Goal-Setting Concepts
It is hard to fail; but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Goal Setting is the commonly accepted name for the process of setting and working towards goals. Most personal development systems, as described in books and at seminars, present goal setting as the route to success. Although the numerous experts in personal development offer slightly different methods for goal setting, they are unanimous in the importance of doing so. Simply put, goal setting is a skill that is an effective method for achieving success.
The practice of goal setting is really an art. It is a learned human skill that can be extremely powerful and rewarding. Mastering goal setting will prove invaluable as you work towards every achievement, whether large or small, throughout your life. Once goal setting is mastered it becomes a way of life. You will pursue your goals with confidence, and literally control your destiny. No longer will you wonder what the outcome will be--you will be in control.
Although the study of personal development systems is a relatively recent undertaking, the personal qualities that make someone successful today are the same qualities that made people successful in the past, and will continue to make people successful in the future. This may appear to be a strong claim, but if you study successful people (and many have) you will find they share a very similar quality. This quality is the ability to create a vision and to steadfastly hold to that vision until it becomes a reality. This requires a commitment to determine and accomplish all that is necessary to ensure achievement. And that is the essence of goal setting.
To succeed with goal setting you must first establish a goal-setting routine that is based on proven principles, which will keep you motivated and progressing forward towards a success you define. Motivator Pro was created based on these sound principles, which you should find easy to understand. Once you have learned this effective goal-setting process, you must continue with it and regularly review your goals, and your routine, in order to stay focused. A regular review increases your ability to make your goals a reality, because you are more capable of performing actions you are familiar with than actions that are unfamiliar. This is why Motivator Pro has a Daily Review feature. Offering an array of reports and graphs that monitor and display your performance in all aspects of your goal-setting routine, the Daily Review feature allows you to customize your review efforts to suit what serves you best. It will keep your goal-setting routine in focus, familiarize you with the success life you desire, and keep you on the path to that success.
Before you actually start using Motivator Pro, to build your goal-setting routine, which will lead you to new levels of success, you must first consider and document who exactly you are. To do this, you should list those values, principles, and beliefs that are inherent and important to you. You can compile this list in Motivator Pro, where it is referred to as the Success Creed. You will find having a Success Creed comes in handy as you are confronted with choices while working towards your goals. The Success Creed will help to motivate you and reflect the limits you will place on your own ambitions.
To ensure that the success you are building for will endure, that success must be based on strong values and principles. As with a building, durability is dependent on the strength of its foundation. The value of the building will also be dependent on the quality of this foundation. Your foundation, or Success Creed, therefore, must reflect your value system. The Success Creed you present must be clear, direct, durable, decisive, and positive. And it must be based on beliefs you consider to be strong.
Experts in personal development believe that success comes easier to those who really know who they are. Although you may not feel confident to write a very lengthy Success Creed at this point, you should still make an attempt. To assist you, Motivator Pro has a number of sample Creed Statements, within the program, which you can review and import into your Success Creed, and your goal-setting routine, if you so desire. If you see a Creed Statement that describes a belief you admire in others, but feel unworthy, or uncertain, of calling it your own, add it to your Success Creed anyway if it is something you aspire to. In this way it will also become a goal of sorts. A goal that leads you to becoming a person you will better admire.
Once you have documented who you are by creating your Success Creed, you will be ready to start the actual goal-setting process, which begins with defining your Objectives.
The Objective is the pinnacle of a goal-setting routine. It is the clear vision in your mind of what your definition of success is. It represents the destination that you would like your goal-setting routine and efforts to lead to. Objectives are generally long-term, sometimes even lifetime, but don't have to be. They do, however, have to be important to you and as large as you can realistically realize. Objectives must be worth pursuing or establishing a goal-setting routine wouldn't be worth doing. Goal setting will help you reach your Objectives, so don't sell yourself short by setting easy Objectives. Your Objectives should reflect a level of success you truly desire. And by learning and practicing goal setting these Objectives will be realized. You will become a success.
Basically, goal setting is the process of breaking down a person's Objectives into smaller and more specific goals. These smaller goals are in turn broken down into even smaller parts, which are a lot easier to focus on and accomplish. The accomplishment of these small goals, which are known as Tasks, leads to the accomplishment of the larger goal it supports, which in turn leads to the achievement of the Objective. This process works because it allows a person to concentrate on the easy-to-achieve steps leading to an Objective, rather than on the Objective itself. By concentrating our thoughts and efforts on the easier-to-achieve Tasks, we progress towards our Objectives while gaining confidence with every little success we have. As we gain this confidence we enter a success cycle. This cycle sees us setting more goals, accomplishing more Tasks, and acquiring even more confidence in our abilities. This all happens as we progress towards Objectives that by themselves seemed difficult, far away, and even overwhelming. And it all starts with a good Objective.
Objectives can be set in a number of categories. These categories could be titled Career, Education, Family, Financial, Happiness, Health, Knowledge, Material, Retirement, Spiritual, or anything else you feel importantly about. Motivator Pro lets you set Objectives in however many categories you like, although at the beginning it is best to only set a few, while you are getting used to your goal-setting routine, as you don't want to start out feeling swamped. As you learn effective goal-setting skills, and start to work towards your goals, you will feel more confident about your abilities. You will gain strength from all your small successes and see a decrease in the antidote of success--procrastination. This will lead you to set new Objectives, enabling you to become a success in all areas of your life. You will eagerly set new support goals for these Objectives as well, and happily work towards them until you reach the big successes, the ones that might have originally looked overwhelming--your Objectives.
The Objective is your vision. It must be worth pursuing, high enough to strive for yet not unrealistic. When clarifying your vision you must also solidify your Reasons for wanting to achieve this Objective. Do you want to retire a millionaire at age 50? Why? Do you desire to lose 25 pounds? How Come? Do you want to own a huge house? What for? Do you want to be company president? Why would you? Do you want to go to Africa and help the poor? Should you? Do you want all these things? Why not?
When you set a particular Objective, Motivator Pro will prompt you to input the date you intend to accomplish the Objective by. You will also be prompted to define your Reasons for meeting the Objective. If you don't, or if the Reasons are not strong enough, you may as well stop there, as you will not reach your Objectives. This may seem harsh but it is entirely accurate--you will only succeed if you have compelling Reasons to succeed.
There is only one reason for setting Objectives and goals, and that is to become successful at what you set out to do. There can, however, be numerous Reasons for setting a particular Objective. As with a salesman searching for a customer's "hot spot" in order to close a deal, you have to find your "hot spot" for wanting to reach a particular Objective. This hot spot is your Reason, and it will be unique to you. It must be compelling and clear to you or you won't succeed. As with your Objective, it must be worth pursuing. If it isn't, come up with another Reason or another Objective--or fail.
Reasons should be written in a "straight from the heart" manner that will help to keep you motivated towards the Objective. Often, people keep adding to their Reasons as they progress towards their Objectives. Doing this keeps you working even harder, towards your Objectives, as having more Reasons will make all your activities seem more worthwhile and effortless. Motivator Pro knows the importance of strong Reasons and, therefore, allows you to keep adding to your Reasons without limit.
Reasons should be reviewed regularly to help motivate you as you pursue your goal-setting routine. If they are not helping to motivate you, perhaps they are not as compelling as you thought. Spend some time working on your Reasons before continuing with goal setting. People have lots of dreams, and it's easy to set goals. It is not easy to come up with compelling Reasons. And without them your goals will remain dreams.
As we have said, an Objective must be the clear vision of what you desire to achieve through your goal-setting efforts. Experts are in agreement that the clearer you can get the vision into your mind the better your probabilities are for achieving success. To assist you with this, Motivator Pro lets you actually attach an image to any Objective, Major Goal, or Stimulant. Image will appear in any report where the item it is attached to appears (except the Goal Tree). To attach an image to one of these items, on the image step in the items wizard, browse to the location on your system where the image is located and select it. Images may be obtained from image CDs that you purchase from your local computer retail outlet, downloaded from the Internet, or imported from Motivator Pro's expanding Image Bank, if one is applicable to your requirements.
Motivator Pro also offers a feature that keeps you working on expanding your goal-setting routine. This feature is called the Goal Coach. Just as a regular review is important in keeping you focused on how you have been doing, and in what you must do, the Goal Coach keeps prompting you into expanding and improving your goal-setting routine. By constant interaction with the Goal Coach, you will develop stronger success habits and a goal-setting routine that will lead to considerably greater success than you initially thought possible. The Goal Coach also prompts you to add mental stimulants to your routine, which will help keep your mind on what you have to do to meet your goals and Objectives. These success enhancements are called Success Questions and Success Stimulants.
Success Questions are exceedingly powerful, and should be used continuously throughout the life of your goal-setting routine. These questions effectively control the focus of your thoughts, which should be directed towards achieving the goals you have set for yourself. Success Questions should be directly related to a particular goal and relevant to your goal-setting routine. You should enthusiastically ask yourself these questions a number of times each day. As soon as you find your mind wandering from the achievement mindset you need to reach your goals, review your Success Questions immediately. This will get your subconscious mind back on your side--the side of success.
Success Questions must be positive. These Success Questions must override your negative internal questions so your subconscious starts working with you instead of against you. The following are examples of Success Questions that would give mental stimulation towards someone's goals:
How can I earn a $1,000,000 as a successful __________ by my 40th birthday?
How can I stop smoking immediately, enjoy the process, and become a relaxed and happy non-smoker?
How can I ensure good things happen to me, and continue to do so?
What is the most important thing I could do right now?
Success Stimulants are motivating statements that, like Success Questions, work on keeping your mind focused on achievement. These could be a motivating phrase you have come up with, or an inspirational thought from a famous person. As with Success Questions and Creed Statements, Motivator Pro offers a variety of samples to review and/or import into your routine. The Goal Coach will also prompt you to keep adding fresh Success Stimulants and Questions to your routine. Doing so will prove to be very important. By giving yourself a number of Success Questions, and by considering some inspiring Success Stimulants, you will find you are more motivated in keeping to the route you have planned. The route to success.
Once you have entered your Success Creed, Objectives, Reasons, Success Questions, and Success Stimulants into Motivator Pro, and have an understanding of the Goal Coach, it will be time to continue expanding your goal-setting routine into something that will make sure you reach your Objectives. As we have already discussed, goal setting is a process of breaking your Objectives down into smaller and smaller goals and Tasks, which when accomplished allow you to meet your Objectives. By breaking our Objectives down into these smaller parts, we increase our possibilities for achieving success. This is because we focus on the smaller pieces more easily than the big picture. By focusing on the smaller pieces we don't become overwhelmed. We also gain confidence through successfully completing all these smaller goals and Tasks. This increase in confidence keeps us working towards our Objectives, and propels us to setting other goals which will further help us reach these Objectives. The goals that lead us to our Objectives are called Major Goals, and correctly setting and reaching them will ensure you reach your Objectives.
Many Objectives will have a number of Major Goals supporting them. These Major Goals should be directly linked to a particular Objective. Major Goals can be specific or broader in scope, whichever allows you to more easily establish the smaller, more specific, Tasks that will in turn support them. Major Goals should include as many details known at this point about what you plan to achieve. If applicable, keep updating these details as more facts become known. This is because it is important to keep your attention focused on what is current.
Major Goals have an Accomplishment Date to keep you moving forward with your goal-setting efforts. If you do not achieve your Major Goals in the time allotted, you won't achieve the Objective it supports in time, or maybe even at all. This Accomplishment Date, therefore, should be realistically reachable and also capable of stimulating you into action. If your Objective will take a long period of time to reach, so might some of your Major Goals. If this is the case, set shorter Accomplishment Dates for the Major Goals and renew and/or revise them as they are met. This will help you achieve constant successes instead of being overwhelmed by your Major Goals as well. Remember, the Accomplishment Date for a Major Goal cannot be past the Accomplishment Date for the Objective it supports. Also, remember to add a picture that reflects your Major Goal if possible. As with your Objectives, you can scan the picture into Motivator Pro, download it from the Internet, load it on disc, or take it from Motivator Pro's Image Bank.
Major Goals are in turn broken down into smaller goals called Tasks. Before we discuss Tasks, it is important to mention a supporting element of a Major Goal that Motivator Pro features: the Quota Goal. Quota Goals are very common in business situations, but also in personal goal-setting routines as well. They can be written as a quantity number or as a monetary amount. Often salesman will set a Quota Goal to sell a certain number of units in a certain time period. While this could be the salesman's Objective, it really should be written as a Major Goal, with a supporting Quota Goal, which leads to a greater Objective of a certain income, being chosen top salesman, or of being promoted to a better position or territory that the salesman desires (and has reason to want). A person might also write a Major Goal to save a certain amount of money by a certain period of time, or for a company to achieve a certain volume of sales in a particular period (either number of units or monetary amount). All of these examples could be set up in Motivator Pro, in the Quota Goal function, which will establish a contribution schedule that monitors existing contributions to the total established, and the amount still required. As with everything in Motivator Pro, you can edit what you have entered, which in this case you might use to reflect busier selling months than others, or seasonal variances in budgets.
As you progress towards your long-term Objectives, you will constantly achieve some Major Goals, and Quota Goals, be working on others, while still setting new ones. Often, you may not have even visualized these new Major Goals when you originally established the Objective. This is normal, and not to be feared, as once you get used to goal-setting, new goals will just come to you. These new goals will be welcomed and seen as another challenge that will be met. Setbacks will be seen in a more positive light, and mistakes will be learned from.
The smallest elements of a goal-setting routine are the Tasks. Although they are the final step in establishing a goal-setting routine, they are the first step a person works on as they start progressing towards their Major Goals and Objectives. As we have said, the primary purpose of breaking down Objectives into smaller steps is to make the achievement of the larger goal easier to conceive. This keeps your attention focused on each step as you go, rather on the complexity of the entire project. This eliminates the possibility of becoming overwhelmed, and allows for maximum positive reinforcement as you successfully achieve each small step--your Tasks.
Unlike Objectives and Major Goals, where some latitude is permitted, Tasks must be written very specifically. Each Task should directly support a particular Major Goal (or Objective), and should, when completed, directly lead to the fulfillment of that Major Goal. Often, a Major Goal will require dozens of Tasks be completed in order to achieve the Major Goal. Completing each Task could be simple or difficult, quick or long depending on what is required. Whatever the case, each Task must be as small a step as possible, or perhaps it should be stated as a Major Goal with other Tasks supporting it.
Tasks can be a one-time act like going to the library to get a particular book, which can be done anytime, or a one-time act like going to a certain seminar, which must be done on a particular date. Tasks can also be one-time endeavors that are ongoing as with taking a university course. Sometimes, as with holding a staff meeting every Monday, we have to do the same Task on a regular basis in order to achieve our goals. No matter how the Task is to be completed, you must assign it an Accomplishment Date. As with Major Goals, this Accomplishment Date must be realistically possible, but still not so far away that it doesn't help to push you forwards. And the timely accomplishment of your Tasks should literally launch you towards your Major Goals.
Motivator Pro, amongst its many performance graphs and reports, has a number of them devoted to monitoring the number of Tasks you have, and your history of performing them on time. Also, when you turn Motivator Pro on, you will be reminded of what Tasks were to be done by that date. You will then be required to indicate whether or not they were done. These are in the program because it is vitally important to achieve your Tasks when you intend to do so. As most Tasks are quite simple this shouldn't be difficult to do. And if you do, your dreams will be realized--you will reach the level of success that you defined.
Through regular use of the Daily Review function you should have no difficulty in keeping the elements of your goal-setting routine organized in your mind. You should know what Tasks support which Major Goals, and what Objective is in turn supported by that Major Goal. For a quick reminder you may check Motivator Pro's Goal Tree feature, which organizes all your Objectives and their corresponding supporting elements, Major Goals, Quota Goals, and Tasks, into a hierarchical diagram. Also, any time you enter an item in support of another, you may view the Parent item to ensure that the item directly supports its Parent.
When people are on a regular goal-setting routine, their mind really focuses on achievement. Where once they thought that success had passed them by, they now see success possibilities all around. Instead of letting these opportunities pass them by, those with an achievement mindset will try to grab the opportunity when it presents itself. Because these opportunities usually come to mind at surprising times, and often well-disguised, it is important to document them. To help with this, Motivator Pro has a feature called the ScratchPad. The ScratchPad is basically a user-friendly word-processor, which you can quickly access to document these brainstorms when they come to you. The unique thing about this feature is that you can convert these entries into any element in your goal-setting routine when you are able to do so. This allows you to keep up with your success-oriented thoughts when they occur, and organize them to your advantage when you have the time!
Many success practitioners also instruct people to document their success efforts in a written journal. Keeping a journal allows a person to review what they were doing and thinking at a particular moment in their goal-setting routine. By documenting these everyday efforts, and thoughts, you can learn from things that went wrong, and relive the positive feelings you received from the achievement of a particular Task or goal. A journal also helps you to put a human face on your goal-setting routine, as it lets you describe your thoughts about the whole process while you are part of the process. Because we also feel it is important to keep this sort of journal, Motivator Pro has been setup to allow you to keep this journal within your goal-setting routine. The feature that is designed for this purpose is called the Daily Journal. Regular use, and review, of it will help you develop your success skills, and ensures you get the most from your experiences, which will lead you towards even more success.
Many people don't have access to their goal-setting routine at all times, usually because they don't have continual access to a computer as they go about their day. To let your goal-setting routine go with you, Motivator Pro is set up so you can print out any or all of your routine. Although you can print whatever parts of your Daily Review you desire, many people just use this feature to give them a printed reminder of their Tasks-to-do for the day. Once again, this just keeps your routine in the forefront of your thoughts, which will, of course, enhance your prospects for the successful achievement of your Tasks, Major Goals, and ultimately, your Objectives.
To keep your mind thinking positively, Motivator Pro has a feature we call the FlashCard Creator. This feature lets you print your Success Stimulants, Success Questions, and Success Creeds onto small cards that you can keep permanently with you. A quick review of these a few times a day will prove to be extremely motivating.
Motivator Pro will assist you towards meeting your Objectives. It is an easy-to-use system that is enjoyable to operate, and thorough in its approach. Motivator Pro, when utilized to its full capabilities, will lead you to successes you may not yet have even dreamed about. It does this by keeping your goal-setting efforts organized, and through constant evaluation of how you are succeeding with these efforts. It will keep reminding and motivating you to progress forward with your goal-setting routine, and to keep evolving this routine into one that is more thorough and efficient, which will be necessary for you to continually reach success after success. Motivator Pro helps you develop effective success habits and a mindset for success. It will force you to become the person it takes to achieve your goals. With Motivator Pro, you will reach the level of success you desire and deserve. You will become a success.