You Can be Great If You Really Want To

With a new year is approaching, we naturally look backward at what we have accomplished and forward to what we hope to accomplish. This is the perfect time to set goals.

If you want to set goals that truly work and empower you to get results, here is a system that really works. Use it and you will achieve great things that will surprise and amaze you.

If goal setting has not worked for you in the past, meaning you fell short, it’s probably because you set your goals in general terms. General goals move you in a general direction. It rarely produces big specific achievements. You need to make your goals specific. This will help you achieve what you want more quickly. Clarity is power. And things become much clearer when you write them down. A Harvard study has shown that graduates who have written specific goals are significantly more successful than graduates who do not.

I’ve been setting goals since I was 17 years old. At first, they were general goals and I didn’t write them down. But I did have a vital ingredient for success. I wanted to achieve them passionately.

You see, I did not have a warm supportive family when I was growing up, although my mother did instill in me a high value for education. She divorced when I was two years old and married my stepfather. He was an alcoholic and beat her. He was a strong man with forearms as big as hams. When I was a teenager and tried to protect my mother, he ground my face in the dirt. So you see I had high motivation to leave home as soon as I could. We also were very poor because of the Great Depression. So I had high motivation to make money.

Later I started writing down my goals and making them specific. It enabled me to get a job with Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Before then all I did was common labor. I loaded a truck by hand with 4 tons of cement blocks. Then I drove to a job site and unloaded it. I did this four times a day, which means I handled 16 tons, just like the coal miner song. I had absolutely no white collar experience. I wanted the life insurance job so bad I could taste it. My passion must have impressed the head of the agency and he hired me.

I was the youngest salesman they had ever hired up to that time. Barely 21 years old, I outsold every one of my 16 colleagues in my agency. I made so much money I forgot to deposit my checks until I was reminded to do so by a call from a harried Metropolitan clerk who was trying to balance her books.

I wanted still more and I got a Masters degree from the University of Michigan, graduating with honors and Phi Beta Kappa, the honor society which fosters and recognizes academic excellence.

No one in my family — mother, father, uncles and aunts — ever graduated from high school.

The goal setting process I now use is simple, easy and fun; yet produces profound results. I’ve been teaching it for over nine years and I see my clients get great results.

I think most people set their goals in general terms, like I used to do, because they’re afraid to make their goals detailed and to set deadlines. They fear not reaching their goals and feeling badly. They avoid painful feelings like disappointment, frustration, feeling insignificant and being full of self-doubt.

When I am making goals, I trigger myself into the mood of a child wishing on a star, innocently full of faith and belief. I think about all the things that I really, really want. I put aside my critical self and don’t worry a bit about how I’m going to do it. Because if I did, it would feel impossible and I would shut down.

I think about what I really, really want. I see it, feel it, hear it. I might even smell and taste it. Just like I wanted that job with the insurance company so I could get out of the house, be my own person, find a good woman to love. I’ve learned that when your desires are strong enough, your unconscious mind will find ways to make it happen. Even the universe will help you out in unexpected ways.

To make your desires strong, you need to have strong reasons why you want to achieve these things. First think of your reasons, don’t worry how you accomplish these things. These answers will come to you. You just have to have big strong reasons why achieving your goals is a must.

Best wishes for a rich and rewarding business and life,
~Stan

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If you have $150 spare, and you can wait for 2 months for Sony to return a replacement PS3 back to you, then that is the best option.

If you don’t have the time, or the money to do this however, then keep reading.

If the blinking red light on your PS3 is happening before you get onto the loading screen, then do the following:

1. Turn the console off by holding the power button on the front of the console down for 10 seconds.

2. Once the console is on standby, then turn it off from the back.

3. Then press the power button and keep your finger pressed on it, until you hear 3 beeps.

4. This should hard-reset your PS3, so it should restart and then load up with no problems.

If that didn’t work, then try this:

Take out the PS3’s hard drive at the side of the console.

Boot up your ps3 – if it now starts up again, great! This could either mean it is fixed, or you have found out that the hard drive needs replacing. Put the hard drive back into your PS3 and load it up again. If it starts up, and you can play games, congratulations, you’ve just fixed your PS3! If it hasn’t worked, you have a hard drive problem.

The PS3 blinking red light usually means that there is a hardware failure somewhere in your PS3.

If you still don’t want to send it off to Sony (and I don’t blame you), there are many comprehensive guides available on the Internet.

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The importance of goals cannot be overstated. Goals are an exceptionally strong motivational tool that provides us with a target that we can focus on.

Goal setting is indeed very important if you want to live a planned life. Whether its personal goals or professional goals, goal setting will lead to self-improvement and teach you the benefits of being disciplined.

Goal setting, however, is not a simple task and takes some experience.

So how should we go about setting goals that provide us with the maximum benefit?

1. Understand goals know full well, what a goal is.

For example, setting a goal like ‘retire at 45′ is significantly different from setting a goal to finish the first three chapters of the book you’re writing within a month.

The former is more of a personal mission statement rather than a goal. While the distinguishing line is not that thick, understand that goals should have measurable targets and a timeline over which major constraints can be mapped and planned for.

2. Set your targets.

Given the understanding of what a goal is, the next step is to establish measurable targets for each of the goals you are setting. The target would usually be in the form of a deliverable with certain characteristics.

If there are multiple deliverables, map them out with the requirements of each deliverable and prioritize them.

3. Identify resources.

Identify the resources available with you that will be required to achieve the above targets. The most important measure, typically, is the ‘personal hours’ that you think will be required in the completion of each task.

In addition, identify any other resources (for example, hardware, additional personnel etc) that might be required to be procured by you for the tasks.

4. Map out constraints.

The effectiveness of most goal setting exercises lies predominantly in this stage. You need to be smart about identifying constraints that will affect the overall timelines associated with the completion of a task.

For example, an employee might be going on vacation, or one particular aspect of a task might require external expertise that will be required to be availed at that point etc. While environmental factors lead to a number of evolving constraints that cannot be planned for, in-built or foreseeable constraints should be mapped to the best of your knowledge.

5. Set your goals.

Given an understanding of the targets, resources, and constraints, set your goal. The key here is to set goals that require you to stretch a little beyond your comfort level. This ensures that you remain motivated, have a competitive timeline and remain disciplined in your approach.

6. Monitor progress.

Have ready, a formal schedule and process for monitoring your progress. Quantitative targets lend themselves well to a disciplined approach towards monitoring your progress. But understand that you will not necessarily be able to defined quantitative measures of progress across all tasks that you undertake.

Where you find yourself unable to set meaningful quantitative targets, use your knowledge to set defined milestones that will help you map and monitor your progress.

7. Be flexible.

Though it may sound contradictory to the general emphasis laid on being disciplined in goal setting, a big part of being effective at setting goals is in understanding that every task is influenced by a number of factors, not all of which are under your control.

Hence, effective goal setting requires that you be flexible and adapt to changing conditions quickly.

Goal setting is one of the most powerful tools to get organized and focus your energies efficiently.

It is however, also a tool which is extremely difficult to implement and can frustrate you as you struggle to utilize it.

The key is in remembering that there are no universal solutions and you need to fine tune the process to best suit your circumstances and characteristics. Monitor your efficacy at it on an ongoing basis and you will perfect the art.