Brian Tracy – Goals! How to Get Everything you Want – Faster than you ever thought – July 2010
Even coaches need to step back once in a while and practise what they preach! For me, Brian Tracy is a source of great inspiration and plenty of practical tips on establishing what it is you really want and getting it.
I loved this book so much I bought a copy for the delegates on one of my recent development programmes and hope it provides them with the direction and motivation to shape their careers and lives.
The whole tenet of goal setting comes from the biological principle that the human ‘mechanism’ is built to be purposeful – every second in every day our brain is constantly working on helping us achieve things (although we don’t think about it as such – every little movement within our bodies is a task achieved). So if we set goals our subconscious will help us move towards them.
Brian takes us through consideration of our values and the need to set goals in alignment with what we stand for before walking us through exercises to consider what we would like to achieve in
Within these areas will emerge one Major Definite Purpose – one thing you would dare to dream if you knew you could not fail. This is the thing to concentrate on setting goals around.
He tackles the issue of beliefs and fears and advocates ‘acting as if’ we already had our goals to make them more compelling as well as using the power of visualization to activate our ‘superconsious’.
He identifies the primary difference between high achievers and low achievers as action orientation – “just do it” is the mindset needed to achieve more and we can help this by planning when we are going to take actions. Also interesting was reference to research by Dr David McClelland of Harvard University regarding the qualities and characteristics of high achievers. What he found was that your choice of “reference group,” the people with whom you habitually associate, was more important in determining your success or failure than any other single factor. To quote Zig Ziglar: “If you want to fly with the eagles, you can’t continue to scratch with the turkeys.”
Brian’s 7 Keys to Goal Setting
And 12 steps to set and achieve any goal:
1 Have a desire – personal wish – why do you want to achieve it?
2 Believe that you deserve this and you can attain it – be realistic with your time frames
3 Write it down – rewrite your goals each day, day after day
4 Analyse your starting point – where are you now?
5 Determine why you want it – what benefits?
6 Set a deadline – best guess – with subdeadlines
7 Identify obstacles in your way – why aren’t you currently there? What is blocking you? What is holding you back? What is the biggest obstacle?
8 What additional skills and knowledge do you need?
9 Who do you need co-operation or help from?
10 Plan – list of tasks to get from where you are to where you want to go
11 Visualise your goal continually
12 Persist
I’ve tested out the habit of writing and rewriting my goals this year at least twice a week. 9 months through the year and Brian’s prediction that 8 out of 10 things will be achieved has be bourne out. I’ll certainly stick to this habit going into the future as well as testing out using index cards which you can reread daily.
I’ll finish with a quote from Brian:
“The very best days of your life lie ahead. The happiest moments you will ever experience are still to come. The highest income you will ever earn is going to materialise in the months and years ahead. The future is going to be better than anything that may have happened in your past. There are no limits.”