Chapter 3
- Step One: Decide Exactly What You Want
- Step Two: Write Down Your Goals
- Step Three: Be Willing To Pay The Price
- Step Four: Make A Detailed Plan
- Step Five: Take Action On Your Plan
- Step Six: Do Something Everyday
- Step Seven: Never Give Up
- The Power Of Commitment
- Action Exercises
Step One: Decide Exactly What You Want
A real goal is clear, specific, measurable, and time bounded. A non-goal – a wish or a hope – is fuzzy and unclear. It is a fantasy that floats in the air. People with clear, specific goals, who know exactly what they want, are very different from, people who are going through life hoping for the best. Your ability to decide exactly what it is you want in each area of your life is one of the most important responsibilities of adult life. (45)
With clear goals, you can do almost anything. Without them, you can do virtually nothing.
One of the major reasons that people fail in life is because they waste so much of their time doing things of low value or no value at all. And the reason they waste so much time is because they have no real idea of what they really want.
Once you have clear goals, your ability to manage time improves dramatically.
Use Your Time Well
Here is a way to decide whether something is a good use of your time. Just ask, “Does this move me toward the achievement of one of my goals?” If the activity helps you to achieve a goal you have set for yourself, it is a good use of time. If it doesn’t it is a poor use of time.
When you get into the habit of only doing those things that move you toward your goals, your life will take off. Your results will improve. You will soon find yourself busy every hour of every day doing things that are helping in some way. You will have no time left to spend on activities that aren’t helping you to achieve one of your goals.
When you set clear goals for yourself, and you know exactly what you want, you will become increasingly impatient with activities that are not helping you in some way. You will watch less television. You will listen to less radio. You will read the newspapers quickly, if at all. You will become far more selective with your friends and your social activities. You will spend time only with people you enjoy, people you can learn and benefit from.
Step Two: Write Down Your Goals
Write down your goals on paper. There is something quite incredible that happens between the brain and the hand. When you take a paper and pen and write down your goals, you activate the Laws of Expectation, Attraction, and Correspondence simultaneously. You intensify your belief and deepen your conviction that your goals are possible for you. The very act of writing down your goals gives you a sense of control and personal power. Written goals increase your resolve and determination to do whatever is necessary to achieve them. (47)
Step Three: Be Willing To Pay The Price
Determine the price you are going to have to pay to achieve your goal. Make a list of everything that you are going to have to do if you want to make your goal a reality.
Are you going to have to start each day’s work a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later? Write it down. Are you going to have to upgrade your knowledge and skills, and take additional courses. Again, write it down. Are you going to have to change jobs, change industries, or change careers in order to achieve everything that is possible for you? Write it down.
The Law of Cause and Effect is the iron law of the universe. For everything that you want, there is a price that must be paid. This price must be paid in full and in advance.
Step Four: Make A Detailed Plan
Make a plan, in writing. Remember, the ability to develop written goals and create plans for their achievement is the master skill of success. A plan begins with making a list of all things that you can think of that you are going to have to do to achieve your goal. Once you have made your list, you can add new items as they occur to you.
You then organize your list in terms of priority and sequence. What are the most important things on the list that you will have to do to achieve your goal? What are the things that you will have to do before you do something else? Which items on your list are dependent on you your completing other items first?
A plan of action gives you a track to run on. It increases your level of belief and intensifies your desire for the goal. You gradually become convinced that your goal is actually possible and achievable for you. You begin to see possibilities that you may not even have been aware of in the absence of a written plan.
Step Five: Take Action On Your Plan
Take action of some kind in the direction of your goal. Once you have set a goal, written it down, determined the price that you are going to have to pay, and made a plan, you must take some action immediately. Even if you only make one phone call or collect one piece of information, be sure to do something.
There is something powerful in your willingness to take a specific action, in faith, in the direction of your goal, with no guarantee of success. Your action itself seems to trigger all kinds of other powers and forces in the universe. You activate the Law of Attraction to help you. When you take action, you demonstrate to yourself, and to others for that matter, that you are really serious about your goal.
Until you have taken a specific, irrevocable action of some kind, you have merely engaged in an enjoyable exercise, like day-dreaming. You have put your key into the ignition but you haven’t turned it on.
Step Six: Do Something Everyday
Do something every day that moves you toward your most important goal. This is a vital success principle that generates energy and enthusiasm. For you to maintain your courage, confidence, and self-motivation, you must be doing something every single day that gives you a feeling of forward motion and progress. Your job is to build yourself up to the point where you genuinely feel unstoppable, and the only way that you can do this is by refusing to stop, by doing something daily.
Step Seven: Never Give Up
Resolve in advance that you will never quit once you have started toward your goal. No matter how many setbacks or obstacles you experience, make the decision that you will keep on picking yourself up and persisting until you eventually succeed.
The Power Of Commitment
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is an elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment that one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidences and meetings and material assistance that no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
Action Exercises
1. What one great goal would you set for yourself if you were absolutely guaranteed success?
2. Make out a “dream list”; write down everything you would like to have in your life someday, exactly as if you had no limitations.
3. Imagine your perfect lifestyle; if you were financially independent and you could live any way and anywhere you wanted, what would you change?
4. Make a list of 10 goals you would like to accomplish in the next year. From that list, select one goal that would have the greatest positive impact on your life if you could achieve it right now.
5. Write your most important goal on a separate piece of paper. Make it measureable and set a deadline for its accomplishment.
6. Make a written plan to achieve this one goal. Write out a list of everything you can think of that you will have to do to accomplish it.
7. Take action on your plan immediately. Once you have started, discipline yourself to do something every day that moves you toward that goal. Never miss a day until you have achieved it.