Goal Setting for the New Year-If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, Any Road Will Get You There

Dec. 10, 2010 - PRLog -- By employing the four action steps for empowering goals, you will have laid the foundation:
   Creating a vision
   Focus on what you want
   Write down your goals
   Repeat mental rehearsals (affirmations)

Creating a Vision (Dreaming the Impossible Dream):
Let’s begin with Action Step One, Creating a Vision.  Creating a Vision is your ability to formulate creative ideas on a large scale and turn the impossible into the possible, or often called daydreaming. Dreaming comes easier to some of us than others.  Children do it easily.  Were you ever caught daydreaming?  Most of us were and as children we were programmed that daydreaming was a negative activity and we never wanted to be caught doing it. Forget the “daydreaming police” and look at unlimited possibilities available to you.

Focus on what you want:
Action Step Two is to focus on exactly on what you what.  Become very clear on the final outcome that you want to experience. An interesting side note is that in working with both men and women on goal setting, there was a difference in how they related their goals to me.  When men shared their goals, their vision of their future in their personal life and careers, most talked about what they were doing to make it happened. Almost without exception, they would talk about what they wanted.  Women, almost without exception, talked about what they didn’t want.

Writing down your goals:
Having your goals clearly in mind is establishing your purpose.  The act of writing down your goals adds even more power to them, which is Action Step Three.  You make a contract with yourself when you write down your goals.  
When you incorporate the following four components, you are personalizing and adding specifics to the outcome.

1.First person, singular (I)
2.Present Tense (Write your goals “I am” rather than past tense, “I have” or future tense, “I will”)
3.As if it had already happened (Not that you want something, but that what you want, you already have)
4.And finally, put some “pizzazz” and excitement to your goals by using words that are full of energy and create a sense of happiness, contentment, pride, accomplishment and fun!

By writing your goals in first person, you have not only made a contract with yourself but have also accepted the responsibility for the goal.  When you say “I,” it puts you in control of the outcome of your life.

Writing your goals in present tense makes goal setting an active process.  If you write them in past tense such as “I have lost ten pounds,” your conscious and subconscious say, “Good! Now I don’t have to do anything else.”  When you word your goal in future tense, such as “I will start my diet tomorrow,” tomorrow never comes.

When you write your goals as if you were enjoying the success of accomplishment, it adds excitement and vitality to your purpose.  That is why you want to include positive, emotionally charged words in your affirmations to help you “feel” the results you want.  

INEFFECTIVE GOAL:  I will be Vice President of Marketing in two years.
EMPOWERING GOAL:  On June 10, I am filled with pride and a sense of accomplishment as I send out letters to friends and colleagues announcing my promotion to Vice President of Marketing.

Talking to yourself?  We all knew you were a little strange.
You’ve thought about your goals, you’ve learned a technique for writing them and now you’re going to add even more power to them by incorporating Action Step Four – repeated mental rehearsals into the goal setting process.  Repeated mental rehearsals (affirmations) allow you to see yourself during each step on the way to achieving your goals as well as seeing yourself enjoying the final outcome.  Affirmations re-energize your efforts. They demonstrate your ability to take a nebulous thought to success.

The ability to set and achieve goals is essential to happiness and success.  Striving to achieve goals puts you in charge of your life.  Goal setting is an active process for change that leads tangible results.  It is a tool that guides you from daydreaming to reality and the rewards of your efforts.  Every time you achieve even one action step on the way to your long range goal, it makes you stronger.  Seeing your progress is a great motivator to make more changes, take more risks and dig into more of your action steps.

When you are actively involved in goal-setting, you are giving your full attention and focus to your life. Be patient with yourself as you move confidently toward your goals. I have always laughed when I have heard the imposing question, “How do you eat an elephant?”  The answer of course is, “one bite at a time.”  Another favorite saying is “Inch by inch it is a cinch.  Yard by yard it is hard.”

Contact Management Training Systems, Inc. at 623-587-7644 for management consulting, strategic planning, employee development and coaching needs.

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