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In the first three parts of this series we have looked at goal setting, the process and the real research behind this to find out what makes a difference.

It seems that there is considerable support for the idea of SMART goals, yet there are still some issues with what the goal is. Is it an outcome or about performance?

Outcome goals – some issues

The problem facing many people with regard to ‘Outcome’ goals is that there is an element that is outside the power of the individual. An example of the potential issues with an ‘outcome’ goal comes from a rather sad testimony from one particular research participant:

“My goal was to have $3 million in the bank for my retirement by age 55. I achieved my goal with great satisfaction early at age 43. Unfortunately my bank was at the centre of a fraud and went under. 16 years later, I am still working and slowly rebuilding my goal. So, goals are important and we need to know what we want to achieve in life – just choose a goal only including yourself and don’t leave all of it in one place.”

Outcome goals are most often subject to others and to the environment. The greater the attainability of a goal through yourself only – I.e. Your own performance – the more you are in control of goal achievement.

Goals that have a high dependence on others and/or external circumstances are considerably more difficult to influence. As an extreme example, one survey participant has goal to win the lottery! Now there are certain things that you can do to increase the likelihood of this becoming reality, buying tickets is a useful component, but how many? Interestingly, another participant who had a ‘money’ goal did indeed achieve their goal – through winning the lottery! Though that wasn’t the original plan and they rated themselves ‘somewhat satisfied’ in having completely achieved their goal. Whilst touching on monetary goals, another participant reminds us that being specific about your goal is important:

“My goal was to be a millionaire by 35… I achieved it the moment I stepped away from the foreign exchange counter at Jakarta airport!”

Following up with our survey participants revealed commonality in the way they went about setting goals and their subsequent actions to achieve their goals. We’ve already seen how those with the greatest success in terms of personal wealth had SMART goals. This isn’t to say that success can only be measured by means of personal wealth at all – the original intention was simply to test the mythical Yale Study results. And, of course, someone could have set themselves a perfectly good SMART goal – but due to their own environment, had not accumulated as much personal wealth in terms of a standard currency – indeed, a person could have less in terms of monetary wealth yet be considerably better off in terms of the value they can obtain from less money.

Performance goals

An interesting aspect that began to show itself through the results was personal satisfaction in goal achievement.

People who set ‘Ability’ type goals, or ‘Performance’ goals reported to be ‘very satisfied’ with their achievements – whether completely achieved goals or not yet complete.

In part, this suggests the importance of personal values and suggests a question about the process by which they set goals. Through a random selection of fifty respondents we found that there is some commonality in the manner in which goals are set:

When we compare the groups of ‘Very Satisfied’ with their achievement and ‘Satisfied’ or ‘Somewhat Satisfied’ with their achievement. The first group were more likely to have SMART goals. The goal is described in sensory terms – what will be seen, heard and felt, and for a small number, smelt and tasted. Respondents were clear about what achieving the goal will do positively for them and the cost to themselves (and others) of achieving their goal. Their goal, they considered personally stretching yet ‘knew’ that they were capable of achieving it themselves.

More than 60% stated their goal in the present tense – ‘I am’ rather than ‘I will be’. This provides a template for a useful goal-setting process that we’ve turned into an easy-to-remember acronym: SWING.

Goal setting process

1. A SMART and Sensory performance goal.

2. What will I positively Win and lose.

3. Am I In control of achieving this goal?

4. Stated as Now.

5. Guarantee – this is an added psychological process to ensure personal motivation towards achieving the goal.

Final thoughts

From our survey, those individuals who set performance goals using slight variations of this process represent a small, though statistically significant fraction of the sample that have a net higher annualised personal wealth accumulation (2.15 times) and are more satisfied than individuals who use only one or two aspects of this process. It is not the writing down of the goal that makes the difference, it seems to be the emphasis on performance or ability and the process of thinking through the goal.

And for those of you, like me, who just didn’t get round to setting goals way back and worry that you might have missed out – well you can’t go back and revise history, but you can create a new one now.

Bibliography

Hollenbeck, John R. and Howard Klein, J. (1987), ‘Goal Commitment and the Goal-Setting Process: Problems, Prospects, and Proposals for Future Research’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 72 (2), 212-20.

Loche, Edwin P. (ed.) (1986), Goal setting, Generalizating from Laboratory to Field Settings, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books) 101-17.

Locke, Edwin A. and Gary P. Latham (1990), A theory of goal setting and task performance, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).

Locke, Edwin A. and GaryP. Latham (2006), ‘New directions in goal-setting theory’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15 (5), 265-68.

Locke, Edwin A. and G.P. Latham (2002), ‘Building a practically useful theory of goal-setting and task motivation’, American Psychologist, 57 (9), 705-17.
Find out more about goal setting and making a success of your life, visit us at GainMore Golf or GainMore Leadership
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Just as I said, my name is Handley, a multi-millionaire, very rich, happy and successful. These are the two of the most powerful strategies I have been adopting in changing the inadequate Self Image and live my fullest potential life.

1. THE DAILY DECLARATION TECHNIQUE

The reason that we have an inadequate self image is because of our past conditionings, we have a feeling that we are no-good, and we are not worth of the things that we desire. What “daily declaration” does is to give you new conditioning of self-worth and condition yourself to believe what you want can be yours.

This is similar to affirmation, but much more powerful and much more effective. Here are the steps to help you setup your own daily declarations.

STEP ONE: List everything that you need
Suggestions:
-New furniture
-Bills paid
-Medical insurance
-New suit
Write down everything you need…

STEP TWO: List everything that you want
Suggestions:
-$1,000,000 in the bank
-A $500,000 house
-Rolls Royce
-6 month trip around the world
Write down everything you want…

REMEMBER: DON’T limit yourself, write EVERYTHING that you truly want.

STEP THREE: List the personal qualities you need or want
Suggestions:
-Ability to concentrate
-Ability to finish what I start
-Creativity
-To be friendly to others
-Personal confidence
Write down every personal quality that you need or want…

STEP FOUR: Turn lists into goals
write all your three lists in the form of goals. Here some check list for writing goals.

1. Do you really want it?
2. Does this goal contradict any other goal I am setting?
3. Any problem with goal cooperation? (Would your family be against your goals?)
4. Is it positive rather than negative?
5. Is it expressed in total detail?
6. Is it realistic?
7. Is this goal high enough?
8. Am I including the personality factors necessary to goal achievement?
9. Is each goal stated as though already accomplished?

Use this checklist to help you write your goals. Your possible goals will look like this…

Tangible goal: I live in a $500,000 house.
Intangible goal: I am calm and cheerful; I share my inner peace and happiness with others.

Then you are ready for “Daily Declaration”

Each morning:

1. Immediately upon awakening, read your list of goals as you prepared. READ ALOUD, if this is not possible, then move your lips as you read silently. This is IMPORTANT.
2. After reading each goal, pause, and visualize in your mind your goals already accomplished.

Each evening:

Just before you go to sleep, repeat the morning process.

That is all you need to do to use the daily declaration to change yourself image. As an added bonus, all the goals that you have written down for your daily declaration will come true.

CAUTIONS:
1. Don’t tell anyone about your goals. The minute you start telling others, the energy that you’ve build up is gone.
2. You must do it daily, if you miss a day, the effectiveness will drop dramatically.

Let’s move on to the second strategy for changing your Inadequate Self Image.

2. THE SUPER SUGGESTION TECHNIQUE

A WORD OF CAUTION: The super suggestion technique can only be applied to your intangible goals, and CANNOT be applied to tangible goals. The reason is that this technique works at the lower level of consciousness, if the subconscious mind is conditioned to believe that you have already had your dream house, dream cars, etc, it will stop helping you to achieve that.

Before you do the super suggestion, you will need to go to a lower level of consciousness. Here is what you do…

Sit in a comfortable position (don’t lie down, because you will easily fall asleep), scan your body from head to toe. Feel your muscles relaxing as you scan each part. As you feel yourself become quieter, and more relaxed, start count from 1 to 20. Feel yourself go deeper into the relaxed state, and once you reach 20, you will be in the state that you want to be.

That’s how you prepare yourself into the lower level of consciousness. Here are the steps for super suggestion.

1. Take one intangible goal from your daily declaration goal list. Intangible goals are those regarding to your basic personality or character qualities, such as the ability to concentrate, the ability to read faster etc. Choose ONE goal only! To maximize the effectiveness of super suggestion, you should work on one intangible goal only until it is attained. You’ll be surprised how fast you can accomplish that.

2. Take one or two keywords from your goal statement that you choose. You will use the keywords instead of the whole statement while you are in the lower state of consciousness, so that you don’t have to commit the entire statement into memory.

3. Read your entire goal statement

4. Go to the lower level of consciousness using the method I just described.

5. Repeat the keywords several times.

6. Come back to the normal state by counting from 20 to 1. When you reach 1, tell yourself you feel fully awake, totally alert.

NOTE: Both daily declaration and super suggestion must be carried out each day. Daily declaration is for both tangible goals and intangible goals. Super suggestion is for intangible goals only. Daily declaration should be done every morning and evening, and as many times as you want throughout the day. Super suggestion needs only be done once a day, suggested time is before lunchtime. And with super suggestion, you work on ONE goal at a time.

By now, I am done with my original intention of writing this article, which is helping you see clearly what the root cause of your life frustrations is and let you know how to eliminate the root cause. I sincerely hope that you can put these strategies into practice, and you will be amazed how much impact they can bring into your life.

Handley J. is a self-made multi-millionaire of our time. It is highly imperative to note that article writing about his personal life is his hobby. Handley also involve in philatropic ventures around the world.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/goal-setting-articles/selfmade-milionaires-secret-to-achieving-goal-1311529.html

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