by Brian Tracy
I had just never given any thought to the process of goal attainment. I had never realized that it is a specific procedure that I could use to accomplish amazing things. Like most people, I was moving randomly through life, reacting and responding rather than focusing and concentrating. As motivational speaker Zig Ziglar says, I was a “wandering generality rather than a meaningful specific.”
Then I discovered goals and was never the same again. My whole life has been different since I learned the master skill, and yours will be, too.
GOALS ARE THE FUEL
Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. A person without goals is like a ship without a rudder, drifting aimlessly and always in danger of ending up on the rocks. A person with goals is like a ship with a rudder, guided by a captain with a map, a compass, and a destination, sailing straight and true toward a port of his own choosing. Thomas Carlyle wrote that “a man with a half volition goes back and forth and makes no progress on even the smoothest road, whereas a person with a full volition moves ahead steadily no matter how difficult the path.”
Human beings, you and I, are goal-centered organisms. We are teleological in that we are motivated by purposes, by desired end states. We are engineered mentally to move progressively and successively from one goal to the next, and we are never really happy unless, and until, we are moving toward the accomplishment of something that is important to us.
Your brain has within it a goal-seeking mechanism that guides and directs you unerringly over time toward the accomplishment of your objectives. This cybernetic faculty is like the guidance system in a missile; it continually takes in feedback from the target and automatically corrects your course. Because of this mechanism in your brain, you accomplish almost any goal you set for yourself, as long as the goal is clear and you persist long enough. The process of achieving your goals is almost automatic. It is the goal setting in the first place that seems to be the big problem for most people.
It is a truism that each of us is achieving the goals we have set. You are where you are and what you are because you have decided to be there. Your thoughts, your actions and your behavior have gotten you to your present position in life, and they could have brought you to no other place, rightly considered.
If your goal is to get through the day and then get home and watch television, you will achieve it. If your goal is to be fit and healthy and to live a long life, then you will achieve that, too. And if your goal is to be financially independent or even wealthy, if that is truly your goal, then there is nothing that can stop you from reaching it, sooner or later. Your only limitation is your desire: How badly do you want it?
YOUR SUCCESS MECHANISM
You are equipped with both a “success mechanism” and a “failure mechanism.” Your failure mechanism is your natural tendency to follow the path of least resistance, your impulse toward immediate gratification with little or no concern for the long-term consequences of your actions. Your failure mechanism operates automatically twenty-four hours per day. Every minute, every hour, it ticks away, and most people allow their desire for what is fun, easy and convenient to determine most of what they do.
However, you also have a success mechanism built into your brain. Your success mechanism can override your failure mechanism. And your success mechanism is triggered by a goal. The bigger your goal and the more intensely you desire it, the more likely you will be to exert your powers of self-discipline and willpower, and the more capable you will be of making yourself do the things that you need to do to get where you want to go.
After a career of fifty years, during which he personally worked with and trained more than twenty thousand sales people, Elmer Letterman concluded that the one quality that was most predictive of success was what he called “Intensity of Purpose.” Taking any two people with the same relative levels of intelligence, background, education and experience, the one with the greatest intensity of purpose will always win out over the other.
TWO REQUIREMENTS FOR SUCCESS
The famous oil billionaire H. L. Hunt, who went bankrupt raising cotton in Arkansas and then went on to build a fortune of several billion dollars and become one of the world’s richest men, was once asked his formula for success.
He said that in America, you only needed two things to be successful: “First,” he said, “decide exactly what it is you want. Most people never do that. Second, determine the price you’re going to have to pay to get it, and then resolve to pay that price.”
The great weakness of most people is that, even if they have some idea of what they want, they have never sat down and thought through what it will take to get it, and whether or not they are willing to pay that price.
We only know two things for certain about the price of success. First, in order to get whatever you desire, however you define it, you must pay the price in full. You must sow before you reap. And you may have to work a long time before you harvest the crop. This is the working of the Iron Law, the immutable Law of Cause and Effect. Most frustration in goal attainment comes from trying to violate this timeless principle.
Second, you have to pay the full price in advance. Success is not like going to a restaurant where you can pay the bill after you’ve enjoyed the dinner. The success that you desire requires payment in full, in advance, every single time.
And how can you tell if you have paid the full price of success? That’s easy. When you have paid the full price, the success will be there in front of you for all to see. It will happen by law, not by chance. When you’ve sown, you will reap; cause and effect, action and reaction. The life you are enjoying today is a reflection of the price you’ve paid up to now. The life you enjoy in the future will reflect the price you pay between now and then.
GOALS MAKE THE LAWS WORK FOR YOU
I described several mental laws in earlier chapters. You may be a bit unsure about how you are going to remember to use and apply all of these laws. Fortunately, you don’t have to. When you have a clearly defined goal toward which you are working every day, all these laws work automatically and in harmony with your purposes. You align yourself with the powers of the universe. You unlock the incredible reserves of potential that lie within you. When you organize your whole life in concert with these timeless principles, you begin accomplishing things that you never dreamed possible, and with less effort than you had believed necessary.
The greatest single enemy of your potential for greater success and achievement is your comfort zone, your tendency to get stuck in a rut and then to resist all change, even positive change, that would force you out of it.
Everyone naturally fears and avoids change. We want things to stay the same, but simultaneously to get better. However, all growth, all progress, all advancement requires change. And change is inevitable. In spite of anything you do, life never goes on the same way for very long. It is always changing in one direction or another. Things are either getting better for you or getting worse, but they never stay the same.
As you recall, the Law of Control states that you feel positive about yourself to the degree to which you feel you’re in control of your own life. The first benefit of goal setting is that goals allow you to control the direction of change in your life, ensuring that change is predominantly positive and self-determined. No one fears a change that represents an improvement. With clear goals, backed by detailed plans of action, you ensure that the changes that are taking place represent improvements in your life and you eliminate a major cause of fear and insecurity.
The Law of Cause and Effect states that for every effect in your life there is a specific cause. Goals are causes: Health, happiness, freedom and prosperity are effects. You sow goals and you reap results. Goals begin as thoughts, or causes, and manifest themselves as conditions or effects. The primary cause of success in life is the ability to set and achieve goals.
That’s why people who do not have goals are doomed forever to work for those who do. You either work to achieve your own goals or yo
u work to achieve someone else’s goals. The best work of all is when you are achieving your own goals by helping others to achieve theirs.
You trigger the Law of Belief by intensely believing that you will achieve your goals, and by taking actions consistent with those beliefs. This is the foundation of faith and self-confidence.
You trigger the Law of Expectations by confidently expecting that everything that is happening, positive or negative, is moving you toward the realization of your goals. You look for something beneficial in every event, a valuable lesson, something you can use to your advantage.
You activate the Law of Attraction by thinking continually about your goals. With your goals as your dominant thoughts, you invariably begin to attract into your life people and circumstances in harmony with those goals. You attract ideas, opportunities and resources that can help you.
The Law of Correspondence states that your outer world will correspond to your inner world. When your inner world is dominated by thoughts, goals and plans to achieve the things that are important to you, your outer world of manifestation and effect soon mirrors your inner hopes and aspirations.
The Law of Subconscious Activity says that whatever thoughts you hold in your conscious mind, your subconscious mind works to bring into your reality. More and more of your subconscious mind is dedicated to making your words and actions fit a pattern consistent with what you really want to achieve.
The Law of Concentration says that whatever you dwell upon, grows. What do you dwell upon continually? Your goals! The more you dwell upon, reflect upon, and think about the things you want and how you can attain them, the more sensitive and aware you become of opportunities to attain them.
The Law of Substitution says that you can substitute a positive thought for a negative one. What positive thought do you use to substitute for negative thoughts or experiences? Your goals! Whenever something goes wrong, think about your goals. Whenever you have a bad day, think about your goals. The very thought of a goal, something that you want to accomplish in the future, is inherently positive and uplifting. It is impossible to think about your goals continually without being optimistic and highly motivated.
When you begin using all these mental laws behind a clearly defined purpose to which you are totally committed, you become an unstoppable powerhouse of mental and physical energy that will not be denied. With clear, specific goals, you develop and use all your mental powers. You then accomplish more in a few years than most people accomplish in a lifetime.
With everything that we know about goal setting, you would think that everyone would be doing it. You have probably been told for years that you have to have goals. You’ve been told that you have to be working toward your goals on a regular basis. You know you can’t hit a target you can’t see.
Yet the sad fact is that very few people have any real goals at all. Less than 3 percent of men and women have their goals in writing. Fewer than 1 percent of them read and review their goals regularly. Most people seem to have no idea just how important goals are.
Many people have attended seminars, read books and listened to tapes on goal setting, and yet if you ask them if they have clear written goals, and plans for their accomplishment, they will confess sheepishly that they do not. They know that they are supposed to have goals, and they intend to set some goals fairly soon, but they just haven’t yet gotten around to it.
When I began studying and applying these principles of goal setting, I got such extraordinary results that I eagerly shared these ideas with anyone who would listen. That’s how I started speaking in public and giving seminars.
However, I was continually amazed at how readily people would agree with me, but then go away and do nothing. I began to question and try to figure out why it was that people don’t set goals. I finally concluded that there are basically seven reasons why people don’t set goals. It is important to be aware of them and to determine whether they apply to your situation. Ignorance is not bliss. Not knowing about these mental obstacles, and not learning how to counteract them, can be fatal to your prospects for the future.
WHY PEOPLE DON’T SET GOALS
The first reason people don’t set goals is that they are simply not serious. They are talkers instead of doers. They want to be more successful, they want to improve their lives, but they are not willing to make the necessary effort. They do not have the “fire in the belly” that translates into a burning desire to make something of themselves, to make their lives bigger and better and more exciting.
The only way you can tell what a person really believes is by actions, not words. It is not what you say, or what you intend, or what you wish or hope or pray for, but only what you do that counts. Your true values and beliefs are only and always expressed in your behavior. One person who will take action is worth ten brilliant talkers who do nothing.
I get countless phone calls, letters and proposals from all kinds of people with all kinds of ideas during the course of a year. But the only ones who impress me, or anyone else, are the ones who actually do something. Remember, only action is action, and nothing else counts for much. Don’t tell people what you are going to do, show them. Get serious!
The second reason people don’t set goals is that they have not yet accepted responsibility for their lives. I used to think that goals were the starting point of success until I realized that, until people accept that they are fully responsible for their lives and for everything that happens to them, they will not even take the first step toward goal setting.
The irresponsible person is the person who is still waiting for real life to begin. Such a person uses up all his or her creative energies making elaborate excuses for his or her failure to make progress, and then buys lottery tickets and goes home to watch television. We’ll talk about this in detail in Chapter Seven.
The third reason people don’t set goals is their deep-seated feelings of guilt and unworthiness. A person who is so low mentally and emotionally that he or she has to “look up to see bottom” is not the kind of person who confidently and optimistically sets goals for the months and years ahead. A person who was raised in a negative environment, leaving him or her with feelings of undeservingness and the attitudes of “What’s the use?” and “I’m not good enough,” is hardly capable of serious goal setting.
The fourth reason people don’t set goals is that they don’t realize the importance of goals. If you are raised in a household in which your parents do not have goals and the setting and achieving of goals is not a regular topic of family discussion, you can reach adulthood without even knowing that there are such things as goals, outside of sports.
If you move in a social circle in which people do not have clearly defined goals toward which they are working, it will be natural for you to assume that goals are not a particularly important part of life. Since 80 percent of the people around you are going nowhere, if you are not careful you will end up drifting with the crowd, following the followers, and going nowhere as well.
If people knew that all their hopes and dreams and plans, all their aspirations and ambitions, are dependent upon their ability and their willingness to set goals—if people realized how important goals are to a happy, successful life—I think far more people would have goals than do today.
The fifth reason people don’t set goals is that they don’t know how. You can earn a university degree in our society, the equivalent of fifteen or sixteen years of education, and never once receive an hour’s worth of instruction on goal setting, even though goal setting is more important to your long-term happiness than any other single subject that you could ever learn. An even worse mistake that people make is to assume that they already know how to set goals. A person who assumes that he or she has a critical skill when, in reality, his or her understanding of it is rudimentary at best, is in great danger of failing at life.
I have been studying and practicing goal-setting techniques for more than twenty years. I have taught hundreds of thousands of me
n and women how to set goals for their lives and I have done strategic planning and goal setting for billion-dollar corporations. I know very few people who have studied the subject and applied it as thoroughly as I have, and I still feel that I have an enormous amount to learn. If someone truly knows goal setting down cold, he or she is probably either very rich or very happy, or both.
The sixth reason people don’t set goals is quite simply the fear of rejection, or the fear of criticism. From the time we were children, we have had our hopes and dreams slapped down by the criticism and laughter of others. Maybe our parents didn’t want us to get our hopes up, or to be disappointed, so they quickly pointed out all the reasons we would not be able to achieve our goals. Our siblings and friends might have laughed at us and ridiculed us for thinking about being someone or doing something far beyond what they could imagine for themselves. These influences can affect your attitude toward yourself and goal setting for years.
Children are not dumb. They soon learn that “if you want to get along, you go along.” Over time, a child who is constantly criticized or discouraged stops coming up with new ideas, new dreams, or new goals. He begins the lifelong process of playing it safe, of selling himself short, and accepting underachievement in life as inevitable and unavoidable.
The solution to this fear of criticism or sounding foolish is simple: Keep your goals confidential. Don’t tell anybody. All effective goal-setters finally learn to keep their goals to themselves. No one can laugh at you or criticize you if he or she doesn’t know what your goals are.
There are two exceptions to this practice of confidentiality. The first are the people, such as your boss or spouse, whose help you will need to achieve your goals.
And second, you can share your goals with other goal-oriented people, people who will encourage you in the direction you want to go. You should also make it a policy to encourage everyone you speak to who tells you about a goal they have. Tell them to “go for it!” Tell them, “You can do it.” Encouraging others motivates you, as well. It is one of the best applications of the Law of Sowing and Reaping. If you would like others to encourage you, take every opportunity to encourage them.
