Goal Setting for Extraordinary Success

Most people stop there. They stay with “If I get a break then I’ll work on this,” or “when I have the time…”

To take it to the next level… the essential level… you need to take from the vision statement the key goals that you will choose to work towards. Narrowing down your vision to four or five specific goals is a giant leap beyond what most people do.

Go back through your vision and write next to each of the goals whether you want to achieve them in 1, 2, 5, 10, or 20 years. Once you’ve done that, copy out your top five one year goals. Include one goal that is an attribute, or a character quality that you desire to develop within yourself, one goal that is something you  want to do, and one goal of what you want to have. The last two goals can be whatever you choose.

Include with your goal the reasons why you will achieve this goal within the next twelve months. Remember it is when we have a compelling reason why that we find what we need to move.

Goal 1

Goal 2

Goal 3

Goal 4

Goal 5

Write down what attribution or character qualities someone who has these goals would possess. Describe the qualities, values, beliefs, thoughts, attitudes et., this person would possess and value.

Nothing is impossible to a willing heart - John Heywood

Handy Tip: It's the quality of our questions that determines our results in life. Here are some great questions for assisting you to think differently about your life and what is happening for you.

Self Coaching Questions:

What is great about this problem?

What can I learn about this problem?

What is it that I really want from this situation? How can I focus even more on my desired goal?

What is preventing me taking action and how will I overcome that obstacle right now?

What would a person who had already done this before focus on?

What can I control or influence about this right now?

If there was a solution what would it be?

What am I willing to do to make this the way I want it?

What am I no longer willing to tolerate to make this work?

Your Focus and Goal Setting

Ask anyone who trains car drivers on safety courses what happens if you tell a new driver to avoid the witch’s hat and they will say the same thing. The driver hits witch’s hat.

The drivers move towards what they are looking at.

It can take five or more times for the driver to move their focus from what they don’t want to hit to where they want to drive.

These drivers are a great metaphor for what can happen in our lives. We can be going for a goal and then notice an obstacle or a challenge. Instead of remaining focused on the goal, we shift our focus to the obstacle. In life, like with the driving course, what you focus on is what you will move towards.

What you focus on is what you will get. Focus on what is a problem in getting to where you want to go, and you’ll get more of that problem, ass if it’s started breeding or invited its entire family over to move in.

You move in the direction of what you consistently think about

Imagine you’re going for a goal, say to weigh your ideal weight. You’re doing the right things, making some progress, then you seem to plateau and no matter what you do nothing seems to be shifting. The going gets tougher than starting to fade and frankly it’s getting tough to say no to the dinner invitations.

You tell yourself you’ve done pretty well, or that you don’t  really have that big a butt, or that it’s okay to carry some extra weight at your age or with your work load or with kids to look after.

You give up the dream because you rationalised your lack of success. You made it okay to settle again for the poor results you were getting.

We do this all the time. Think about a time you wanted a pay rise, a date with someone or a bigger saving account. We don’t get what we want in the time frame we’ve made up for ourselves and that we’re most likely not even aware of and we rationalise our lack of results.

“I don’t care about the job anyway.”

“He wasn’t that great.”

“I’ll save once I’ve had this holiday, this new car, this stereo, this wardrobe…”

And so it goes. We rationalised ourselves into mediocrity, unit the next cycle of pain hits and  we have to act. We take a few steps, get result, notice a plateau and the going getting a little tough… and the rationalising starts again.

The Problem with this strategy is each time we do it we shave a little more off our self-esteem. We trade in our self-belief for setting. We drop our standards because we don’t want to be disappointment the next time.

The next time comes around and the plateau seems to hit a lot sooner.

This is what most people do in the game of life. Anyone who doesn’t push through the plateau enough to know true success will give up and settle. We have to get some runs on the board occasionally or we learn helplessness. We learn the strategy of low expectations.

And you thought this was a motivational book!

In a way, it is, because now armed with this knowledge of this specific strategy you are now placed in a position of power. You now have enough knowledge to recognise when the “I don’t want to get hurt” Strategy is about to kick in.

That means you get to choose Plan B.

Plan B is simple. When you hit the plateau, you raise your standard. You ask more of yourself than you normally would and you ask more of yourself than the people around you would. You don’t settle, you step up.

It sounds so ridiculously simple that you’re probably questioning if this was worth the investment. Yes, absolutely, because this can change your life.

Most people experience a setback and give up. People who live at Level 1 don’t give up. They keep going… even harder. They focus on where they are going, not on what is holding them back. They have a plan and they read it often. They see themselves doing the thing they want successfully. they don’t see it once, but dozen and even hundreds of times.

Ian Thorpe sees himself not just winning his race, but all the others swimmers stuck behind him in grey colors, looking as if they are stuck in the pool.

Level 1 players focus consistently on where  they are going and have a deadline for when they are going to achieve their goal. Not “Next Year,” but a specific date. If you say “Next year.” Next year can’t ever arrive. We can only experience now

Level 1 players are specific about what it is they want to achieve. “I’ll be rich,” is not specific. “I’m earning $250,000.00 per year effortlessly,” is specific.

Level 1 players state their goals “as if”. This means you need to state your goals as if it is the deadline right now.

“It is August 2014 and I am delivering a public speech to one thousand people who are responding with cheers and applause and I feel fantastic.””

Your Goal and the Problem They Create

The only way to know you have a goal that is important to you is if you have obstacles. Problems tell you this counts and that you want it. The only way to experience a problem is to have a goal.

Imagine someone sitting on a couch, not working, and broke. Their goal is to make money, the obstacle is their lack of motivation.

Imagine someone earning a million dollars a year. They want to double it. They try everything they can with total motivation but don’t achieve it. A sale falls through at the last moment. Thier goal is to make more money, their obstacle is not enough sales.

You want great health and get sick. Your goal is to be healthy and your obstacle is the illness.

You want a new job and go hunting. You get only a few interviews but nothing you want. Your goal is a new job and your obstacle is the lack of suitable jobs.  

It’s only when we want something that we can experience obstacles

This is good news, because it tells us that each time we experience a setback or a problem, it’s feedback telling us this counts and that we want it. The more success we get the bigger the problem… there is more at risk… which is even better because it means we have stepped up.

We love problems.

Be SMART About Your Goals

S- Smart

M- Measurable

A- Attainable

R- Realistic

T- Timeframe

Make sure  your goals fit in with this model. Your goals need to be specific - that is, state exactly what you want to achieve.

They need to be measurable - how will you know you’ve achieved your goals?

Your goals need to be attainable - Achievable by you and something you alone can control and influence.

They need to realistic - within reach yet still a stretch, with an incremental plan for getting there.

Your goals need to have a timeframe - when will you achieve this goal by and how will you celebrate?

There’s one more letter that needs to be added, and without it all of this is just talk….

A- Action

We must, must, must, must be prepared to take action. If we don’t take action we are simply filling time with an interesting philosophical exercise.

Nothing can replace actin.

The Power of Questions

What is your primary focus? What do you consistently ask yourself when in different situations? We are constantly processing, filtering and sorting for evidence that our world matches how we think it should look. We do this through 65,000 thoughts each day. Most of these thoughts are in the form of questions. Is this right for me? How do I do this? What if I can’t? What will they think? Why? Why can’t I do it? How can I do even better?

Questions constantly shape our choices. We can’t stop the questions, but what we can do is choose what the questions are.

We have over two million bits of information coming at us every single second… we can’t possibly take in all this information, so we delete, distort and generalise about what we are experiencing to make sense of it. One of the ways we do this is through our Driving Question.

What question do you ask yourself most often that drives most of your behavior and choices?

For example, a client’s original Driving Question was “How can I stop feeling scared all the time?”

The client experienced strong emotional intensity around this question. They also asked the question constantly.

Another client thought their Driving Question was “How can I make more money?” With some thought, they realised that what they were really asking was “How can I feel safe?”

Another client asked the question “How can I help people?” When they thought about it they realised their question was “How can I get people to like me?”

A client had the question “How can I learn from this?”

Who do you think experienced more pain in their lives? The first few clients or the last clients?

When thinking about your Driving Questions are, be aware of:

You ask these questions in all different situations

You associate intense emotion to the questions.

The intent of your question is to serve and empower you, but sometimes it can block us from everything getting in. The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our questions. What this means is that if we ask ourselves disempowering questions, we are going to get an answer like this: “Because I’m not good enough, because I always make a mess of things, because I never get a break, because I’m useless.” And on it goes.

If you ask yourself low quality questions you will experience a corresponding quality of life.

Similarly, if you ask yourself high quality questions, you will experience a corresponding quality of life. Imagine you make a mistake, and instead of “Why me?” you ask yourself “How can I turn this around?” or “What can I learn from this?” or “what is the gift in this?” or “How can I do better next time?” or “What is it about this that I control or influence?”

Better questions? Absolutely, I’ve been training my  mind to ask these questions I experience less stress, overwhelm and anxiety. I haven’t eliminated these emotional states… even knowing this, I still do disempowering questions… but remember, it’s what we do consistently that counts.

The quality of our life is determined by the quality of our questions to ourselves and to others

If you have a pattern of asking yourself poor quality questions it’s time to commit to a new pattern. The same way you learnt the old questions, you can learn new ones that will work with you instead of against you. It takes a willingness to want more for you life.

Examples of disempowering Driving Questions:

How can I stop feeling scared?

What if I fail?

What if I don’t fail?

What’s wrong with me?

How can I get people to like me?

Why is this happening to me?

What am I going to do with my life?

How can I get what I want?

Why won’t they listen?

How do I be number one?

Why me?

What’s the use?

Why doesn't anyone care?

How can I stop being hurt?

Why can’t I stop eating?

What disempowering questions do you ask yourself on a consistent basis?

What do these disempowering questions cost you? What do you miss out one because of these questions? What do you fear, tolerate or avoid because of these questions?

Why must there questions change right now?

Examples of Empowering Drive Questions:

Where’s the good in this?

How can I be even more joyfully driven and contribute even more right now?

What will self-driven and self-love create right now?

What’s even more magical and magnificents within me right now?

How can I appreciate even more the perfection in this moment right now?

How can I get to the next level?

How can I improve this?

What do I admire about this?
How can I enjoy and share even more the love, joy and passion that is within me right now?

How can I feel and share even more the love and sense of fun I feel within me right now?

How can I appreciate even more the vitality and great health that I am experiencing right now?

How can I feel even more love right now?

Notice the pattern with the new questions… built into some of the empowering questions a presupposition… an assumption… that the quality or attribute already exists within you… even more…

Claim the desired questions for right now..

What empowering questions of you ask yourself on a consistent basis?

If you were t construct the ULTIMATE DRIVING QUESTION that you would ask yourself on a consistent basis, what would it be?

Don’t wait until you’re dying to find the will to live.

What is your new Driving Question… a question that fulfills you, makes you happy, and can be your focus every day? What question, if you were to ask it everyday and in all situations, would enable you to move your life in the direction of even more happiness, fulfillment and success?

How can I appreciate and enjoy even more…

____________________________ that _____________________ right now?

How can I enjoy and share ever more _____________________ that  _________________________________________ right now?

How can I …. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________, even more?

What are the benefits of this new questions?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Handy Tip:

If you are stressed, you are asking the old question.

You can’t feel gratitude and fear/ stress at the same time.

Choose to experience gratitude/ appreciation and notice the difference in how you experience your life.

The way to be poor is to be ungrateful.

Designing your Ideal Life

To create an extraordinary life we must be able to paint a picture of what it looks like. Few people take the time to do this, preferring to stay in “reality” of their current situation. Building a picture of your life, how you would like it be, what you would be doing, what you would feel, who you would be (your attributes), what you would own, how you would contribute and how you would spend your leisure time, is one of the most valuable things you can do.

The ideal way to do this is to put aside the “doubter”... the voice that tells us we can’t stop. Write everything you would want to experience, and don’t stop for at least five minutes.

Types of Values

If you place importance on something then you value it. For example, you might say that you value happiness, security, family, and money. The first two values are what are called End Values, because they are the emotional states you want to experience. The last two  of family and success are what are called Means Values. They are the vehicles by which you choose to experience the emotional state you must desire.

When talking of values in the context of creating an extraordinary life, we are referring to end values: those emotional states you want to experience.

If you desire happiness, there are thousands of vehicles for you to achieve this value. The means to achieve happiness is endless. The means is simply how you will get there.

If you said you loved your job, because it give you a sense of accomplishment, pride, connection and satisfaction, then the hob is the means for you to experience the emotions of accomplishment, pride, connection and satisfaction.

If you said you love money, I would ask you what does it give you? You might say wealth. I would ask you what does that give you? You might say security. Your means was money and wealth. Your end state… the deeper value… is security. What you want when you earn money is security.  

Do you think there are others ways you might be able to experience security other than money? Of course.

What happens is that we get so caught up in the collection of the means… collecting the stuff of like a house, car, friends, holidays, clothes, wealth… that we don’t realise we’re doing it all to meet our true values. Our true values are our end values.

Have you ever experienced the feeling of achieving something you thought you wanted and then said to yourself “Is this all there is?”

I have. I remember striving for my first big job in a corporation. I thought that this was it. I thought that I had made it. It took short time for me to realise that it was nothing like I felt empty, unappreciated and unimportant.

If I’d known my values I would have known that one of my core moving toward values is connection. I value connecting with others, and I could not achieve this in a large company where everyone stuck to their political agendas.

I worked with a client who was a doctor because that what his parents wanted for him. He was an excellent and talented doctor, but he knew there must be something more to life. When he gave up living his parents’ dream and pursued his own his whole world changed. He realised that what he really valued was making a difference, love and being challenged. When he began pursuing these values his life finally made sense.

Moving Towards Values

Emotional states that we want to experience are called Moving Towards Values. Moving towards values are positive emotional states that we enjoy experiencing, such as love, connection, and fun. These are the emotional states that we most want to attain on a consistent basis.

Examples of Moving Towards Values

Love

Security

Health

Passion

Adventure

Honesty

Respect

Wisdom

Gratefulness

Playfulness

Creativity

Freedom

Safety

Energy

Compassion

Integrity

Connection

Intelligence

Contribution

Growth

Happiness

What has been most important to you in life? What emotional states have you most wanted to experience? Be as honest as you can when you do this.

Once you have this list, reduce the values you have listed down to a maximum of ten. To eliminate values, look for values that are similar to others. Remember, dropping a value from the list doesn’t mean you no longer value it.

As you wrote your life of values you might have noticed that you value some of these emotional states more than others. For example, you may have listed love and security as one and two on your list, then happiness and fun, but you know that you value fun ahead of security.

Now that you have your list, it’s time to put your values in order of importance, as your mind will recall the list the way it is written, not the way you say it should be in your mind.

To find out which values you value ahead of others, go through a list and ask this question:

What has been more important to me in my life, ____________________ or _____________________?

For example, what has been more important to me in my life, security or happiness?

Trust the answer you come up with and write it down.

What is it that you have learnt from doing this exercise? For example, were you surprised by your list? Did you know you valued some of the emotional states that you listed as much as you didn? Does your life reflect what you’ve listed? For example, if you listed freedom as one of your top values do you stay free of commitment in some areas of your life? Do you prefer to keep your options open?

If you said you valued security do you notice how you like things to stay the same? Do you put energy into feeling secure, like a reliable job and steady partner?

Do you think if someone values love above all else will experience a different quality of life to someone who values security? What kind of decisions do you think they would make?

If someone values certainty ahead of all else what kind of life will they lead compared to someone who values playfulness? What kind of decisions would these two people make?

What if someone says they value control about all else? What kind of decisions do you think they make? Many of my clients come to realise that what they have been driven to achieve in their life isn’t happiness, like they thought they had, but a sense of control. They have pursued getting control at the expense of all else, especially happiness.

What about someone who has values that are in conflict? For example, what if someone values freedom and control? What kind of life would they experience? Part of them wants to be free to do with the flow and part of them wants to control the situation. I’m imagining they would find decision making difficult, to say the least. And I imagine someone like this would be constantly unhappy.

By  getting clear on what you truly value, you can understand why you do what you do. What you want to do is find ways to meet your values every day. Not some of your values, but all of them.

So how do you do this?

Rules are what must and must not happen in order for us to meet our values. My highest value is health and vitality, and I have rules that must be met for me to meet my core values every day. One of these rules is that I experience health whenever I go for a walk. A rule for you to experience love could be “My partner tells me he loves me.” or “I hug someone I love.”

Take the time now to write down your rules for what must happen for your core values to be met. This exercise takes a little time, but it is well worth it.

To do this exercise, answer the question:

What has to happen in order for me to feel_________________?

Whenever I do this exercise with a client, their rules are often very hard to meet.

Example of Rules:

Number One Value: Health and Vitality

Client’s Rules for this vallue to be met:

I must walk six days a week

Eat healthfully

Avoid alcohol

Drink three litres of water

Lose weight...

Notice how hard these rules are? How hard must this person work to meet their core value? This is what I call self-sabotage. We set ourselves up to fail by setting standards for success that are too high.

When I elicited my values and rules I was shocked about not just the values, which were about certainty and comfort, but my rules for achieving these values. I realised that whilst I had prided myself on living a life that embraced uncertainty, I actually found it stressful and tried to avoid it.

Then I asked myself, are these the values I would have if I was to live the life of my dreams? If I was to create my ideal life what would my values need to be?

In a little while we’ll at what to do if our values and rules don’t support our desired life. For now, though, lets look at the school types of values.

Moving Away Values

As well as having emotional states we want to experience, we also have emotional states that we want to avoid. These are the emotional states that we perceive would cause us pain. Remember, we do more to avoid pain that we will to feel pleasure.

Example of a moving away values are rejection, frustration, irritation, failure, guilt, humiliation, overwhelm, stress, depression, sadness, anger or procrastination.

What had been most important to you to avoid experiencing in life? What emotional states have you most wanted to avoid experiencing? Be as honest as you can when you do this. To find out, answer the question:

What is a feeling I would do almost anything to avoid having to feel?

As you did for your moving towards values, it’s time to put your moving away values in order of importance. Again, it’s important also to write the list in order of importance, as your mind will recall the list the way it is written, not the way you say it should be in your mind.

To find out which values you want to avoid ahead of the others, go through the list and ask this question:

Which of these feeling would I do more to avoid having to feel, _____________________ or ___________________________?

Which of these feeling would I do more to avoid having to feel, rejection or loneliness?

Trust the answer you come up with and write it down.

Take the time now to write down your rules for what must happen for your core moving away values to be met.

To do this exercise, answer the question:

What has to happen in order for you to feel ________________________?

Now that you've completed you old values, we’re going to explore how you want your life to look. Once we've done that we will come back to values… and explore what your values need to be in order for you  to create your ideal life. Whenever anyone does this exercise they are amazed at the transformation their values go through… and then how that impacts their life.