Got your goals for 2003?
by Paul Shearstone
Inspiration without application improves nothing, benefits no one and fans the flames of mediocrity!
Ask anybody on 2 Jan 2003 if they have New Year’s Resolutions or goals and nine out of ten will say: "Yes!"
Ask the same people about their resolutions three months later and they'll look at you like a small goat discovering a new fence for the first time.
All good intentions aside, exhaustive studies have shown that only 3% of the population engages in some form of goal-setting and on average, only 1% write them down.
It should be noted that there is no small coincidence that the 1% who write their goals down are the highest achieving, highest income-earning men and women around the world.
Setting goals is the genesis from which things great and not so great are accomplished. Read any book on achievement and you’ll see the quintessential message: Goals = Success!
If it's that simple though, why is it then most people are so unsuccessful in the fundamentals of Real goal-setting?
One legitimate answer may be our generation is busier than any generation in the past. Life today is not static and our preoccupation with just trying to 'get by' runs juxtaposed to the activities needed for maintaining concentrated goal achievement. Fair enough.
On the other hand, these same studies I mentioned are just as clear on the real reason most people - the ones who bother to set goals - will never achieve them. They don't write them down, relying rather they be left to our memories to manage.
In my soon to be released Thought Book, I wrote: Your goals are future landmarks on paths created by You.
Goal experts, however, will be quick to point out, "Unwritten goals are nothing more than Wishes"... and we know the world is full of people with plenty of wishes. Go to any lottery office or anywhere that sell things like DotCom Stock. In one place they wish they'd bought more, in the other they wish they hadn't bought any at all!
Real goal-achievement has nothing to do with merely wishing or thinking of what we'd like to accomplish, and everything to do with Not Forgetting.
As the young man once said: "My memory is the thing I use to forget with." If we buy-off on the precept, we are now the busiest, most preoccupied generation. It's no stretch then to believe the experts when they say: "Goals left only to memory are destined to fade like so many wishes."
Before we look for the remedy to the goal-achievement challenge, it's important we understand the fundamental psychology of goal setting. That is to say, how it works.
Psychological studies on the highest achieving men and women demonstrate that people with clear, specific goals, immediately and by default, become psychologically Goal Oriented individuals. [No mystery there].
Since goals take place in the future, those with goals also by default become psychologically, motivationally, Future Oriented individuals.
Finally, since we can agree we go to the trouble of having goals because we want to achieve them, another automatic psychological outcome is we immutably become psychologically, motivationally, human-behaviourally, actively, Success Oriented individuals.
[To put that into perspective, we can all think of people we know who are Failure Oriented individuals].
These hallmarks are known as the Three Unique Psychological Success Orientations - the stuff that governs everything we do in the present, the moment, the now, as we go about our lives putting people, places and things together to affect positive outcomes in the future as it relates to our goals.
That is, if we don't forget them!
The good news is, the simple act of reviewing our goals and activities on a daily basis serves to ensure we don't forget them - thereby keeping them fresh, clear, specific and at the front of our mind.
As mentioned and psychological studies show, unforgotten goals quite naturally engender Unique Psychological Success Orientations that by default, impact in a positive way, our thoughts and activities as we go through our lives focused undauntedly on things we wish to accomplish.
The Bottom Line:
More often than not, those without goals find themselves directionless and relying mostly on things like luck. Goal-Setting is only the first step. Constant Goal-Review is the activity that ensures Goal-Achievement and Success!
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