Sales Training Motivational Speaker | Gavin Ingham» goals

What Is Success?

Gavin Ingham — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 19:13:29 +0000

There was a great question asked on my LinkedIn group today and I thought it was one worth thinking about on my blog… What is success? What does success mean to you? What a great question! It’s probably one that people do not ask themselves often enough. One of the immediate problems that most people will have with it will be the preconceptions about the word “success”. For many people it immediately conjures up visions of money, cars, awards, sales results, houses, holidays etc. One of the problems, of course, with just “accepting” such generic and externally driven definitions of success is that you might well “achieve” and then wonder why you bothered in the first place!

I quoted Dan Pena this week in this short blog post as saying, “Super success, whether it’s in the Olympics or in the boardroom, is not for everybody.” I believe this to be true. It is important that people are well aware of what success is to them or they may well end up never achieving true personal success. So, for these reasons, the definition of success is always going to be personal, internal and unique to you…

For me, success means…

… living the life that I want to live, spending time with people I love and care about, achieving fulfillment, enjoyment and making a difference in work, helping others to achieve their goals, laughing, loving, caring and having enough money to partake in activites and the life that I want to partake in…

What does success mean to you?

The Magic Of Thinking Big Or Even Bigger Still

Gavin Ingham — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:59:16 +0000

OK! OK! So I borrowed part of the title but so what, it’s a good one and I like it! If you’ve been following my missives on goal setting so far, you’ll know that I have already alluded to the fact that when setting goals you ought to set them big.

So here it is for the record, think big and set big goals!

If you’ve ever read a book on goal setting or personal development you will have read this somewhere or other. If you’ve ever had a boss who told you to set goals he will have said this to you at some point. If you’ve ever listened to a motivational speaker you will have heard this woven into the fabric of their talk…

As Les Brown says, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

Or David Joseph Schwartz, “Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success.”

Or Earl Nightingale, “To achieve happiness we should make sure that we are never without an important goal.”

And Mark Victor Hansen, “Big goals get big results. No goals get no results or somebody else’s results.”

Let’s face it, everyone knows that they ought to set big goals. This is not a new concept. What’s interesting however is how few people actually do set big goals.

Think about it for a moment…

When was the last time you were enjoying a drink in your local pub and your mate who runs in the local running club every Thursday night came up to you and told you that he was going to run in the 2012 Olympics?
Or when was the last time that your friend who canvasses for the local political party said to you, “I’m going to be the next prime minister or president?”
Or the last time one of your friends said that they were going to chuck in their job and work 4 hours a week and become a millionaire?

Get my drift?

I once worked for a well know training company. They really liked the work of Anthony Robbins and several of their courses and programmes were based on Robbinsesque type material. I remember once saying, quite seriously, that I would like to be the “next Anthony Robbins” and they all looked at me like I was either a) mad, b) arrogant or c) both (aside – I have very different plans and goals now!).

Interesting.

So here were a group of people who teach goal setting and personal development. They’re all about thinking big, dreaming big and going for it but I had made them feel uncomfortable with my goal. Was this because I have had just started as an employee with them and I should have been in “humble learner” mode? Or was it because it was ok for me to be good but not that good? Or was it because they didn’t believe that they could be that good so therefore they could not believe that I could be that good either? Who know? Frankly, who cares?

Small minds limit dreams.

Remember that. I said we’d be straight in this column and we need to be because some personal development learns require tough love. If you set big goals people will rain all over your parade. All over it. Not just light April showers either but full on torrential typhoon-like downpours. Big storms. People do not like big goals, they make them feel uncomfortable and that’s before we consider how they might make you feel yourself!

And these are not small-minded people either.

Often times the barriers to thinking big are rooted in common wisdoms or perceived truths.

Stuff that is just accepted as true. Big lies if you like. They probably weren’t designed to hold you back but hold you back they will and do.

Here’s one I accepted as a truth…

“You cannot make millions out of a (non-fiction) book, you have to use it as a back end for bigger products and that’s where you make your money.”

Now in this “truth” is a wisdom. It sure makes sense to have something else to sell. If you can sell 10,000 books and make $2 per book profit that’s ok but if you can upsell a product that makes profit of $100 to 10% of those people that bought a book that’s 1,000 times 100 = $100k. So good advice for sure but that does not hide the truth that there is a “dont think big” lie in there too… You cannot make millions out of a book…

Really….?

Go tell that to Anthony Robbins, Jack Canfield and Stephen Covey.

For sure, they all made big money from upselling seminars, audios etc but they did make millions from their books alone.

The problem is that people aren’t happy with setting uncomfortably big goals. We weren’t taught this way. We were trained to be accepting, to make the most out of our life, to do the 9 to 5, to be a good little “soldier”. Most of us were not encouraged to think big.

We bought the mediocrity lie.

Remember when you said that you wanted to play football for a living? Or maybe you said you wanted to be a famous actor? Or a racing driver?

Few parents or teachers support these kinds of dreams…

And they’re right in some ways because not everyone can be the president. Not everyone can win the golf open. Not everyone can break the world mile record.

But someone has to be president. Most people have far more potential than they are currently using.

And that’s the rub.

When I run seminars I ask people to set goals for the coming year. Few set what I would call big goals. Let’s say I am working with a sales team and I ask what they would all like to sell this year. Few tell me a figure that is significantly at odds with the target given to them by their managers. So if their manager has targeted them at 250k of sales they will tell me their goal is 250k of sales or at the outside 300k.

Why not $1 million?

So I think it’s time to test your limits. I am going to suggest some goals for you to think about. I am not for a moment suggesting that you want or have to go for any of these but we need to start somewhere and I want to help you to really get this. As I list each goal I want you to honestly think about how you would feel about setting this as a real goal for you. Not whether you want it or not but how you would feel if you wrote it down, committed to it, told everyone that you were going to achieve this, took consistent action towards achieving this, made your life achieving this…

Become the prime minister or president of your country
Become a top 5 in the world film actor or actress
Live in a $10m house
Have a fleet of $100k+ sports cars
Own your own private jet
Be the CEO of a billion dollar company

How did you do? I’m guessing you struggled with some if not all of them. Don’t worry. That’s to be expected. It’s your anti-ambition conditioning (AAC).

This is a war you have to fight and you must win. You need to defeat your AAC and the only way you can do this is to start to think about what you really do want in your life and then to set some really big goals.

I remember looking for my first sales job. I hadn’t intended to get into sales but several people had suggested to me that I might be good at it so I thought, “What the heck, I’ll give it a go”. I had resigned from my last job and had looked up a couple of recruitment agencies who specialized in placing salespeople. I still remember the conversation I had with one of them. He was trying to “sell” me on a job with a basic of 15k but with an OTE of 50 to 75k. I told him that I wanted something more realistic, something that wasn’t just wishful thinking. Probably more like 15k with an OTE of 25k.

My conditioning stopped me thinking big.

I thought that 50k was a ridiculous figure. My brain at that time could not cope with the idea of setting a goal to earn 50k or more!

Guess what I got? A job on 16k with a first year OTE of 25-30k. Touche.

A couple of years ago I set mnyself a goal to charge a certain amount per day and to only deliver seminars or keynote speeches a certain number of days per year. At the time that goal made me feel very, very uncomfortable indeed but time has proven that not only was my BIG goal not that BIG but actually that it wasn’t BIG enough.

I have since achieved it and have had to set new goals.

I don’t want to get into a political debate but it is quite topical to “rubbish” the salaries of “fat cat” CEOs these days saying that they are not worth the money and that no-one should be paid that much. The media usually equate their salaries to how many shop floor workers the company could employ for the same figure. This seems to fire up rage in a large proportion of society, probably because they don’tt have this money or do not have any belief that they will ever have this amount of money.

If you want to set big financial goals the last thing you want to do is join in with this conversation. You need to forge your own path. See, the way I see it you can either sit around moaning about it or you can use this information to challenge yourself to set yourself a bigger goal.

Several speakers allegedly charge 50 -100 thousands pounds (GBP) for a one hour speech. Are they worth it? Who knows! But what they really demonstrate is that it is possible so use the information around you to set yourself a bigger goal.

We’ll talk more about big goals int the future but for now I challenge you to share your big goals in public and on this blog. Batter through your AAC and do it, now!

Goal-setting resources:

The Magic of Thinking Big, Achieve Your Goals, Unlimited Power, The Ultimate Goals Programme.

What Should I Set Goals About? Goal Setting Tips & Strategies

Gavin Ingham — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:39:00 +0000

Many people know that they ought to set goals but they don’t for a variety of reasons. One that comes up frequently is that they don’t know what to set goals about. There are three distinct groups of people that this article will be of use to…

The first are people who are new to goals, goal setting and personal development. If this is you and you are thinking, “What goals should I set?” don’t worry! This is a very common question and a good one to ask. This article will help you to answer it and to get started setting some goals that can you more of what you want in your life.

The second group of people approaching goal setting are those who already set goals. You set goals already because you know how effective they are. You set goals already because you understand how much focusing on your own personal development and personal success can improve so many aspects of your life. You know that if you get one new thing or “remind” yourself of one core truth in this article then that could bring massive benefit for you.

The third group are the, “I don’t see the point of setting any goals” group. I hear you. This is a very common stance particularly in today’s society when people see goals as something that’s done to them and not something that they do for themselves. If you are in this group it might make sense to read my article “Why people don’t set goals even though they know that they should” before you continue with this article. On returning to this article you will find it helps you to set goals that you will see the point in setting.

Effective goals setting is all about setting the right goals. Setting goals that mean something to us. Setting goals that are in alignment with our values. Most people set goals that they were told to set or that they feel that they ought to set…

Salespeople chase targets set by their sales managers and directors.
Teenagers chase careers that their parents have coerced, convinced, cajoled and indoctrinated them to pursue.
Dieters set goals based on idealistic visions of beauty from magazines, models and their imagination.

You get the idea!

This kind of goal setting is no fun and is ultimately doomed to failure. Failure when you don’t achieve your goals and failure when you do!

When you set the right goals, goal setting is not like this. The right goals will motivate you. The right goals will empower you. The right goals will get you up early in the morning and keep you up late at night. The right goals will be in total alignment with your values and beliefs and every step you take towards achieving them will be an achievement in of itself.

Effective goal setting is also about setting goals that are all about what you want rather than what you don’t. When you think about these core areas that we are going to discuss make sure that you think about your goals in the positive (“I want to work with children and young people”) and not the negative (“I don’t want to be stuck in a stuffy office with a bunch of suits”). We’ll talk more about this and how to set goals another day but in the meantime, think in the positive…

Effective goal setting is about setting goals for all of your life. Many people only set goals for their career and theirfinances with the occasional weight loss goal at New Year! This is a fundamentally flawed plan as chasing one goal in one area of your life at the expense of all other areas of your life is likely to lead to imbalance and collapse. Even if you do want and do achieve your goal the end result could be catastrophic.

To help you with some ideas for what you should set goals about and to make sure you set goals across all areas of your life we are going to look at the core areas within which you should be setting general and specific goals.

1. Money and finance

Despite my protestations to the contrary earlier on in this article you should set money and finance goals. Many people fail to set any goals around this area and consequently fail to ever achieve anything.

One delegate I worked with had no goals in this area and no guidelines. Every month he spent his salary before the end of the month and every month he went further into debt. In today’s society of buy now pay later many people are on the slippery slope to financial ruin. Their short term goal is to get everything that they want as fast as possible! Their long term goal has not been thought through at all.

When I first started out in my career I wanted to save money but I never seemed to get around to it. I had no goal and no plan and I most definitely had no money. Once I set a goal to save a certain amount of money every month leading to a bigger finiancial goals I had a plan. I needed to deduct money from my salary every month to save towards my goal.

Another goal I set was for my daily charge out rate as a consultant. At the time I set this rate I had no idea whatsoever how or if I would ever hit it. It seemed a pipe dream to many around me. Within 5 years however I had overachieved my goal and had “reset” it twice… but more about how to set your sights on the stars and the importance of thinking big in another article (That said, if you haven’t read The Magic of Thinking Big then you really should).

2. Career and work

In my experience many people are going through the motions in their careers. They go to work at 9am and come home at 5pm day in, day out. It’s just like the Sheena Easton song, “My baby takes the morning train, he works from nine till five and then, he takes another home again”, over and over!

Now there is nothing wrong with this if you are doing what you want to do and you are on path… It’s when you’re not that the problems occur and most people aren’t.

By a certain age many people fail to set goals for their careers and their work believing instead that they have found their place in life. The can dream of other things, they can wish for other things but they cannot have them. That’s the sort of thing that only happens to others.

By setting goals for our career and our work we can start to reclaim our right to build the career and life that we want.

Most people set goals around work like… doing as little as possible, getting home early on Fridays, getting a small bonus at the end of the year. This is fine if this is what you really want but for many it isn’t, they’ve just long forgotten what they really do want.

Spend some time and think about what you want now and set some goals around this are.

3. Loving relationships

How many people do you think have settled for relationships that are less than they want. I have no idea what the answers is but, as a citizen of this world, my firts thought would be… quite a lot.

Many people set a goal of just being in a relationship (“I want a partner”) but none around the actual quality of the relationship itself. This will often see the relationship bounce around on the turbulent waters of life before being smashed apart on the rocks. Ouch!

Think about what you really want out of your relationship and set some goals around this area. Once you have some goals you can start to think about what you need to do to bring them to fruition.

One friend of mine set a goal that he wanted his relationship to always be as fresh and as exciting as it was when he and his partner first met. Colleagues and peers told him that this was impossible and that life just wasn’t like that! My friend, in partnership with his wife, worked out what they would need to do to head towards that goal and he and his wife set out in pursuit of their goal.

They’re 10 years into their marriage now and seem, if it’s possible, even happier than they were when they first met.

4. Family and friends

How many people do you know who would like better relationships with their family and their friends? It shocks me how many people wish they had closer relationships with their mothers, fathers, siblings and extended familes.

It’s not surprising that in the close-knit bosom of many familes, relationships come under strain and resentment and ill-feeling grows. Spending time to set goals around your perfect relationships with your family and your friends will help and guide you in taking the actions that you need to take to bring that to reality.

5. Social activities and hobbies

Want to learn a language? Leran to play the piano? Travel the world? Got to the pub more often? Got to the pub less? Play tennis? Do regular exercise?

Most people would like to spend more time doing something. Many people would like to do things that they have never done at all. In a world of infinite opportunities this is a shame.

Many of these things may not attract you any more but some may. Taking the time to think about what you really want to do in your spare time and setting goals around it will help you to focus your attention onto activities that get you more of that you want in your life.

6. Personal develoment / spirituality

By personal development or spirituality I am talking about bettering yourself. About learning things. About improving. About seeking out to be everything that you can be.

I am not just talking about religion… although, for some, this is exactly what I am talking about.

Failing to include personal development goals is a mistake. Growth is important for humans as a race and people are happier when they feel that they are growing.

Goals in this area could be things around religion, personal development, learning stuff, communicating getter etc.

7. Health and fitness

Far too people set decent health and fitness goals. Many people set dieting goals or weight goals but these are not necessarily the same thing at all.

Health and fitness is something that many people do not take seriously when they have it but is something that everybody should set goals around if we want to keep it.

I used to run competitively and for years afterwards I ran 6 or 7 days a week and visited a gymn at least three times a week. I also ate incredibly healthily. About 5 years ago I realised that it was 15 years since I had run any kind of race or competition and that I had no plans to ever do so again.

I was also very busy with work so removing my old goal was welcome. Unfortunately, I “forgot” to set another goal to replace this one and over the next few years found myself not do anything enough exercise and eating poor food when I was travelling and in transit! 5 years on I am paying the price of my lack of health and fitness goals as I am having to work hard to meet my newly set goals to get me back to where I want to be.

What to do now!

I hope that this article has got you thinking about the infinite number of goals that you can set and the wide variety of areas in which you can set them. Your next step is to start to think about what goals you would like to achieve in each of these areas. Get your personal development logbook or if you haven’t got one your diary or a large piece of paper and head it with one of the areas we have talked about. Underneath scribble down everything you would like to do or ever thought about doing in this area.

At this stage it matters not where you are in relation to that goal or how likely you think it is that you think you can achieve it. The important thing is that you let you mind be more open to possibility and you capture that creativuty and energy. To get your mind in gear think about what you wanted to do when you were a child, a teenager, between 20 and 30, between 30 and 40 and so on…

We’ll be talking more about goals, setting big goals and avoiding roadblocks in the near future. In the meantime, get thinking about what you want to achieve and look through my recommended resources below.

Resources:

The Magic of Thinking Big, Achieve Your Goals, Unlimited Power, The Ultimate Goals Programme.

Have your say:

Why not share some of your ideas, goals and experiences by commenting below.

Why People Don’t Set Goals When They Know That They Should

Gavin Ingham — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:28:06 +0000

Whether for business, career, health, finance, social or hobbies, everyone knows and understands the power of goal setting. For years, experts and gurus have carped on about the value of setting goals. For decades, authors and speakers have written books and created programmes about goal setting. Everyone knows that they should set goals to help them to achieve their aims and objectives…

So why is it then that so many people don’t set goals when they know that they should?

Well its certainly not through lack of education! Whenever I attend a seminar, from investing in property to building your business, the subject of goals and goal setting seems to get mentioned. Somtimes in detail, sometimes in passing but its nearly always present. And every time it heralds an orgasmic groan from 80%+ of the keen audience. They’ ve heard it all before…

SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timed. Yeah, got it thanks pal!
Well Formed Outcomes from NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Yeah, done that one too buddy!
The Yale Study – the 3% with written goals achieved more than the other 97% put together. Yawn! Yeah, heard that one too. Got anything else?
(Interestingly, that one is more than likely not true by the way but more of that another day).

So it’s certainly not lack of education or knowledge that stops people fom setting goals.

Perhaps its lack of time then. That’s what a lot of people say. Yes, that must be it, people don’t have time to set goals. They don’t have time to write them down. They don’t have time to review them regularly. They don’t have time to change their habitual actions.

Yes, that’s it…

But then again, perhaps not! Figures (looked up rapidly on the web – stats attributed to Nielsen Media Research Inc.) suggest that the average person in the US watches 28 hours of television every week. The figure in the UK was stated as even higher at 32 hours per week. So even if we allocated a generous 1 hour for reviewing and revising goals every week and allowed 30 minutes of visualisation exercises every day there would still be plenty of time left to ensure that you did not miss your favourite programmes!

So not lack of time then.

So what is it, really, that stops people setting goals? The truth is that there are probably many, many reasons but I decided to share with you the top 7 reasons from my experience as to why people don’t set goals…

1. Lack of belief & scepticism

Many people don’t believe what they hear. They don’t believe what is taught to them. They don’t believe that they could achieve significantly more than they are currently achieving in their business, their health and their lives just by setting goals.

This is not surprising. We are all creatures of our own circumstances. We form our beliefs based on our experiences and the people who surround us. If no-one around you has any goals or has very limited goals then it is hardly surpising that you feel sceptical or are not ambitious with them yours either.

I suppose I am what you call pretty creative. My mind goes at 100 miles an hour and I come up with loads and loads of ideas. Some are good. Some are great. Some are appalling. Some are impractical. Some are practical. Some are world-beating. Some are pretty poor (oh ok, not many!). But I’ve always been like this. Most people around me are not like this so they are not very supportive when I set goals. Theys say things like, “Well, you set that goal to (do whatever) once and that didn’t work. Why should this be any different?”

This is hardly going to help me now is it!

On the other hand it would be quite feasible for them to focus on the goals that I have set and achieved. The goals that I have set and then overachieved on and then some. And there are more than enough of them to dwell on!

2. Setting the wrong goals

Some people just set the wrong goals. They set goals that they think that they ought to set. They set goals that their family wants them to set. They set goals that their teachers, their peers and their college professors wants them to set. They set goals that their boss thinks they ought to set. They set goals that they pretend they want but that they really don’t.

How many people do you know who lead seemingly successful lives but underneath it all are pretty unhappy? Probably quite a lot. I have met many ex-school chums who are doctors, barristers and accountants who absolutely hate their professional (and personal sometimes) lives. They know exactly why… because they set the wrong goals. They set the goals that their parents wanted for them. They set the goals that their schools pushed them towards. They set the goals that they were supposed to set rather than the ones that they really wanted.

Setting the wrong goals will at best see your goal setting efforts fail but worse than that you could succeed in achieving something that you really don’t want. Getting to the top of the wrong mountain having spent your life climbing it is not a nice experience! There’s every chance that you’re going to throw yourself straight off it again!

Because so many people view goals as something that is done to them, something that others prescribe for them, something that they don’t want, then many people see goal setting as a “no no” for them.

3. Previous diappointments

Let’s be brutally honest here, most adults are not very resilient. We say we are but in reality we’re not. We try something once and if we fail, we refuse to do it again for fear of embarrassment or comparison with others who have succeeded.

As kids we leap up from our failures and try again. When we’re learning to walk we stand up and stand up and stand up until we can flipping well walk! But somewhere down the line, something changes. We learn the pain of disappointment and we start to settle. We settle for second best. We think, “Well, if I don’t set my sights to high I can’t feel too disappointed.”

It’s not your fault. They trained us to be like this, our parents and our childhood advisors. You said you wanted to play football for a living, they told you to be realistic. They didn’t want you to be disappointed. You said you wanted to be a barrister, they said you’re not clever enough, set yourself a target you can hit…

Hanging onto previous disappointments will stop you in your tracks where goal setting is concerned. It’s bad news.

4. Fear!

Fear paralizes many people into inaction. Fear paralizes many people into virtual inaction. Fear paralizes many people so that they just keep on doing the same old things that they’ve always done.

Fear stops them setting new goals incase they achieve them. Fear stops them setting new goals incase they don’t achieve them. Fear holds you inside your comfort zone and stops you setting big goals.

I often ask people in seminars, “How much would you like to earn?” They might say, a million! Or more! But when I ask them to set a goal around what they want to earn they are much less ambitious… They say 30k when they’re earning 20k or 50k when they’re earning 35 or 40k. Few say £250k when they’re earning 25.

Why?

Fear. Fear that it’s too big. Fear they cannot do it. Fear it’ll hurt if they fail. Fear others will ridicule them. Fear that things like that just do not happen to people like them.

5. Laziness

I guess laziness had to come into it somewhere. Goals require energy. Without energy you’re not even going to take step 1 towards your goals. Many people I know do not set goals because they are just too lazy. Sure they don’t say that, they say they’re too busy but they’re not. They’re too lazy.

One of my friends works 9-5 Monday to Friday. He never goes in to work early and he never goes home late. He takes any work home. He never has to. His life outside work consists of TV, the pub and his mates.

He told me one day that he would like to set up a small business. He was quite enthusiastic about it. But he told me that he coud not afford to give up his job. Together we sat there and figured out that if he were to do a couple of hours a day after work and 4-5 hours at the weekends he could be turning over enough money within 6-9 months to leave his job without losing his standard of living.

Wow! Was I psyched for him…

Unfortunately, I was more psyched than he was. When he realised that his goal meant not watching TV, not coming in from work and slopping down in front of the football, not going to the pub every night and cutting back on some of his leisure time, he quickly lost interest.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. You should only set goals that you really want and that are really important to you but the point is profound…

No-one else can do it for you as I couldn’t do it for him. If you’re lazy, you’re goals are going nowhere.

6. Comfort zone

Setting goals will take you outside of your cofort zone. Setting big goals may take you a long way outside of your comfort zone. Setting goals and chasing your dreams could take you on a journey that you could never imagine.

I have a goal for this site… I will share it with you one day. It actually makes me feel quite uncomfortable. I have to take actions that stretch my activity levels. I have to make decisions that seem strange at times. I need to promote in a way that I have never promoted before…

For many, getting outside of their comfort zone is really uncomfortable. In seminars, when we discuss how to get outstanding results, we come up with many, many new actions and activities that would take the delegates in the direction they want to be going in their lives. Excited as they may be, when they start thinking about the reality of changing their behaviours, many delegates feel challenged by the thought of being off comfort zone island. They quickly get out of the sea and seek refuse on the safety of their own little island of habitual behaviours.

7. I want it now

In today’s society we want everything now. We are living in an instant gratification, short termist culture. If we want something we buy it. Never mind whether we have the money or not, if we want something we borrow the cash and we get it. Now!

People are really focused on now… Live now, pay later. Live now, worry about it later.

Goal setting requires a focus on the future… saving for your retirement rather than blowing your spare cash on lottery tickets and hoping for a lighting strike, forking our for a wedding day but never thinking about the marriage itself, going on a crash diet but not thinking about the exercise necessary to be a healthy person.

I want it now is not the best way to set goals. I want it now doesn’t worry about goals. I want it now will be blown about in their life by the winds of want and desire and instant gratification.

Resources:

The Magic of Thinking Big, Achieve Your Goals, Unlimited Power, The Ultimate Goals Programme.

Have your say:

Why not share with us some of the reasons and justifcations that you use for not setting goals?!

Motivational Speaker Gavin Ingham Interviews Goal Setting Expert Andy Smith

Gavin Ingham — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:35:26 +0000

One of the issues that comes up frequently when running sales training seminars is the thorny issues of goals and goal setting. In my experience, few people seem to set any goals at all and even fewer stick to them! Ever since reading Anthony Robbins in my early twenties I have been a keen goal setter… and it has worked well for me. As a salesperson they helped to keep me on track, motivated and focused. As a manager they empowered me to take action to get results. As a motivational speaker in the sales training arena they have helped to give me the edge that I need to get the results that I want.

It’s common knowledge that most successful people set goals. Most successful people know what their goals are. Most successful people are aware of the power of goals and goal setting. I have written about how important setting goals is before so today I thought we would do something different…

I have interviewed my good friend Andy Smith of Coaching Leaders about the power of goals and goal setting across your whole life not just your sales and business goals. Andy is well qualified to answer these questions: he is an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) trainer, EI (Emotional Intelligence) expert and executive coach who is a specialist in goal setting that really works. Andy is the author of the Dorling Kindersley book Achieve Your Goals: Strategies to Transform Your Life and has been featured in many publications talking about goal setting and other personal development subjects.

1. How will people benefit when they set goals?

Apart from being much more likely to achieve the goal itself, going for goals has an effect on our happiness levels. We are biologically hard-wired to feel happier if we have some sense of control and choice over our lives, which is what setting goals and taking action gives us. We change from feeling like victims of life’s circumstances, or at best passive consumers, into someone who knows they can make a difference. We are also learning along the way – even the mistakes we make, though they aren’t enjoyable at the time, will bring us valuable wisdom if we choose to learn from them.

2. Can you give us some specific examples of goals that people you know have set and achieved and how they have benefited?

Just some examples from my clients and students: some people have used these methods to hit and maintain their target weight and fitness levels for the first time for years, some have made their transition to a new career easier, or finally got around to living in a new country after dreaming about it for years. People have also used goal-setting to cope better with the curveballs life throws at us from time to time – divorces, redundancy, getting out of debt.

In my own life, I’d say the two biggest things so far becoming a published author (by Dorling Kindersley, a ‘proper’ publisher) and rather more significantly meeting my life partner Jules. I actually did set a goal of being happily married by the end of 2000, despite there being no remotely suitable candidates around at the time – and I’m happy to report that we did just squeak it in on December 29th of that year!

3. Given that, why is it do you think that most people don’t set goals?

I think there are two things going on here. One is that in today’s busy society, they never get round to it. There is always something "urgent" clamouring for our attention, with more tasks waiting in line when that one is dealt with. If people do try to think about their goals, they may be too tired from all the busywork to do them justice. So it requires a conscious effort to step off the hamster wheel and take some time to think about what’s important to you and where you want to get to. The best advice I’ve ever been given was "plan the time to plan" – set aside some protected time so that you can think about the future. This is equally important whether you’re working for yourself or in employment.

4. Is the old story that written goals are better than non-written goals true?

There’s a famous story about the "Yale Study" in which researchers asked Yale’s graduating class of 1953 how many of them had specific goals for their future in writing. Twenty years later, the 3% who had written goals had more personal wealth than the other 97% combined!

It’s a compelling story, it’s quoted by Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar, plus legions of other motivational speakers and it sounds as if it ought to be true – but, alas, it never happened. You’ll never see an academic reference for it, Yale have no record of it, and when ‘Fast Company’ magazine investigated the origin of the story, Robbins’ people directed them to Brian Tracy, Tracy said he heard it from Zig Ziglar, and Ziglar’s people suggested the source might be Robbins!

It’s still a good idea to write your goals down though – it’s the best way to get clear about them and keep them in the forefront of your attention.

5. What sorts of goals should people set?

I would urge people to think big and set long-term goals that excite them, without worrying at first about how they are going to get there. It really is a shame when people limit their lives by telling themselves that what they really want isn’t realistic. The only way to find out what’s realistic is to go for it.

You also need short-term goals to aim at, to give you something that’s achievable and to give your unconscious mind some behavioural reinforcement when you achieve them. Psychologists have found (Ken Sheldon and Tim Kasser if you want to look them up) that people are happier when they achieve "vertical coherence" in their goal-setting – that is, when your higher-level and short-term goals are aligned so that achieving the immediate goal takes you closer to the big one.

6. How should people go about setting goals?

First, get yourself into a positive emotional state by reviewing what’s already working in your life, what you like doing, what you’ve achieved already and what you’re proud of. This will help you find your direction, get you thinking more strategically, and also help you to feel like you deserve success.

Then clarify your values – what’s important to you – in the area of your life in which you want to set goals. Typical areas might include work and career, relationships, finances, health and fitness, and personal development.

Only then, when you’re feeling good and you know what’s important to you, should you start thinking about specific goals that will satisfy your values. Get clear about what you want, get a clear sensory image of what it will look, sound and feel like, and set a specific date for it in your future.

7. What are your top 3 tips for successful goal setting?

Okay, the first one would have to be focus on what you want, not what you want to get away from. If you don’t know what you want, how will you know if you’re on the right track, or recognise when you’ve got there? It may sound a bit "cosmic ordering" to say that your unconscious mind attracts what you focus on, but it’s only another expression of that principle widely recognised in business that you are going to move in the direction of whatever targets you set. "Towards" motivation gives you a direction, it gets even stronger when you get close to achieving your goal, and you feel good when you have it. "Away from" motivation, by contrast, is undirected, it runs out when you get far enough from the thing you want to avoid, and it’s stressful.

Next, form a sensory image of your goal – what will you see, hear and feel when you have it? This is vital for motivation. Most people are familiar with the idea that goals should be SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timed – but you’ll notice there’s nothing in there about whether you care if you achieve them or not. Using your senses gives you that missing piece by providing something to engage your emotions.

Finally – put a date on your goal! Until you have put a date on your goal, it will keep getting pushed to the back of your queue of priorities. Even if you say "in a year’s time", the goal will always remain a year ahead unless you turn that into a proper date.

Why? Your unconscious mind acts like a good and faithful servant, and it will do its best to give you whatever you ask it for. But it will always take the line of least resistance. If you don’t put a date on your goal, there will always be something more urgent to deal with. This is why important but non-urgent tasks tend to be neglected,

8. What pitfalls do people new to goal setting have to be careful of?

Three that I can think of straight away: firstly, not taking into account potentially unwanted knock-on effects of achieving the goal. If you don’t consider all the consequences of your goal – on your health, your family, your friendships, and the wider community – you may end up with something you don’t want. The smarter way to set goals is to take the consequences into account, allowing you to make changes to your goal and/or your route to achieving it. That way you stand a chance of getting the benefits of your goal while avoiding unwanted side effects.

Second, taking too much on and getting discouraged. It can be very easy to set a big, compelling goal – and then feel overwhelmed by the effort you think it will take to get there. The goal is so big, and so different from how things are now, that getting there by the deadline you have set will surely demand too much of you. And the more you think about the legwork it will take, the more discouraged you feel. The remedy is to break it down into smaller steps that feel more achievable, and recognise each step as an achievement. The key really is to get started – not necessarily to "take massive action", but to take some action to get you going.

Finally – and this is the biggest pitfall of all – not knowing what you want. In the absence of some powerful external motivation, like getting yourself out of debt or meeting a deadline set by someone else, how do people motivate themselves to even think about what they want – as opposed to what they want to get away from? I’ve certainly had large periods of my life when I was more or less drifting. The way out of it is to think about what’s going well, what you are good at and what’s important to you – then it becomes easy to build a picture of where you want to go.

9. Tell us a little about your book on goal setting and how it can help people.

Well, Achieve Your Goals: Strategies to Transform Your Life (Dorling Kindersley 2006) is a step by step guide for how to determine what you want, how to set goals so they happen, and how to keep yourself motivated on the way there. It wasn’t easy to write it to fit in with the publisher’s very exacting design standards, but it’s actually come out as twice the book it would have been if I had just written it as a conventional textbook. I had to collaborate with the designers to find visual ways of getting the main points very concisely, and the result is a beautifully designed and illustrated book that is a lot easier to read for the busy person. It’s something you can work through from start to finish, or just dip into for a quick fix if you run into a specific obstacle. Judging by the number of five star reviews on Amazon (all the reviews are five star at the time of writing), it’s doing its job.

10. Is there anything else you would recommend people to do, read or look at?

It’s definitely worth taking a course like the four-day ‘Create The Life You Want’ workshop which is also the first part of the NLP Practitioner training – it’s one thing to read about goal-setting methods, but you really have to experience them in practice to get the best from them.

There’s a lot of interesting research on goals and motivation coming out of the Positive Psychology movement at the moment – you can keep up with it on my ‘Practical EQ’ blog.

And, if coming on one of our courses is not practicable for you at this time, why not get together with some of your friends and form an Achieve Your Goals book group so you can support each other as you work through the exercises? Social support is a key component of goal achievement that makes it much easier for most of us – you don’t have to do it all by yourself!

As you can see, goal setting can form a key element in keeping yourself on track and focused. If you want more from Andy we also conducted an audio interview which will be available from my shop in the next few weeks. In the meantime, why not take some time out to review and revise your goals? I look forward to hearing of your successes.