Let’s take an example of a set of goals which someone might draft for themselves for a three to five year time horizon:
1. To set up a training institute for self-development courses.
2. To recruit and train associates for duplicating the business.
3. To purchase a suitable property in a historic building.
4. To apply the 80/20 principle to clients to increase their profitability by 300%.
5. To improve working systems so that personal efficiency in increased by 60%.
6. To design and implement a health and physical fitness regime with the intention of increasing effectiveness and life-span.
These goals are ambitious… achievable. BUT…………
……………. are they BORING or WHAT??
Contrast those goals with this verbal picture:
“I am working in my office in my castle which has a magnificent panoramic view over a bay with yellow sand and a blue sea. It is a warm sunny climate and the light has a wonderful luminous quality about it. My office is a large airy room with a stone floor and walls with tapestries hanging on them. There is a sense of spaciousness, calm and purposefulness — it feels like the hub of the universe. It is a beautiful place. I have twenty clients who are paying me a total of $1 million a year, with a waiting list of the rich and famous who want me as their adviser. A little further down the hill is my
highly profitable training institute, where people are being trained to take my methods into the world. It is run for me by a team of enthusiastic trainers. I live a completely integrated life and achieve everything I set out to do with the greatest economy and creative power. I have great fun doing this and love my work and my life as a whole. I am changing the lives of thousands and am a major influence in the world. I am in total health and look and feel younger than I did ten years previously — and am much fitter than I was then.”
Both the goals and the picture say much the same thing, but which would YOUR mind get enthused by? If you are like most people, there’s no contest. The picture wins every time.
Why? Because all the goals are seen as part of an undivided IMAGE and not separate unrelated items on a list. And because that whole is described in terms of how it will FEEL when you have it.
Exercise:
Select a time horizon of three to five years, and then describe what you would like your life to be like then. Describe it as a snapshot. And, as in the example above, include all the elements that you want to be present. Make sure that you only describe what you DO want, not what you DON’T want. And describe your feelings about it so that it is so REAL you can almost reach out and touch it. Then put your draft away in a drawer.
Bring it out a few days later and see how you feel about what you wrote. Rewrite anything you want to and put it away again. Do this at regular intervals so that you sharpen up your vision and make it something you are really happy to be aiming for.