In the previous posting on this subject, I said that initially all you need to know about your goal is enough to recognise it when you get there. What happens next?

The second step towards getting to your goal is to know where you are. This is a step which we often overlook. If you imagine that you are trying to map read your way from Point A to Point B, if you don’t know exactly where you are on the map you are lost. Without knowing where you are relative to Point B, you can’t find your way to it.

So with any goal, a realistic appraisal of the situation as it is at the moment is essential. This must not only include the physical facts about the situation but also your feelings about it. Not admitting your fears or other emotions about the goal, may lead to your trying to take a path which is not right for you. This means you goal will ultimately founder because your unacknowledged resistance will lead you to sabotage your own efforts. There is more about this in the article “Guilty Goals” on my website. If you didn’t follow the link I gave to it in this week’s special announcement, then I suggest you do so now (click here). It tells you how to remove your feelings of ambivalence about a goal.

Of course you need the physical facts about your current situation as well. For instance if you goal is to get out of debt, then you need to reckon up just exactly how much debt you are in, what the interest rates you are paying are, and how much of your earnings are going as debt payments. Without this vital information your efforts to get out of debt will always be pie-in-the-sky.

Another very important fact which you need to take account of is your own history in dealing with similar projects. You would be surprised how many people try endlessly to start up new projects of the same type at which they have consistently failed in the past.

And remember: you don’t just need to know where you are when you start the project. You need to know where you are throughout the project. Monitoring progress is absolutely essential. It used to amaze me when business owners told me that they only knew how their businesses were doing when they got the half-yearly balance sheet from their accountants. How can one possibly run a business like that? Yet I came across it so often that I stopped being amazed!

Ok, so now you have taken the first step and defined your goal enough to recognise it when you get it. You have taken the second step and identified exactly where you are in relation to the goal. In the next post I will deal with what the third step is that you need to get moving on your project.