine. You may realize that.
On the other hand, the goal might be to build a relationship with a particular mentor in your life and you might start thinking about that. What happens if I establish a relationship with that mentor? And you will realize that yes, I will go to the next level, I will learn a lot of things that I would not have known before, they will introduce me. to other influential and powerful people. I will be able to be advised by some of your friends. That will increase my income, my personal satisfaction. You know what, that’s a really important goal. That’s something I really need to figure out how to do.
So the first step in setting goals is to use the power of your mind to imagine all the results that would happen. Next, if you relate it to the idea of being a problem solver, take the goal you have set for yourself or the vision you have set for yourself and make a list of all the problems you need to solve. To reach the goal. My mentor Jerry Ballinger taught me that for problem solvers, a great mental exercise is to go out into the future and imagine that the goal has been reached. Imagine that you have completed the vision. You have arrived there. And then look back and ask yourself what are all the problems that I had to solve on the way there. And that can become a very useful way for problem solvers to find a list of the things they need to do to reach their goal.
So goal setting and problem solving are like two different muscles, and we want to work on both. We don’t want to just jump in and make a list of the things we want. We really want to use our minds to find out, if I reach this goal, what will it mean to me? And once we’ve found a goal that will explode our lives in the most positive way, and that will actually bring us more, and more, and more of what we want, then we really want to think about it. We want to seriously consider that as a goal we set for ourselves. And then once we’ve set that goal, we’ve chosen it, we want to go back and we want to say, okay, now, I’m going to go into the future. I’m going to look back and say what were all the problems that I had to solve on the way to creating this goal?
I want to say one more thing here. If you really want you to achieve your goals, ask yourself the question, what conditions do I have to establish in my life so that the result I want to achieve, or the goal I want to achieve, is? it will happen automatically. If I set these conditions, it will happen automatically. It is one of my favorite questions because it takes you to a higher level, you set your goal, you walk away and you are seeing the whole situation. And instead of just saying it’s okay, how do I get this, you’re saying, what conditions do I have to set in life? And the conditions can be relationships with people. They can be configurations, so you do one thing and make something else happen. Conditions can be many different things in your physical, emotional, relationships. And when you ask, what conditions do I set for the goal to happen automatically, it just makes you think on a different level, and I think it will help you reach your goals much faster? So, use these goal setting techniques and see how you reach them faster than you thought possible.
