What Would You Achieve If You Knew You Couldn’t Fail?
I was meeting with a good friend of mine, Andy Smith (NLP and EI trainer), the other day and, over a tasty Chinese buffet lunch, we were talking about “things that truly make a difference”. Interestingly, and despite all of the training courses that we had both been on, we were in total agreement that you could track back the things that had truly made a difference for us to a handful of techniques and strategies. Perhaps more interesting still was the fact that, even with our very different backgrounds, it was very similar topics that had made the difference for both of us…
And, most interesting of all, the really powerful techniques that really changed our lives were the simplest ones.
Now, I’ve talked before about how sales people and business owners ask for the “advanced” sales training strategies, rushing headlong into studying “advanced sales skills” when they’re not even covering the sales training basics so I’m not going to say again how important nailing important sales principles and reviewing and practising them regularly is…
I am however going to share with you one of my favourite ever questions…
What would you achieve if you knew you couldn’t fail?
A simple question, and one which is easily overlooked. Don’t make this mistaake. Really thinking about this question and your answers to it could well change your sales results, your career prospects and your life.
I was reminded of the power of this important question this week when one of my readers sent me the following passage…
“Let’s imagine that for one day only, you will be guaranteed success on every single new business call that you make, and you absolutely cannot fail……..
What time would you set your alarm in the morning?
What time would you start prospecting?
What time would you finish prospecting?
How many new business calls would you make?
How long would you take for lunch?
How long would you spend socialising?
How long would you spend in the supermarket?
How long would you spend chatting to colleagues?
How long would you spend on ‘admin’?Now, compare your answers to the questions above to what you actually did do today.”
You’ve probably seen a question like this before. You may have even thought, “Good question”. Perhaps you were even slightly motivated by it. But you probably moved on and read something else without really benefitting from the inherent wisdom behind this question.
If you want a great day, stop now and take a break. Get a coffee and consider…
How would you spend your time today if you knew you couldn’t fail? What would you do? Who would you prospect? What would you ask of them? What would you achieve? What would you ask for that you’re currently not asking for? Who would you ring who you are currently avoiding? What price would you aim for? What targets would you set for yourself? What would you stop doing? How would you deal with distractions? How would you protect your valuable time?
You get my point.
What are you going to achieve today?
The Magic Of Thinking Big Or Even Bigger Still
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
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
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?!
Is This Time Management? A Review Of The 4-Hour Workweek By Timothy Ferris
Review of The 4-Hour Workweek; Escape 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich. Thus Timothy Ferris titled his new book. And what a book…
There has been a lot of hype about this book. Some of it good, some of it bad. Take two conflicting and contrasting review comments on Amazon…
* 5-Star highly recommended, "A must read"
* 1-Star Shameless Self-promotion, "Please – please – don’t waste your time with this book. Catchy title – but that’s about it."
One thing is for sure, this book has generated a lot of chatter and a lot of reviews and they’re pretty diverse. Some of it is very negative saying that Timothy is exploiting people in the 3rd world, being underhand and devious, lacking integrity… and far more besides. It made me want to know what all of the noise is about. I could go on but if you want to read the rest go and read them yourself here.
In my opinion the reason for this avalanche of conflicting feedback is the whole concept behind the book. Think about it… To even consider a 4-hour working week or anything near it you are going to have to throw away many assumptions and practises that you currently have. You are going to have to break the mould and act radically differently to those around you. You are going to have to forge a different path. Let’s tweak a well-known NLP tenet for our own purposes here…
If you do what everyone else is doing, you’ll get what everyone else is getting.
99.99% of people do what everyone else is doing. They go to work for around about 9. They leave around about 5. They take lunch breaks. They work for someone else. They start work after school or university and then they retire as early as they can. Sometimes they get adventurous and take a gap year or a career break. Some even retrain and do something else…
Timothy proposes something else. Something radically different. And it is different. This, as Tim says himself in his opening chapters, is going to push a lot of people outside of their comfort zones. People don’t like it when someone challenges their "comfy" existence. They lash out. Surely, their world must be real. So they go on the attack to prove and pretend that "their" world is the only possible reality.
A couple of the reviews even claim that Timothy’s material is stolen from Jack Canfield, Michael Gerber and others but this is not true. For sure, many of his principles have been tried and tested elsewhere but Tim takes them on to another level, he puts a personal and more radical twist on them. Certainly Jack and Michael obviously did not think he had plagiarised their material when they said,
"It’s about time this book was written. It is a long-overdue manifesto for the mobile lifestyle, and Tim Ferriss is the ideal ambassador. This will be huge."
Jack Canfield"The 4-Hour Workweek is a new way of solving a very old problem: just how can we work to live and prevent our lives from being all about work? A world of infinite options awaits those who would read this book and be inspired by it!"
Michael E. Gerber
My thoughts…
This is a good book and well worth the cover price. One reviewer said that it was "overpriced"… they must have approached it with the wrong head on.
This book does exactly what it sets out to do. It outlines a radically different and mind-stretchingly challenging approach to time management, work ethics, career and life. There are tactics and tips in here for everyone. I have worked incredibly long hours, been involved with SME set up businesses, played the corporate game, worked for myself and consulted with businesses from one man bands to major corporates. If you choose to look for it there is something in here for everyone.
IF.
What’s more, it is an enjoyable read. I read this book in one sitting without putting it down and I knew from the first few pages that this would be the case.
I do not want to work a 4-hour week. I do not want to spend huge amounts of time in Berlin, Thailand or Argentina. I do not want to do many of the things that Tim has done.
But I can apply many of these things to get me more of what I want. The art and skill of personal development is in taking someone else’s material and making it work for you.
That is what you need to do with this book. So what will you get out of this book?
- An enjoyable read and an interesting story
- Your ideas and perceptions about what you "have to do" and how you "have to act" seriously challenged
- Some sound concepts for you to adapt and play with particularly around time management and personal effectiveness
- Several resources to help you apply the techniques
My favourite concepts and ones I will be picking up, expanding upon, testing out and trying and discussing with you are on outsourcing, email and prioritising. So look out for those in the weeks and months to come.
I recommend that you read The 4-Hour Workweek. I think it is unlikely that you will follow all of the ideas inside of it nor do I think you should. Its unlikely you will choose to copy Timothy Ferriss’ life but this is not the aim of this book. Read it. Challenge yourself. Find better ways to work and be more effective.
See look, it’s 9am, I’ve finished this and I have not checked my email yet. That does feel better already!
Gavin Ingham Interviewed By Keybank On Successful Goal Setting
I was interviewed by Keybank on goal setting for students but before you switch off and decide this is not relevant for you, it might well be!
The answers are relevant for everyone no matter where you are in your career!!
Everytime you see the word student or education below you will see that it can either be ignored or switched to make the answers relevant to you!
1) Why is it important to set personal goals in order to succeed educationally?
Setting goals is an essential part of achieving “success” not only educationally but also in your life in general. The skill of goal-setting is something which should be taught to everyone from a young age. Setting goals encourages individuals to look at what they want to achieve, to create route maps to that success and to prioritise correctly.
Effective goal-setting requires the goal-setter to ask themselves “why is this important to me?” This is particularly important in education as many young people assume goals that have been set for them by others rather than chasing their own dreams and aspirations. Assuming other people’s goals is unlikely to be successful and if you do succeed in achieving “your” goals, you may well discover that you don’t like where you have arrived!
2) What are some examples of realistic goals commonly set among college-age students?
When setting goals we need to be wary of the word “realistic”. I could name at least a dozen friends from school age who abandoned their “dreams” because someone told them that they were “unrealistic”. As motivational speaker Les Brown says, “Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars.”
Goals for college-age students could include goals about what qualification they want to achieve, at what level and by when. Or maybe what job they want to secure after they qualify, where and working in what kind of company and with what kinds of people. They can set goals about their finances, their hobbies, the people they want to socialise with, what they want to do for their community.. And they can also set longer term goals about their life, finances, hobbies, social life, friends, families, vocations…
3) Why is it important to set goals in order to succeed in life?
Setting goals is an essential life skill. It is akin to setting your compass before embarking on a cruise. If you didn’t take your compass, how would you know where you would arrive or whether you were on course or not? Metaphorically, many people are travelling through life having never even bought their compasses so they end up bobbing around with little or aim or direction.
In today’s society many people seem to be “anti” goal-setting. Maybe this is due to fear of failure, perhaps it’s because they see goals as “greedy” and maybe it’s because they are sick and tired of striving for goals that other’s told them they should go for, Goal setting does not have to be “greedy”” and indeed it should be about all areas of your life not just money! You should set goals that you care about and you should go for them. Failing to set goals and go for them is just failure.
Going for goals and not achieving them is learning and experience. Often with goals it’s not about whether you achieved them or not, it’s about the journey.
4) Is there a correlation between the behaviors established in college and those used in the career-world?
I have no educational statistics for this question however my suggestion would be a resounding “Yes”. Habits once formed are difficult to break. Someone who sets goals which mean something to them and who lives their life “on purpose” will form the habit of living that way is likely to carry on doing so. The opposite is unfortunately true.
5) What are some examples on how students can be sure to reach the goals they set?
Students should start by visualising themselves achieving their goals. Actually having them, being there and experiencing them. Then they should walk back down the “timeline” of the goal looking at the steps along the way to achieving those goals and making a note of them. From these steps you should create mini-stepping stones along the way to reaching your goal. These are smaller, more achievable, bitesize chunks so that you can see your progress and celebrate along the way.
Reminding yourself of your goal and taking time out to visualise yourself achieving it regularly will also help. An important point so I’ll say it again is that one of the most effective ways to achieve your goals is to ensure that YOU wanted them in the first place.
6) Any organizational tips?
Break your goals down into achievable chunks. Enlist the help of others to support you and get help with resources that you may not have had. When planning look for “blocks” where you may need help and work out where this is coming from. Constant small activity that moves you towards your goal is the key. Try asking yourself, “Is this activity moving me towards my goals?”
7) Ways students can reward themselves for accomplishing goals?
If you really wanted the goal in the first place then achieving it and the journey itself should be reward enough. Sometimes however there are activities which we do not enjoy that we need to undertake in pursuit of a greater goal that we really do want. Small rewards such as a night out, having a relaxing hot bath, going to the cinema or meeting up with friends could be just the ticket!
8) Any examples of things that can get in the way of reaching goals or
Many things can get in the way of goals that are not properly set:-
- Setting the wrong goals
- Allowing yourself to accept other people’s definitions of “realistic”
- Well meaning people saying that you "tried" when what they should be saying is "try harder"!
- Giving up
- Not chunking the goals in manageable pieces
- Getting distracted
- Fear of failure
- Not taking consistent action
- Dreaming not doing!
9) How can college students develop leadership skills?
Read about leadership from text books. Study biographies of people you consider to be great leaders. Visualise what kind of leader you want to be. How will you act? What will you be doing? What value will you add to the world and others? Grab opportunities to lead, to work as part of a team and to serve others.
10) Why do you feel that it is crucial for students to remain goal-oriented throughout their college career?
Setting goals is a fundamental life skill and one which everyone should learn. Taking the time out to plan your goals and then to constantly review them is essential for your success – educationally, personally and in your career.
Any other comments you might have?
Take the time to check out my website at www.gaviningham.com for more tips on goal setting and success. Visit your local library or bookstore and invest in some books on goal setting and personal development in general.
Why not share your tips for goal setting below by joining in and commenting?
Goal Setting With No Limitations
I take holidays as a good opportunity to read, digest and think about life and work in general and this week I am in Spain thinking about goals and goal setting. It´s occurred to me that I don´t talk about goals and goal setting enough. I don´t really know why.
Certainly, it´s one of the most powerful personal and career development exercises I have ever done. I remember the first time I ever came across goal setting, years and years ago. It was through a book by Anthony Robbins called Unlimited Power. A friend of mine recommended it and said that reading it would increase my sales results.
Yeah, righto!
But I like reading and I like books so I picked it up anyway. Wow! Did I enjoy it or what! The book is a great read and a must read if you´ve never read anything like that before.
Anyway, I duly followed the instructions and set myself goals for numerous areas of my life, many of them "plainly absurd" based on where I was at that point in my life and career. I shared them with a few of my friends at the time and they were, to put it mildly, unsupportive. I don´t think they meant to be that way but hey, that´s where they were in their lives. I guess that they were just trying to protect me from heartache and disappointment!
I got a lot from Anthony Robbins at that point in my life but I guess that, like many things, I got sidetracked by life and stopped working on my goals. Probably because life was so busy and my career was going from strength to strength. With the work I was doing studying sales and communications I just forgot to review my goals. A move of house later and my goals were buried somewhere under a whole host of paperwork and books.
About 3 years later I was sorting through some papers and I came across my goals. I read through them laughing at some of the preposterous things that I had written. Had I been ambitious or what! But as I read them, I started to laugh on the other side of my face.
Many of the goals I had set had already been achieved or even surpassed!
Stop! What?
I had already achieved many of them.
Checking through my goals I looked more closely. All of the "achievable" ones had been achieved, all of the "stretch" ones had been achieved and over half of the "unachievable" ones had been achieved. And that´s when I have "forgotten" about them!
What could I have achieved if I had been really focused on them?
From that point on I was a convert to goals and goal setting. Goal setting works and I was up for it and motivated to achieve everything I wanted in my life. I promptly set goals for my life, career and work and then set off to achieve them.
In my travels as a sales author, motivational speaker and seminar leader I often ask about goals and goal setting. It constantly amazes me how many people just do not set goals or set such wishy washy ones that they stand no chance of even knowing if they have been achieved let alone of achieving them. Perhaps this is fear of failure. Maybe it is cynicism. Perhaps it is because they associate goals with "school" and other people, thus thinking goals are about going for things that we don´t really want. In the UK I even think some of it is avoidance of being too greedy or capitalistic!
Get over it already!
Goal setting does not have to be about others. It does not have to be about money. It does not have to be about business. And it does not have to be about "things".
Goal setting is about you and what you want. It can be as monetary as cold hard cash and as holistic as peace. The key is that you set goals that mean something to you, that you set them well and that you go for them.
Failure to set goals will ultimately mean failure to achieve what you want out of life and failure to achieve what you want means unhappiness.
Do you have kids? Then you should be setting goals. Not goals that they need to be a doctor or a banker or play for some football team or another. That´s about you and that´s your stuff. Maybe that´s why you avoid goals 
. No, goal setting for your kids should be about quality time together, love and support.
So here I was, sitting by the beach with the sun coming down and I was thinking about goal setting. I had just finished Jack Canfield´s Success Priniciples and I had decided to review my goals.
And then it hit me.
It wasn´t anything I had read. The Success Principles is good, it´s well written and I would certainly recommend it but there was nothing I had not read of, implemented previously or taught myself in there.
No, it was one of those moments when you realise that you´ve accepted something as a truth which really, really isn´t.
I believe that when you want to achieve something you should find someone else who has already done incredibly well in this area and model it. Use Other People´s Experience (OPE) to get you where you want. This has always been my approach and it´s one which works very well.
But when you accept someone else´s model you also accept it´s limitations too and as I sat on the beach I realised that what had been the "right" goal for me, now held limitations. Because I had achieved most of the goal, one specific fundamental that had been empowering was now serving as a limitation. When taking a model of someone incredibly successful you sometimes don´t pull out the limitations and I´d missed the fact that this might become one in the future.
Now I know this and I teach it so this wasn´t anything new either but it just shows the importance of constantly reviewing your goals and ensuring that there are no limitation creeping in.
I´m not going to tell you what it was because it doesn´t really matter (unless you´re a speaker!) but it´s something that is carped around in coaching, training and speaking circles as a truism. And it´s not. Not even slightly.
So I am very excited. Excited about what this means for me and for the business and of course for you. Because this frees me up to really focus on an area of the business that I had been "avoiding" because of "common" wisdom.
So what´s my message?
Well obviously to set goals. To make them mean something to you and to review them regularly. Find someone you can model and model them well but be careful to pull out any limitations in their model because although they may not hold you back to start with they may become limitations in the future.
Whatever barriers or limitations they are; whether on time, possible billings, size of sale, what clients will pay, how much you can earn, how you can do it, how much time you can have off; you don´t have to buy it.
Why not share with me and our community the most exciting goal that you ever set and achieved. Click on comments now.
Work Life Balance For Salespeople – Realistic Or A Pile Of Steaming Dung?
Seems to me that there’s been a lot in the press recently work life balance. So many people have thrown their hats into the ring that I’m beginning to think that it’s the precursor to some sort of twilight world of badly dressed, Brut drizzled, 70’s wife swap party.
Even David Cameron has been on record saying that people are more interested in work life balance today than money and possessions.
Really?
See, as a sales training specialist I meet thousands of people every year and I think the politicians are right that there has been a change and they are right that people are TALKING about work life balance but they are WRONG in their intepretation of this information…
Here’s the world according to Gavin…
- People are richer than ever
We are. Just face it. Look at the luxuries people take for granted these days that people would not have dreamt of thirty years ago… holidays abroad, meals out, binge drinking, designer clothes, house styling, coffee shops etc etc. - People have short memories
People say money is important when they don’t have any but once they have it (most) people don’t see it as that important. If you can afford to drink coffee at Starbucks you’re not really worrying about money therefore you start to worry about other stuff, “Ooh, I feel unhappy. It’s all so bad. Things used to be better”. Take the money away and most will quickly tell you that they want the money back and start saying they’re short of cash! - People want possessions – more than ever
Don’t kid yourself otherwise. I see car parks full of BMW’s. I see shelves full of designer clothes. I see young people starting out in life with massive flat screen TVs. People want possessions. - People don’t want work life balance they want less work for the same possessions
That’s the truth. We’ve got it better so we want to work less. But we want the stuff too. People aren’t talking about forsaking stuff for this so called balance – they just want more for less. I believe we’re creating a society that expects something for nothing.
So why these thoughts on a sales training blog? Because it’s fools gold. Don’t buy it. Don’t believe it. Don’t subscribe to it. If you want stuff, if you want possessions, if you want to buy yourself a comfortable living, if you want to retire comfortably at some point in the future you have to do your time. Least in sales you do. Sales is not some reality tv instant gold rush. It requires consistent hard work and consistent effort.
Sales hurts and this is where you start to pay…
The Bruce Lee Sales Training Academy
"The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus."
Bruce Lee
I guess you all know who Bruce Lee was… probably the most famous martial artist that ever walked the earth. Like many film stars who died young and under slightly suspicious circumstances Bruce Lee’s appeal and fame has outlived him and will continue to do so.
I’ve been a bit of a Bruce Lee fan for years now but not necessarily of his films per sae. When I was younger I was really into martial arts and read a lot of books on and by famous martial artists. Bruce Lee intrigued me. Most commentators talk about his charisma on screen or his famous moves but that wasn’t what intrigued me. What intrigued me was his focus. He was famous for it.
Bruce Lee lived and breathed martial arts. He trained for hours every day. He read every book that he could get his hands on. He talked to and sought out experts to learn from. With friends he talked about martial arts for hours and hours, day in and day out. He even designed, wrote and tested out his own martial arts system, Jeet Kune Do, which lives on and is taught around the world until this day.
So what’s my sales training point…
It’s easy to write off sales superstars as having charisma or as being lucky and maybe some of them do have these things. But neither of these attributes are things which are inside of your control. Far more important however is focus which you do control 100%. Maybe changing your habitual levels of focus isn’t easy but it can be done. Here’s some sales training thoughts for helping you to focus…
How focused are you? No seriously! How focused are you right now on a scale of 1 to 10. Most salespeople are not focused enough. Sales superstars are focused 100% on the job in hand when they’re selling.
How much time do you spend focusing on improving? When did you last read a sales book? How many sales experts who sell more than you do you spend time with? Which areas of your sales have you been working on recently? How can you get a group of friends together to mutually improve your sales?
Don’t wait for your manager, or me or your luck to change…
Had Bruce Lee been a sales training expert he would probably have said, "Being a sales superstar does not happen by chance. It requires hard work, commitment and focus."
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