The 11 Basics of Goal Setting
By Leslie Fieger
“Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is
reaching out and striving for his goals.” –Aristotle
“Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even
courage, but simply because they have never organized their energies around
a goal.” –Elbert Hubbard
Millions of words have been written about goal setting. Millions of
people set goals. Yet, most goals set by most people remain unfulfilled. I
have distilled (from experience and education) the eleven essentials of
successful goal setting here for you. Follow these and you will accomplish
your goals. Fail to follow these and you probably will not. No hype. No
rah-rah encouragement. No fluff. Just the simple explanation of how and why
to set and ACCOMPLISH goals.
Your goals must be:
1. Original
2. Inspirational
3. Harmonious
4. Realistic
5. Idealistic
6. Specific
7. Adaptable
8. Visualized
9. Affirmed
10. Time related
11. Written down
1. Goals must be original. That does not mean that they cannot be the
same or similar to the goals that others may have; it means that they must
be yours, not secondhand. Many people set goals according to the hopes and
expectations that they have been programmed to have by parents, teachers,
society or cultural norms.
As a consequence they do not own these goals. You cannot generally have
or hold what is not yours or even if you do manage to keep it, it will not
have any value or meaning to you. What’s the point then of having it? The
real reason you set and hope to achieve goals is not just to have the thing,
it is to be happy and fulfilled in the accomplishment.
Set goals that are yours; not inherited or assumed. If they are not your
own original goals, even if you manage to accomplish them, it will mean very
little to you. Why waste your life pursuing something that will end up as
meaningless?
2. Goals must be inspirational. They must arouse your passion. This must
be a consuming passion, not some whim or ‘someday I’d like to’ feeling. You
must desire passionately to achieve what you set as a goal. It must drive
you to action and you must feel fulfilled in that action because you know
that it is leading to the fulfillment of your goal.
It is passion that drives you to move continuously toward your goal. It
is passion that keeps you from getting distracted. It is passion that keeps
you from getting discouraged. It is passion that fuels your motivation. It
is passion that draws others to you to assist in your goals. It is passion
that inspires you and others. It is passion that lights your way through the
darkness that you will find along the way.
Get passionate about your goals or get passionate about someone else’s.
Life without passion is not a life; it is merely an existence.
3. Goals must be harmonious. Obviously, you cannot have conflicting goals
in life or you will be conflicted. That’s the easy part. Your goals,
however, must also be in harmony with your core beliefs and your
self-assigned purpose in life.
It is easy to understand that to having conflicting goals will raise your
stress levels and frustrate you. Yet, people do that to themselves all the
time.
It is not so easy to understand that you may have some deep set
unconscious game plan for your life (whether from some basic spiritual urge
or from some sense of undefined purpose) and the goals you set may actually
be in conflict with that real, but hidden, game plan.
First, decide who you are and what you are here to do and then set your
goals in alignment with that; or you, yourself, on a subconscious or super
conscious level will continually be sabotaging your goals.
4. Goals must be realistic. There is not much point in setting a goal to
personally live on Mars, if you are today (in 2003) over 95. The goals you
set for yourself must be achievable within the framework of what is humanly
possible.
But (and this is important) realistic does not mean what the majority
commonly accepts as realistic. Most people did not think that it was
realistic to attempt to fly a bicycle with wings and a motor attached, but
two brothers named Wright did. Most people did not think it was realistic to
build a personal computer for people to use in their home, but two guys
named Steve did.
These 4 guys changed reality for all of us. Their goals were obviously,
in retrospect, quite realistic. Don’t let your imagination be hemmed in by
the crowd.
5. Goals must be idealistic. In two ways—they must involve your personal
ideals in the five mentioned areas of your life and they must be
progressively higher or further ahead than you are at now.
If your goals are not in tune with your ideals, you will be conflicted.
Most people are, in some way, in conflict with the different aspects of
self: Material and Financial ($$$ & Things); Physical and Environmental
(Health of body, home and world); Emotional and Relationship (Happiness,
Love, Social contact); Mental and Educational (Learning, Awareness,
Self-knowledge); Spiritual and Ethical (Unity, Life purpose, Values,
Sacredness). This is why they are unhappy and why they do not achieve their
highest potential. Set your goals in harmony with your ideals.
If your goals are not idealistic (in the sense that they are
progressive), you will get bored and unsatisfied. People (those who don’t
understand) often wonder why those who are already extremely wealthy
continue to pursue more wealth. It is because the ideal is always being
extended or raised. Great achievers don’t rest on their laurels. Each goal
achieved is merely a stepping-stone to more and greater achievement. It is
not the end in itself.
6. Goals must be specific. Goals like “I want to be rich” are not worth
the paper they are printed on. Rich must be defined. $1 million in the bank
might mean rich to most people but it means poor to many others. It is the
same for more ethereal goals. I want to be happy means nothing. Happy must
be defined just as rich must be defined. I want to be spiritually fulfilled
is the same…meaningless, unless defined.
What does rich mean to you? Exactly. What does happy mean to you? Don’t
know exactly? Then how on earth will you ever even know if you get there? I
have met a lot of people who say that they are on a spiritual path. I like
to ask where that path is leading. Most can’t say anything specific. It is
all very nebulous. If your destination is not defined, how in heaven’s name
will you know if and when you get there?
7. Goals must be adaptable. One of my favorite jokes (which would offend
some readers so I will not quote it here) involves a guy who had set a
specific goal but when a gal came along to offer a much better fulfillment,
he asked her to help him to accomplish his original one. Many people miss
the better fulfillment of a goal because their focus on the one they had
originally visualized is too intense and narrow to recognize the better one
when it shows up.
Be sure that you are focused on the best possible fulfillment of your
goal, not just on the method that you foresaw that goal fulfillment
happening.
8. Goals must be visualized. If you cannot see it as real and as true and
as a part of the way you live your life…it will not happen.
Many folks, when confronted with some seemingly outrageous possibility or
goal, will comment, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it made real, not just some
imaginary ideal.’ The dreamers, schemers and achievers of history all had a
different approach…’I see it. I believe it. It is real if it exists in my
imagination.’ Tiger Woods ‘sees’ his shots landing on the green a few feet
from the cup before he takes the shot. The average golfer looks up (usually
too soon) from his shot to see where it went. Guess whose shots end up where
most often. Visualize the reality in your imagination and it will become
real in your manifestation.
9. Goals must be affirmed. You must tell yourself all day, every day, in
your constant conscious and subconscious self-talk that your goal is real
and achievable. AND, you must tell others what your goal is so that they can
‘buy into it’ and contribute to it. If you don’t believe in it enough to
make it a part of your daily conversation and are not passionate enough
about it to be compelled to talk about it to yourself and others, it is NOT
real for you and it will NOT become real.
You will be surrounded by naysayers. Someone must speak the truth of the
reality of your goal. That is your 24/7 job. Constantly affirm where you are
headed and why. You’ll end up not only convincing yourself but the world as
well.
10. Goals must be time related. Everything exists in space and time. If
something is not defined precisely in space and time, it does not exist. A
goal of someday, I’d like to be financially secure, or someday, I’d like to
climb that mountain does not, and it is highly likely that it WILL NOT ever,
exist as anything other than nebulous wishful thinking. You must set
specific times for your goals to be made manifest OR you will be forever
going towards you goals and never quite reaching them.
Almost everyone in developed countries sets the goal of retirement in
financial security, but the overwhelming do NOT achieve that. Why? One of
the reasons is that it is always a ‘someday’ goal not a ‘by June 21st 2004’
goal. Of course, it is also likely that these people are also not applying
the other 10 rules of effective goal setting.
11. Goals must be written down. If it exists only in your head, it is
only wishful thinking. This is the basic, proven by experience, truth of the
matter…95% of people who have specific written goals, accomplish them; and
95% of people who have unwritten goals (specific or not) do not. If you can
read that sentence and not begin immediately to write down your goals, you
might as well resign yourself to the fact that you will not accomplish what
you imagine you want to be, do and have in life.
Yes, there are those few high achievers who manage to set clear distinct
goals without writing them down and also manage to stay focused on them for
their entire lives. Don’t kid yourself…you are not one of those people. I’ll
prove it to you. Tell me (or anyone) right now exactly, specifically and in
full detail what goals you held 1,000 days ago.
Write them down. Period. Now.
This article was excerpted from the book, Destiny. To obtain your copy,
visit http://LeslieFieger.com/success-store.htm
© Leslie Fieger. All rights reserved worldwide.
Leslie is the author of The DELFIN Knowledge System Trilogy: The
Initiation, The Journey and The Quest plus many more success publications.
He also the co-author of The End of the World with Hugh Jeffries and
Alexandra's DragonFire with his daughter Ashley. Subscribe to his free and
ad-free eZine at
http://www.ProsperityParadigm.com or
http://www.LeslieFieger.com.
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