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.

Related posts:

1. Gavin Ingham Interviewed By Keybank On Successful Goal Setting
2. Why People Don’t Set Goals When They Know That They Should
3. Goal Setting With No Limitations

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?!

Related posts:

1. Gavin Ingham Interviewed By Keybank On Successful Goal Setting
2. Goal Setting With No Limitations
3. Motivational Speaker Gavin Ingham Interviews Goal Setting Expert Andy Smith