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Put Your Life On Track By Setting Goals

Everyone wants success and I hope to show you how to get there.  I think it is interesting that so many people talk about setting goals, but so few people ever seem to actually set them.  This is one of, if not the most, important part of setting your life on the right path. I used to be one of those people. It seems that I have read every book on goal setting that I have been told about or seen advertised.

I thought I knew everything there was to know about setting goals, but I just never set any. I knew that goals worked, but I just was never willing to put them into my schedule. Then one night as I was trying to get to sleep, I was dreaming about “the good life” I would have if only I could make my wishes come true.  You know, like in a fairy tale.  In a fairy tale you could always count on someone to be there to help, but this was the real world, and there was only me. That thought, however, stayed with me for a long time! What if I really could count on myself? That might not be so bad!  What if I could determine exactly what I wanted from life and then make it happen?  What if setting a goal was as easy as just making a wish?

Wishes are goals with some added glitter.  Goals provide the course of action that can take you to wherever you want to go, but not the motivation to get you there. Wishes are a little different,  they have a little more impact – like being in a thunderstorm instead of a small rain shower. Wishes let you dream, let you fly, and help to unleash a source of limitless opportunities that give you the power to accomplish what you might not have otherwise even imagined.

If you really want to make good things happen in your life, think of setting goals as making wishes. Wishing was that extra motivation I’d been looking for. I never had the urge to get out of  bed in the morning and say to myself, “Oh boy!! Today I’m going to work on my goals.” But when I would say to myself, “Today I’m going to make my wishes come true”, that  was a completely different story.  By thinking in this way I would feel like I could do anything.

This new way of thinking has changed my life drastically. It has made me feel like maybe I can have that success that other people have, not right away, but there is hope. The very instant I changed my behavior and my way of thinking, the world around me seemed like a place I wanted to get out of bed for – and start working on my goals. Things I wanted to happen began to happen. The kind of life I had always dreamed about started to come true – like in a fairy tale.  Just small things I wanted to happen but now I know the big things are on the way too.

My purpose with this post is to share with you the incredible power to make your wishes and goals come true. To help you get what you want out of life – regardless of your background, your age, or your present circumstances.  Many people think that luck or good fortune is what determines our fate but that is only slightly true. Luck contributes its part in what happens to you, but you have to do your part also. Luck essentially deals the cards but you have to play the hand that was dealt. While fate rules, it favors those who learn the tricks and the most important trick of all is cause and effect.

The Importance of Cause and Effect

Have you ever ran a red light and not been given a ticket? Luck was on your side; you got away with it. Take into consideration the law of cause and effect. For every effect, there must be a cause. That cause must always come before the effect. Simple and to the point, it’s the easiest natural law to remember and probably the easiest to forget.

How often have you heard someone say that from now on he will do only what he is paid to do – and nothing more – unless he gets a raise? I think I remember myself saying this when I had my JOB!  According to the cause and effect law, he’ll be waiting quite a while because he must first do more than he is being paid for in order to make himself worth more.   Then, and only then,  will he ever see that raise.

Have you ever seen a spouse who wanted more out of a relationship, but wasn’t ever willing to invest more in the relationship? Because of cause and effect, this kind of spouse will always be in for a rude awakening.  Things may never get better.  You must be willing to give more to get more.  Have you ever met someone who feels as if they are owed the rewards of success without first being willing to put forth the time and effort it takes to become successful?

According to the law of cause and effect, the investment must always come first, if the rewards are to follow. Life teaches us that we have to put wood in a fireplace before we get flames; we have to make a deposit before we can make a withdrawal; we have to plant seeds, water them, and nurture them before we can harvest the plant. Too often, unfortunately, we don’t apply this practical knowledge to the way we conduct our lives. If you yearn for a particular thing to happen in your life, you must first set in motion the cause of  effect. When you don’t get a desired effect, you can be sure that you have not set the appropriate cause into motion.  You can be sure that once you put the cause in motion, the effect you want will follow. The cause needs to come first. Once it does, the effect will follow.

When you decide to be a cause in your game of life, you get to call the shots and make all the plays. But when you choose to be an effect, you only get to watch the game on tv with no control over that game.   The difference between being a cause and being an effect is the difference between being a screwdriver and being a screw. One acts and  the other is acted upon.

The Process for Making Your Wishes Come True

I would like to show how to understand why you simply don’t need strong-minded discipline to succeed in life. You also don’t need to be extremely talented or gifted to make your wishes come true. You only need to follow these steps:

·         Make your wish

Determine what your wish is. Think of it as selecting the effect you wish to cause and then stick to it the way bees stick to honey.

·         Make a plan

Create a plan of action so that wish will come true.

·         Take action

Set into motion the causes that will make that wish come true.

·         Never Give Up

Finish what you start and stay persistent. Never give up. Just remember:  To get whatever you want from life –  set in motion the appropriate cause, the effect will take care of itself.

Make Your Wish

Imagine you are out for a walk one evening and you stumble upon a brass lamp.  You start rubbing it to see what it says on the side of the lamp and all of a sudden a genie pops out of it just like the story tells.  He looks at you with a gleam in his eye. And with a strong, powerful voice, he says, “I am the Genie of the lamp. What will you have me do , Master?” What would you ask the genie to do?

Believe it or not you already own such a lamp.  It is located behind your eyes and between your ears – your brain.  This is the most powerful lamp of all – it has invented everything from super computers to simple ice cream. And you own this brain, free and clear, equal to any other brain anywhere.  You are the only one that can bring forth its powers to grant your wishes.  You are your own genie with the God-like power of creation.

But you still haven’t said what you would ask the genie to do. First you must decide what to wish for.  When people don’t get what they want out of life it is usually because they don’t know what they really want.  They go through the days dreaming about the good life but rarely get a clear idea of what that “good life” should be.  This is because even though they are hardworking and able to make decisions, they lack purpose.

Anyone can do remarkable things  if they have remarkable things to do.  Once you decide what you want, the rest will fall into place.  You will wake up in the morning with a reason to get out bed, your days will be filled with meaningful work and you will be able to take advantage of those responsibilities because you have a purpose. So, go ahead, figure out what you really want, not what it is you are supposed to want or what someone else wants for you, but what YOU in your own heart wants.  Now, go after it.  Dream big because you will succeed if you follow these steps.

Make a Plan

Now you need to create a plan to put your wish in motion. The magic of your plan is not in the details, it’s in the freedom that those details give you. Freedom from the distraction of worrying about what to do next. Freedom to focus all your energy and attention on  knowing that every step you complete takes you that much closer to where you want to go. Freedom to try, because you know you’ll succeed.

A good plan sets your mind at ease and your body in motion. It removes confusion, uncertainty, and doubt so you can concentrate on getting the job done. You don’t have a plan until you have a deadline. The purpose of a deadline is to make you feel a sense of urgency.  It lets you know how serious you are about making your wish come true.  Set reasonable deadlines.  A deadline is designed to make you focus, not to make you panic. The advantage of setting a deadline is that you set your wish in stone.  You begin to plan your life around it, the same way you plan around any other important event. Your wish becomes real, like an appointment you’ve scheduled for next month. The more real your wish becomes; the more convinced you become that you can make your wish come true.

Once you’ve listed the steps you need to take to make your wish come true, and you’ve set milestones to keep you on track toward your deadline, you need to put it on your daily schedule.  Scheduling creates the difference between planning and doing.  You don’t have to schedule the entire plan all at once, just the next week or two. Then if a step takes longer than you expected, or your schedule is disrupted in some other way, you won’t have as much to reschedule.

Once you’ve listed the steps of your plan and scheduled them on your calendar or daily planner, you then need to schedule regular progress reports to see how you’re coming along.   A progress report is like looking out the window while you’re riding on a train.  By watching the things that you pass, you can tell whether or not the train is going in the right direction.  But if you aren’t paying attention, you can come to the end of the line and find yourself in the wrong city.

Ask these questions for your progress report and write down your answers:  have I met the milestones I planned to, do I need to change my plan to reach those milestones,  and do I need to change my milestones?  Circumstances change constantly.  Your plan may needs to change with those circumstances.  If you do need to make changes, make them. If you need to revise your plan, go ahead and revise it.  That’s what a progress report is for, after all.

Take Action

A plan gives your wish form and action gives it life.

When you act, you set causes in motion and are rewarded with effects.  When you take action, you make a giant leap from thinking your wish to living your wish.  You change yourself from a dreamer to a doer.

Think small.  Instead of trying to complete your wish in a single day, focus on a single step, the smallest step you can think of.  The moment you take action – any action – you are  on the right track. You will become a body in motion and will tend to stay in motion.  The most natural thing in the world will be for you to take the next step, and then the next, until you’ve completed your wish.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Your plan, no matter how simple or how complex, begins the same way.

The first action you take is the one that transforms you from a body at rest to a body in motion. Take that action and you have the momentum you need to carry you to the next action. That’s all you have to worry about. You don’t need enough momentum to complete your whole plan.  All you need is enough to complete your next action. Then that momentum will carry you to the next action, then the next, then the next after than, until you complete your wish.

The secret of that first action is to make it so simple that you give yourself no reason to resist it.  You can never finish what you never start. The easier you make it on yourself to take the first action, the greater your chances to make it to the last action, the one that completes your plan and makes your wish come true.

The easiest way to grant yourself a wish is to make it a habit. You can create new habits the same way you created all of your existing habits – through repetition until it becomes second nature.  To form a new habit, all you have to do is to apply the same principle.

Suppose you wish to take a walk each morning to work yourself into shape, but you’re having trouble giving up your morning routine -  your habit – of reading the newspaper. What is needed is a new habit to replace the old one. For thirty days, practice walking  instead of reading that paper. At first, it  may feel uncomfortable because the old habit still has hold.  But by the second or third week, walking will seem more natural than reading the paper.

You can turn almost anything into a habit if you implement the Thirty-Day Plan. All you have to do is to decide what new habit you want to acquire and then agree to practice that habit every day for just thirty days. If in thirty days you don’t like the results, quit.

Make sure you schedule practicing your new habit each day and then honor your schedule. Don’t let yourself skip days because of weekends, holidays, illness, or because you had to go out of town. Don’t accept any excuses for missing even a single day. If you do miss a day, start over.  The beauty of the thirty-day plan is that it minimizes your natural resistance to change. You aren’t asking yourself to give up anything, you’re just asking yourself to try something new.

Although we might hate to admit it, we all talk to ourselves and we listen. Psychologists call this affirmation. What that means is: if you tell yourself something often enough, you begin to believe it.

The first step in creating an affirmation is to make certain it supports your values. If you feel it’s unethical or undesirable, then it won’t work. The next step is to follow similar guidelines to those you used when you created a wish.  Be specific and affirm what you want instead of what you don’t want.  Use the present tense.  Give it intense emotional impact.

Never Give Up

How many times will a baby try to take its first step before it gives up?

A baby doesn’t know how to give up.  It doesn’t know the difference between success and failure, understand self-discipline, and it knows nothing about courage.  All a baby knows is what it wants, and it keeps going until it gets it.  What if you had the same approach to life?

Getting what you want boils down to a single word: persistence.  No matter how presentable your wish, how good your plan, how tireless your work, your success will ultimately depend on persistence.  Are you willing to go the distance?  Then you will succeed.   Are you willing to endure when others are ready to quit?  Then you will succeed.   Are you willing to keep at it  until you get it, however long it takes?  Then you will succeed.  Success belongs to those who refuse to settle for less.  Persist until you get what you want, and you will get it.

The most common reason we give up is that we don’t believe in what we’re doing anymore.  Either we don’t believe our effort can succeed or we don’t believe that success is worth our effort.  Either way, once we lose our belief, that’s it – the end.

Belief is the foundation of persistence.  Without belief, you have no reason to complete a task.  But if you have belief, then you have no reason to quit.   Whenever you find yourself tempted to give up on a wish, ask yourself these questions:  do I believe I can make my wish come true and  do I believe my  wish is worth the effort?   If either answer is no, then you need to work on your belief before you can effectively work on your wish. Belief is the cause of  persistence and persistence is the cause success.

Now that you know your own strength, now that you know how to make your own wishes come true, what are you going to do about it?

Are you going to make your wishes come true and start achieving your goals, or are you going to settle for something less? Are you going to take the strategies  I have talked to you about and turn them into a habit that can bring you literally anything you want for the rest of your life? Or are you going to let the next ten years pass the way the last ten did? There is nothing wrong with that, as long as you don’t mind being in the same place ten years from now that you are today.

If you want to make your wishes come true, you have a decision to make. You have to decide whether you want to be a cause or an effect. You have to decide whether you want to be a screwdriver or a screw.

Just remember, only you can make that one choice that makes everything else possible.

By now, you’ve locked on to your wish; you’re taking the appropriate action; you’re managing your progress; and you’re ready to persist in your efforts until you make your wish come true.   So go get it.  Do not let anything or anyone get in your way.  You can and will succeed in getting all your wishes.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and maybe it has helped you just a little to be able to get those goals set.  Don’t be afraid to go after what you want.   If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment and let me know.  Also feel free to leave any ideas you may have.  I would love to connect with you, if you want please join my Google Friend Connect and retweet my post.  Thanks for reading and have a really great day. Make it count.