Don’t Just Set Goals — Achieve Them
As one famous book title put it, If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, You’ll Probably End Up Somewhere Else. As a society, we love setting goals and making plans. The practice of coming up with resolutions and plans for self-improvement is one reason New Year’s Eve is such a popular holiday (in addition to all of the champagne, of course). But it is one thing to set an ambitious goal and quite another to stick to a regimen for the long haul to ensure that it becomes a tangible reality. Many teach goal setting, yet few achieve it.
As it turns out, many of our techniques for setting goals simply don’t work — if they did, more of us would find fulfillment in our work and achieve the goals that we set for ourselves.
The root of the problem lies in the goals we set. Too many of us are not sure what it is we want for ourselves, or what we want from life. We often tell stories about ourselves that don’t match up to reality, or turn to dogma and others’ ways of thinking. How many of us have chased the corporate ladder or a plum position based on influence from others rather than determining ourselves what would be the best options for our particular talents? We may know deep down what it is that we are seeking, but our subconscious and conscious thinking don’t match up. Rather than tapping into our inner feelings, we are drifting by, letting the influence of the outside world dictate our feelings and desires.
Finding my own purpose — and helping others determine their own unique purpose — has been the driving mission throughout a good portion of my professional career. My greatest sense of satisfaction has been derived not from my own accomplishments or bank account, but from the contentment I feel in guiding others to uncover the plans that are right for them.
My books, trainings, and curriculum are innovative, even revolutionary, in that I don’t merely teach you about goal setting, I give you the tools to achieve your goals. I help you through each step of the process by showing you how to program your subconscious so that it aligns with your conscious thoughts. Through this system, you create small, actionable steps you can take each day to drive you toward the life you desire. When you align your daily thoughts and actions with your deeper, fundamental impulses, the challenges of figuring out how to prioritize the tasks in your daily schedule are eliminated and you stay on track for your purpose throughout each moment of every day. These functions become effortless. You will wake up each and every day ablaze with a sense of purpose, clarifying which tasks you should focus on — which you also want to focus on — to create your new world and everything you want in it. You go from goal setting to goal achieving.
What I have found throughout my years of consulting is that the most successful among us are those who exhibit no tension between their innermost convictions and their daily routines or behavior. They have achieved a unified purpose and spirit that allows them to shut out the minutia and noise that threaten to distract us all each day. Their ability to tap into their inner reservoirs is not just a tactic to meditate or enjoy contemplative inner happiness — they are able to more efficiently harness their energy to create the tangible freedom and lifestylefor which they’re aiming.
Here are the critical steps to uncovering your innermost desires from your subconscious mind:
• See what you want to see. Our brains are flooded each day with a cornucopia of stimuli. Even if you aren’t a big television viewer, advertisements and propaganda will follow you just about everywhere you go, especially if you live or work near a big urban area. Resist the temptation to just see the default images the world throws at you. It is critical to train your brain to toss out images and messages that seek to turn you into a passive consumer or fearful citizen. Instead of dwelling upon all of the haphazard images flooding in, take responsibility — you should, and can, be the one who decides what your brain focuses on. Don’t let whatever force currently has the media in thrall dictate what your mood or focus is going to be today.
• Be deliberate in setting your goals. Don’t just write down a bucket list of things you want to accomplish. Strive to write out your objectives in a deliberate fashion to help ensure that your ideas will bleed down deep into the recesses of your subconscious thinking. This will involve prioritizing your lists, not just writing down every passing idea that flitters across your mind. Remember that not choosing what is most important to you leads to making a choice in and of itself. By telling yourself what you are most invested in seeing accomplished, you dictate the course for your daydreaming and nocturnal thoughts to consider during your down time. One of the best ways to see if a goal is important to you after creating your list is to go take a few minutes and actually visualize each item on your list. The ones that you can see most easily and create an emotional response for are likely the most important to you.
• Give yourself a positive direction. Set a positive tone for your subconscious mind. This is not just “positive thinking” as is often talked about by other gurus. When you align your outer thoughts and those of your subconscious, the congruency creates a positive environment in which to live and create. Maintaining positive and constructive thoughts through deliberate mantras will help ensure that your inner thoughts are geared toward positive outcomes rather than dwelling on old mistakes and failures. I call these PPMs, or Personal Programming Messages. The brain can react very harshly and quickly to negative words and stimuli, which is why you must be so vigilant about the tone and quality of the material you let into your brain — even if they come from your favorite television shows or from a friend. This is where your PPMs take over and keep your mind clear and focused. Give your mind the freedom to focus on what may come tomorrow rather than endlessly cycling through what has already been done and finished. How?
• Take care at bedtime and when you wake in the morning. Before you go to sleep at night and just after you wake up are two of the most crucial periods of time to determining the quality and strength of what you are pondering in your subconscious mind. The dream state you reside in over-night is by no means wasted time, despite the heroics that so many of us go to in avoiding sleep and pulling all-nighters. In actuality, this period is a ripe time for your mind to recharge and chew over your challenges in an entirely new way that can leave you feeling completely refreshed and ready to tackle your goals anew in the morning. Set yourself up for success by taking some deep breaths at night right before you go to sleep. Just listen to the state of your breathing. Then take a few minutes and listen to a recording of PPMs, which you made, in your voice. By entering the night in a relaxed state, and your PPMs firmly placed in your subconscious for the night, you will be more readily able to focus on positive goals in your dreams. And do the same thing when you wake to set your day and your mind to focus throughout the day.
Do these practices ring familiar? Likely not for most people. But what is stopping you from giving them a try? You have nothing to lose — and everything to gain. In fact, I expect that if you take what I have said, even just these few steps, you can go from setting goals to achieving them, just like so many people that have implemented what I am talking about. You create your future, and you are the one in charge.