#TuesdayTips
You’re probably familiar with the concept of S.M.A.R.T. Goals – you may even have tried them and discovered that they worked well … or maybe you struggled to formulate your S.M.A.R.T. Goals properly and gave up.
You’re probably familiar with the concept of S.M.A.R.T. Goals – you may even have tried them and discovered that they worked well … or maybe you struggled to formulate your S.M.A.R.T. Goals properly and gave up.
When you’re setting S.M.A.R.T. Goals you don’t want to try to set too many at a time because your unconscious mind will get confused [Unconscious Mind] – and also you will probably get lazy in your goal setting process. It’s much better to create 2-3 well-formed goals than 8-10 sloppy ones, but sometimes we get carried away by our desire to create change in several areas of our lives all at once.
One thing that often gets people confused when they’re setting goals is that they mistake a state or value for a goal. Happiness, for example, is not a goal – it’s a state. It could be part of a well-formed goal if you thought about it like this:-
I want to be happy …
I would be happy if my relationship with my spouse/partner involved more conversation …
I will plan to have 2 hours together talking about important things or doing projects with the TV turned off every Tuesday and Thursday …
After 2 months we should be communicating much more deeply about things that matter.
You do have to think about the specific change that equate to realising your goal, and the steps you will take to get there.
The thing that really makes S.M.A.R.T. Goals dynamite is actively visualising the outcome using as many senses as possible. Feel the satisfaction, hear the roar of approval, smell that new car smell … The more clearly you can experience the emotion that is linked to your success, the more likely you are to achieve the goal. If it doesn’t seem real to you, the chances are you won’t achieve it.
Posting pictures of your desired outcomes in plain view will really help keep you motivated and on-target. So find pictures of the holiday you want, your dream home, the relationships you want to enjoy, the people you want to help and put them on your walls, your computer, or in a notebook that you keep nearby and you’ll be amazed at how many wonderful things happen in your life.
Studies in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) show that when we send very clear messages to our unconscious mind about what we want, it helps us get where we are trying to go. Your brain is a very powerful and amazingly complex structure and it influences your behaviour at many, many levels. Science has hardly begun to tap the power of your mind to direct your life but there is no denying its almost magical powers. The thing we really need to do is set up the conditions and then get out of the way.
So, you’ve set a goal, and thoroughly visualised your successful accomplishment by harnessing all your 5 senses. Now you need to to set out your evidence procedure.
How will you know you’ve reached the goal? – Make this as specific and concrete as possible. Whether it’s an action like booking your ticket for Hawaii, or boarding the plane, or information like a specific sum of money in your bank account, or even a signed contract. Be sure you can say, “When this particular thing happens, my goal has been reached.”
Then set 3 intermediate milestones which will tell you that you are on target. Make them just as specific as your final goal because they will be your progress markers along the way. Use pictures for these as well.
If you follow this process thoroughly and focus on 2-3 goals at a time, you can’t help seeing dramatic changes unfold in your life. Start with just a single goal – something you really, really want and see what happens.
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Meta Description: S.M.A.R.T. Goals are a great way of giving your unconscious mind directions, but making them truly visceral adds a whole new dimension to their achievability.
By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales
A few years ago I did some research into ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ and how effective they really are. Most statistics show that roughly 70% of people will have abandoned their ‘resolutions’ by 15th January and what I found was that most of the population think of New Year’s resolutions as something that you need to ‘try’ really hard at.
In considering my research, I realised that many struggling to make those ‘resolutions’ a reality are sabotaging themselves by doing one or more of the following…
So here’s a few things to do to make 2016 the year that you get stuff done, a year that you can look back and say “I achieved…”
In 10 years of coaching at Life Puzzle I have seen many people spend a lot of time dreaming about how the year will be different and yet they are still ‘trying’ to achieve the same outcomes when you talk to them again at the next turn of the calendar year. So please, Instead of ‘trying’ just start ‘doing’ and if you need a little help you may wish to join us at Quest 4 Your Best.
Make those Commitments your Reality and until next time,
Be well and Be Empowered!
By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales
I talk to a lot people who have been setting goals for years, and who think it’s a nice exercise, but not really important. That’s because their goals never really affect their lives. They’re either so mundane that it doesn’t take any effort to reach them, so abstract that you’d never know whether you had reached them or not, or so impossible that you can’t possibly reach them anyway.
You can read about the techniques of S.M.A.R.T. Goal-setting here, but this post is about using your unconscious mind to keep you on track.
One of the things that often stops people from reaching their goals is the amount of deliberate effort it takes to stay focused. If you harness your unconscious mind and give it clear instructions about what you are trying to achieve then you relieve your conscious mind of that task. This gives you more energy to apply to actually working towards the goal, so it’s a really powerful tool.
I’m really passionate about the power of goal-setting, but I think it comes with a caution. If you really can’t visualise your goal, you probably should ask some questions about whether you can get yourself there. On the other hand, once you have a clear picture of your goal, you can give your unconscious mind all the help it needs to carry you forward until you achieve them.
People are different. They are genuinely motivated by different things. For some people it’s the car they drive, or the house they live in, or the clothes/jewellery they wear. For others it’s about charitable causes or relationships.
I don’t know what you really want, but if you can figure that out and write down your goals to incorporate sensory information – visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory, gustatory and emotional information they will intensify your image of the goal, and send a clear picture to your unconscious mind.
So, now you’ve given your unconscious mind a vivid picture of where you want to be, you work through the milestones you need to achieve them and send that to your unconscious mind as well.
Say you’re publishing a book (something I’ve recently been working on). My final goal, was to hold that book in my hand and be able to say, “I’ve done it!” Early in the process I created a mock-up of the cover so that I could focus my unconscious mind on what the finished product would look like (in the end I even changed the title and cover, but all the way through I had a picture in my mind of me holding the book).
Along the way there were many things I had to do:- writing the book, getting it edited, working with my graphic designer and printer etc. At every stage, I had a clear picture in my mind, and I could feed that to my unconscious mind so that I stayed focused and kept moving forward. I still had to make decisions, and put in the effort, but my unconscious mind kept prodding me into action.
Your unconscious mind is very busy moving you forward, whether you’re aware of it or not. How much more effective it is to use your unconscious mind to take you where you want to go, rather than simply letting it keep you up at night – but you need to give it some help.
This is where physical prompts like lists, posters and white boards come in. My computer desktop usually contains visual prompts to keep my primary goals top of mind. That way, every time I open my computer I am reminding myself both consciously and unconsciously about the goals I’m working towards.
I also have a vision board on my bedroom wall just to keep me focused. Many days I don’t consciously notice it, but it’s always there as an unconscious prompt.
Try it for yourself – you’ll be surprised how far it takes you.
By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales
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