Art Of Money

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Last week I attended a great presentation about goal setting. It was presented at the local business resource centre and was given by Dan McDonald of Business Improvement Solutions.

The presentation was specifically targeted to business goal setting and it was based on Dan’s extensive experience coaching businesses to set and reach their goals.

My past experience with goal setting books or talks has been that they didn’t sell the concepts well enough to my mind. In other words I was always left with a voice that could say, “that wouldn’t work, because of x, y or z.” But with Dan’s presentation, I couldn’t poke a hole in it. I was convinced that if I followed the twelve steps with honest and sincere effort, I would succeed in anything that I applied them to.

Here are the 12 steps for goal setting. Take your time and let them sink it a bit.

1. Make Your Goal Personal

You must make goals that come from you. I stumble on this one all the time with my blog network. I get caught up in the success of other networks and start to want those things (venture capital, millions of uniques a month etc) but they aren’t necessarily what is really right for me and my business.

Honesty is required since having goals that don’t align with your talents, skills and true desires will decrease the likelihood of manifesting the goal.

2. Make Your Goal Believable

Your mind has a certain sweet spot where it feels like the challenge is completely engaging, but entirely possible. If your goals are too easy or the odds are too remote the mind won’t engage fully in its pursuit.

Go over the goal in your mind and pay attention to your response. Try a few different ones to see what the various reactions are. For example, if you currently earn $30k a year.

1. 1. I will earn $30,200 next year.
   2. I will earn $3,000,000 next year.
   3. I will earn $60,000 next year.

I’m not trying to say that one is more possible than the others but #1 is not really a significant accomplishment; basically a waste of time. Roll up the coins in your change jar and you’re done.

Number 2 will be too much of a stretch for most. I believe it is possible to multiply your income by 10, but most people will lose interest or tune out the challenge before ever take significant action; the mind won’t engage if it feels the odds are too slim.

Number 3 will likely engage you because it is in the sweet spot of what is possible. It gets you busy!

3. Write Your Goal Down

Most people aren’t even brave enough to allow a dream or goal to clarify in to a thought in their heads.

Why?

• Fear of failure
• Fear of change
• Fear of success

Then to take the goal and actually write it down requires an even greater leap into the possibility of discomfort. But writing it down begins to activate the belief system.

A recurring theme throughout the talk was Dan’s emphasis on actions that “trained the brain” into believing that what you were doing or wanting was important enough for your brain to begin to devote some of it’s massive energy and power towards making it happen.

4. Ask Why You Want the Goal

“So I never have to feel pain,” or “so I can be in control of everything,” are not the best reasons for wanting to be rich. Your brain is smarter than that, it probably won’t co-operate with thinking that is that limiting. In my experience you’ll get infinite support for goals and activities that increase your overall life’s capacity, but very little support for ones that decrease it.

A lot of people think that they want to be rich but it is really a misguided belief that being rich will mean something else.

“Why do you want to be rich?”

…To have more friends

…To show people that I’m important

…To prove I’m not a loser

etc.

Honesty is required to get to the real reason but it is a necessary step since the planning and actions required to achieve a goal are unique to the goal. Having more money won’t get you more friends, but meeting more people and taking an interest in other people may.

5. Analyze Your Current Position

This is a surprisingly easy one to neglect and vitally important. I struggled for months trying to build my passive income up to the point where I felt I could afford to work full-time on my blog network.

Then one day I sat down and took a good look at where I was at financially with everything in my life. I realized that I could actually afford to go for a year just from my current savings. I never would have guessed it, if I hadn’t sat down with the cold hard facts.

The other part of current position analysis is that it has a big impact on the plan you will develop to achieve the goal.

6. Set a Deadline

Take advantage of “the final exam effect” where most of the results (studying) will happen right before the deadline.

There is also a power in working within an enclosed or limited amount of anything. A restriction focuses your inner resources. A lump of coal, lying on the ground isn’t going to turn into a diamond.

7. Identify Obstacles

List out all the obstacles that could keep you from achieving your goal.

Order them from largest to smallest impact on your success. Now forget about all of them except the one at the top of the list. Work only on that one until it is overcome. The reason is that it is quite likely that a number of the others are pinned to or dependant upon it. Once it is removed it is likely that your obstacle list may not require any more attention.

Important clue…it is likely that the biggest obstacle is inside of you (an attitude, belief or fear that prevents you from completing you goal).

8. Acquire Knowledge

In the workshop I really liked the reason that was given for making acquiring knowledge as part of your goal process:

It re-enforces your commitment and trains your brain that you are taking this seriously.

The real secret to the law of attraction is not dreaming or thinking about what you want, it is in taking focused action.

9. Find Your Customer

Since this was a business goal setting workshop, there was a component about clients and customers. The key point from this section was market research. Don’t assume you know what your customer wants. There is often a disconnect between what someone says they want and what they really want.

Take the time to ask questions. One of the most successful moves I ever made was when I decided to go back to school (my second career) for computer programming. There were 4 schools in my city offering similar training, all with slightly different lengths or options.

My goal was to come out of the training and easily get a job. I was clear about what I wanted, but all the schools promised that I would achieve my goal.

Not that I was skeptical but it was important for me to get it right. My wife was going to support me while I went to school and the last thing I wanted was to end up going backwards financially.

So I did market research. I called 6 companies and asked which school’s grads they preferred to hire. It was a slam dunk which one they would choose…they all told me they preferred grads from the same school!

Sure enough after my two year course I easily found an excellent job.

10. Make a Plan

Planning is another vital part of goal setting. I really liked the emphasis that the workshop gave on this section. All Dan said was that a plan needed to be filled with concrete ACTIONS.

When we think of a business plan especially, there is a lot in there that doesn’t really contribute to getting the business goals met. Pull out the real plan, the actions steps, and use it as a checklist of tasks needed to get to the goal.

11. Visualize

Seeing it in your mind can reduce fear.

Like the picture of the puzzle on the outside of the box, take time to create the picture and you can finish the puzzle faster.

This is another brain training step. What will it look and feel like when your goal is reached? Consider every detail in depth. It isn’t uncommon for professional athletes to spend as much time visualizing as they do playing their sport.

12. Determination, Drive & Desire

The keys to achieving goals is not talent. In the workshop Dan told a story of a study that was done on people who had achieved great success, and every single one of them said that they had met someone who had more talent than them, but didn’t achieve as much success.

The researchers speculated that the people with more natural talent, because success came easily to them, were eventually surpassed because they didn’t develop determination, drive and desire.

Achieving success is usually a long term process and during that process it is inevitable that you are going to feel completely hopeless, or become disillusioned or feel like a complete failure at least once, probably often.

Having the ability to get up, dust yourself off and continue on towards your goal is the most important factor to achieving something truly worthwhile.

Wrapping Up the Goal Setting Process

Like I mentioned off the top, this is by far the most comprehensive, in terms of covering all the mental loop-holes, guide for goal setting that I have encountered.

The only thing it doesn’t cover, which will doom most people is that you actually have to do the 12 steps to accomplish any goal.

Like I mentioned above the real secret is that focused action is required to move forward.

- Jon Symons
Goal Setters Anonymous