Goals and Success
(Audio File and Transcript)
Everybody dreams of something that they want in life, but unfortunately, not everybody is willing to do the work necessary to turn those dreams into reality.
Turning dreams into reality begins with turning your dreams into a goal. Dreams are what you wish would happen, but goals are what you’ve decided you’re going to make happen. And if you interviewed a thousand successful people, that’s the one thing that would separate them from all the rest. At some point they decided exactly what they wanted and they went out after it. They created their outcome in their mind and then each day gathered whatever they could to complete that outcome.
If you think about it, this is really the only logical approach. If you want to arrive somewhere in life, you first have to decide where that “somewhere” is. Creating clear goals for ourselves and focusing on them on a regular basis is the most important work we can do if we want to steadily increase the level of success we experience in our life.
And it’s important to note, when it comes to setting these goals, if we really plan on making them real the least we’ll do is take the time to write them down.
Lets face it: Our minds are a confusing blob of electrical energy…We’ve got intangible ideas, and beliefs, emotions, thoughts, hopes, and fears bouncing around in there.
But we live in a physical world…so we’ve got to convert those intangible things into real things before we can really get our hands on them. And one way to translate all that into a physical form is to put words to paper.
Once we pull those things out of our mind it’s much easier to put them in perspective. It’s easier for us to structure the ideas, for us to prioritize them, or, just take apart the bad and improve upon the good. And it also frees up a lot of mental energy that we had been using trying to keep track of everything in our head.
Keep in mind, we’re not writing a novel here. Nobody has to see what we’ve written and nothing is cast in stone. Just get it out, and start working with it.
Of all the things people avoid, this seems to be the favorite.
And I’ve got to admit, when I first started trying to improve my life, I didn’t want to do this either. …But in my case, it was just a matter of being afraid to do it.
I was afraid I’d take the time to think about every detail, get really excited, write it all down, and then not be able to make it happen. I was afraid I’d look at exactly what I wanted in life and then feel like I might have to settle for less.
Fortunately, at some point I started thinking about how stupid it was for me to think that way.
Seriously, if it was painful for me to think about NOT having what I truly wanted in life, why would I choose the one course of action that GUARANTEED I’d never have it? How could I ever move closer to what I truly wanted, if I wouldn’t even take the time to figure out what that was, write it down, and commit to getting there?
Well, I did some more thinking and I realized something… there was really only three things that could happen once I’d set my mind to a particular goal:
I was either going to:
A) Make progress towards the goal
B) Achieve the goal, or
C) Give up on it
Whether I wanted to lose 10 pounds or save the world, that was pretty much all that could happen.
And I’ve got to figure; the same rule applies for everyone else.
Look, here are the facts:
5 years from now our lives are going to be different whether we want them to be or not. We’ll either have moved closer to what we want in life (By learning and doing what’s necessary to get us there) or we’ll have moved further away from it (by doing nothing and letting time that we could’ve used pass us by.)
Whether you’re 8 or 80, starting today, you either begin the process of moving closer to what you want, or you begin the process of moving away from what you want. Each day is a choice for one or the other.
Making the right choice (making plans for our future) is something we’ve got to decide to do…and often, the only thing that stands in our way…the only thing stopping us from making that extremely important decision is doubt.
Think about it. What if 5 years ago you realized you could literally achieve anything you wanted, no ifs ands or buts about it? What would you have gone after? And NOW, 5 years later, how different would your life be?
In 5 years, I went from renting an efficiency apartment, to owning free and clear a $300,000 home. (Update here) And I’ll tell you something, I know that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t made it one of my goals.
The truth is, there’s no person on this planet that can’t improve their life in some way, regardless of how developed or undeveloped their life may be.
Accepting that what we have is “all that can be had” is a lie. Anyone can become more in so many different ways there’s no end to our potential for growth. There’s never a day that we can’t strengthen our ability in one area or another. When it comes right down to it, the only person that can keep us from becoming more…The only person that can truly stand in our way…is us.
It’s common knowledge that ALL animals avoid what they fear. And, we of course are no different. There could be any number of things that are keeping us from setting goals and going after them, but if I had to guess, more often than not, I’d say it’s a fear of failure that stops us from trying…and as we already know, if we don’t try, we’re guaranteed to fail, so what we need to do here is: we need to get rid of the possibility of failure completely. Obviously, if we cannot fail, then we must succeed.
And the logical question is going to be: How can you eliminate the possibility of failure? It’s really pretty simple: We redefine what success is.
Most people define success as “the completion or attainment of a goal.” And the main problem with using that definition is, it immediately presents your mind an image of how it could fail.
We’ve got to stop thinking of success as a finish line that we’re going to cross some day. Success isn’t a finish line…Success is an ongoing process; success is a byproduct of our progress.
And each day that we make progress towards what we’re trying to achieve in life is a day that we gather success. We can assemble that success in different shapes, or draw finish lines with it if we like, but true success comes as a result of us continuing to grow in some way.
By working towards improving our lives, we succeed in the mere act of doing so. And all of the defined goals we reach are just mile markers. They’re all just a part of the total success that we eventually come to experience in our life.
Once you realize that – Once that becomes your definition of success, there is no failure, there are only opportunities each day to continue adding to who you are…to increase yourself in some way. Whether it’s financially, creatively, spiritually, intellectually, you name it, there’s a limitless supply of increase available to you. And because of that fact, there will always be a limitless supply of success.
Wrapping up this chapter there’s just three things that I want to remind you of. They’re all very important.
- If we want to CHOOSE the direction of our lives, we’ve got to be willing to invest some effort. Setting clear goals, writing them down, and looking at them on a regular basis is the best place to begin investing that effort.
- Writing things down is an extremely effective way to get elusive images and ideas out of your mind and into the real world. Once you’ve done that, it becomes much easier for you to control, shape and use them.
- Success is a process, not a destination. Until the game’s officially over (and you get that big promotion to the other side of existence) there’s no limit to the amount of increase available to you and because so, there’s no limit to the ways in which you can succeed.
Now in the next chapter, we’re going to talk about one of the most effective ways to access the tremendous power of both your conscious and your subconscious mind. From entrepreneurs to professional athletes, movie stars to world leaders, nearly all would agree that visualization plays a huge role in achievement.
By 2005, I had not only sold my business but also my “3,000-square-foot house” along with other “toys” and moved to a 1200 square foot home (on more land) in New Hampshire. I will eventually write the story of why I did this in greater detail. For now it is enough to say that “wealth” had provided me time to study…and in my studies I realized that the $10,000 per month I was sending to Washington DC, in the form of “Income Taxes,” was doing more to HARM America than help it. I came to realize that my “contributions” were being used by very bad people to do inexcusable things. Again, someday I will write the full story. For now, you can check out www.DishonestMoney.com for a “light introduction” to the topic of corruption in “high places.”
This does not substantively change anything I’ve written in “The 1-Hour Guide to Successful Thinking.” Each person has to choose the life that is right for THEM. For me, two things became very important: 1) I wanted to cut my income so I could (legally) cut my taxes and 2) I wanted to expand my efforts to learn about and expose the crimes taking place at the highest levels of government. ...And that's what I've done. --Return to previous spot on page
