Get Smart!: How to Think and Act Like the Most Successful and Highest-Paid People in Every Field
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- Goal Setting Brings Out the Best
| Goals Are Essential This is why goals are so important. Goals enable you to control the direction of change, to assure that your life and work are self-determined rather than being dictated by outside events. One of the great secrets of success is for you not to worry about things that you cannot do anything about—factors that you cannot change. You cannot change or slowdown the rate of change. But you can adjust and adapt to change much better as long as you are clear about your ultimate goals. Today, you can be either a master or a victim of change. You can be a creator of circumstances or you can be a creature of circumstances, overwhelmed and left behind by the onrushing and impersonal forces of change that you cannot affect. Goals give power, purpose, and direction to your life. Goals bring out the very best that is in you, enabling you to realize your full potential. Goal Setting Brings Out the Best Goal setting requires long-term thinking, slow thinking, and informed thinking. A key success principle is for you to think on paper The very act of writing down what you want dramatically increases your probability of achieving it. Remember, you can’t hit a target that you can’t see. You can’t hit a target unless you can clearly describe it on paper. The quality of your thinking is greatly enhanced by the quality of the questions that you ask yourself, especially in the areas of goal setting and goal achieving. Here are some questions that you should ask and answer on a regular basis so that you can maintain high levels of clarity, focus, and concentration: D ETERMINE W HAT Y OU R EALLY W ANT What do you really, really, really want to do with your life? It seems that when you ask this question, it is the third really that helps you to develop absolute clarity about where you want to be sometime in the future. When you ask really three times, you drill deeper into what you want more than anything else. W HAT D O Y OU R EALLY V ALUE ? What are your values What are your basic organizing principles What virtues and qualities are most important to you and most important in the people whom you like and admire? Most problems inhuman life, most confusion, can be resolved by a return to values. Your values makeup your core. They are the axle around which your life revolves. Your values determine your deepest emotions. They determine your beliefs, expectations, and attitude. You don’t see what you believe you see what you have already decided to believe.” For one week, ask yourself this question repeatedly What is my most important value in life?” Don’t be satisfied with your first answer. Your first answer will always be something simple, obvious, and admirable to other people. But keep asking the question. What is my most important value in life You maybe surprised at the answer you eventually come up with. Y OUR T HREE M OST I MPORTANT G OALS What are your three most important goals in life right now? Write down your answer in thirty seconds or less. When you only have thirty seconds to write down your three most important goals in life, your answers will be as accurate as if you had thirty minutes or three hours. What are they? N O F EAR OF F AILURE Imagine that you have $20 million in the bank but you discover that you only have ten years left to live. What would you choose to do with the next ten years? This question liberates you temporarily from the limiting concern over money and resources. Most people hold back on doing what they really want to do because they feel that they cannot afford it or that they do not have enough time, talents, or resources to achieve it. But when you imagine that you have $20 million in the bank and you must choose to do something with the next ten years, you will often see clearly what is most important to you—your hearts desire What might it be for you? S IX M ONTHS TO L IVE Imagine that you visit your doctor fora complete examination. He then sits you down and tells you that he has good news for you and bad news. The good news is that you are going to enjoy superb physical health for the next six months. The bad news is that you are going to drop dead of an incurable illness on the st day. If you only had six months left to live, how would you spend your time? What would you do Who would you spend your time with What would you want to complete What kind of legacy would you want to leave? These questions help you clarify what it is that you value and what is really important to you. You’ve heard it said that No one on their deathbed ever said that they wished they had spent more time at the office.” Y OUR F EELING OF I MPORTANCE What sorts of activities give you your greatest feeling of importance, of personal value and self-esteem? Dale Carnegie once said, Tell me what gives a man his greatest feeling of importance and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.” What activities or accomplishments have been most responsible for your greatest happiness in life to date What do you do especially well What has been most responsible for your biggest successes What would you like to do, all daylong, even if you didn’t get paid for it? O NE G REAT G OAL What one great goal would you dare to set for yourself if you knew you could not fail? The fear of failure is the greatest single obstacle to success and the primary cause of failure in adult life. Imagine that you have no limitations. Imagine that you have all the time and money, all the people and relationships, all the friends and contacts, and all the talent and ability that you need to accomplish any goal that you can set for yourself. What would it be? Your ability to think clearly about who you are and what you really want is central to your living a high-performance life. Asking and answering these questions on a regular basis help you to develop clarity, focus, and concentration. Download 0.86 Mb. Share with your friends:
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