appear in your life. As William James of Harvard says, “Belief creates the
actual fact.”
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The Law of Mind says that, “Thoughts objectify themselves.” When you
replay the picture of your goal repeatedly in your conscious mind, you will
begin to believe with ever-increasing intensity that the goal is achievable for
you. As your belief grows, your goal will begin to take physical form in your
external world, and sometimes, far faster than you can imagine.
2. Positively Affirm Your Goal as Accomplished
Create a clear statement or affirmation of your goal as already achieved.
Enthusiastically repeat this statement to yourself over and over again. Imbue
your statement with emotion, conviction and emphasis. As you repeat this
positive affirmation, you imprint this command to achieve the goal deeper
and deeper into your subconscious mind. Use personal language such as “I
earn $50,000 per year!” Or, “I weight 175 pounds,” or “I am an outstanding
salesperson.” By using affirmations, you can totally reprogram your thinking
about yourself and your goals. With affirmations, your potential becomes
unlimited.
When you reprogram your subconscious mind, you create a force field of
energy that inevitably draws into your life the people and circumstances in
harmony with your dominant pictures and thoughts. You automatically
accelerate the process of goal attainment.
3. Accept Complete Responsibility for Results
Accept 100% responsibility for doing everything that is necessary to achieve
your goal. Repeat to yourself, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” Refuse to make
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excuses for not making progress. Refuse to rationalize or explain away your
lack of success. Refuse to justify the reasons for your problems and
obstacles. Instead, accept total responsibility for achieving your goal.
Become totally self-reliant.
Here is an interesting discovery. When you accept complete responsibility
for achieving your goal, people will emerge to help you and guide you along
the path to your success. But when you make excuses, blame others, and
expect them to help you, they will ignore you and avoid you. When you look
to yourself first, you are far more likely not only to be more successful, but
to attract into your life the support of the people you need. If you look to
other people to help you achieve your goals, you will almost always be
disappointed.
4. Step Out in Faith
Once you are clear about what you want, “Act as if it were impossible to
fail.”
As Thoreau said, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.” Act as
though the achieving of the goal was absolutely inevitable. Carry yourself in
your daily activities with others, in everything you do and say, exactly as if
the achievement of your goal was guaranteed by some great power.
5. Do Something Daily
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Do something every day that moves you toward your major goal, or goals.
“By the yard it’s hard, but inch by inch, anything is a cinch.” When you do
something every single day that moves you closer to your goal, you
eventually develop an unshakable faith and belief that your goal will
ultimately be achieved.
In the final analysis, every goal setting exercise must be reduced to specific,
concrete action steps that you can take to achieve the goal. If you do just one
thing each day, no matter how big the goal, or how far away it may be, this
single action will keep you motivated and focused. It will keep your
subconscious mind stimulated and active. Daily movement toward your goal
will energize you and increase your confidence.
Achieving Income and Career Goals
Here are some key ideas for setting goals for your income and your career:
1. Focus on Customer Satisfaction
Everybody makes his or her living by serving someone else. Whatever you
do for a living, you are always in the business of customer satisfaction. Your
job is to determine your most important customers, inside and outside your
company, and then dedicate yourself to serving them better and faster.
Who is your customer? Your customer is the person whose satisfaction
determines your success in your career. It is the person who depends upon
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you for something that you do for them. Your customer is the person you
have to please in order to be paid more and promoted faster.
In business, your boss is your primary customer. If you please your boss by
doing the things that he or she wants or needs, you will be successful. If you
please everyone else in your company but you don’t please your boss, your
job will be in jeopardy. What does your boss need to be happy with your
performance?
If you are a manager, your staff are also your customers. Your staff has been
entrusted to you to help you achieve your goals of satisfying your customers.
In order for you to do your job satisfactorily, your staff must be happy with
you, and with the way that you treat them. The very best bosses have the
happiest and most productive staff members. Who are your most important
staff members?
Your coworkers and colleagues, over whom you have no direct control or
influence, are also your customers. Their help, or lack of help, can have a
major impact on your ability to do your job well. Who are the people around
you whose support and cooperation you require to get your job done well?
The primary customer for your business is the person who purchases and
uses your product or service. Your ability to satisfy this customer with what
he or she wants and needs in a timely fashion, at a reasonable price, and at
an appropriate level of quality, is the key not only to your success, but also
to the survival of your entire enterprise.
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2. Find Out What Your Customers Want
Keep asking yourself, “Who is my customer? How does my customer define
satisfaction? What value does my customer expect from me? How do I best
please my customer?”
Every company that is successful is continually asking its customers, “What
can we do to please you better? What can we do to satisfy you even more
next time?” Every individual should be asking these questions as well.
Once of the biggest problems in the world of work is that people are not
clear about exactly what they need to do to satisfy their bosses. One of the
best things you can do on a regular basis is to go to your boss and ask him or
her, “Why am I on the payroll? What is the most important thing that I do
around here, from your point of view?”
You can be doing your job extraordinarily well, but if what you are working
on is not important to your boss, you will actually be sabotaging your career.
However, if you do the one or two things that are most important to your
boss, those actions that generate the highest levels of “customer satisfaction”
in his eyes, this alone can advance your career faster than anything else you
could do.
To succeed at work, you must ask yourself repeatedly, “Why am I on the
payroll? What results have I been hired to achieve?”
3. Determine Your Primary Output Responsibilities
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Continually ask yourself, your boss and the people around you, “What are
my primary output responsibilities?” In other words, what are you expected
to produce as the result of your work.
There are three ways of defining an output responsibility. First, an output
responsibility is measurable, concrete, specific and can be defined clearly on
paper. You can attach a number and a standard of performance to it. An
output responsibility is a certain quality and quantity of work that can be
defined and measured by an objective third party, including your boss.
For example, “Getting along well with others” is not an output
responsibility. It may be a necessary activity for you to perform your job, but
because it is neither measurable nor concrete, it is not a key determinant of
your success or failure.
Second, an output responsibility is something that is under your control. It is
something that you can do from beginning to end. It does not depend upon
someone else.
Third, an output responsibility for yourself is a task or result that serves as
an input for someone else. In other words, every output that you produce
serves as an input to someone else. It becomes a part of someone else’s job.
For example, if you make a sale, that output becomes an input to your
organization which must now produce, deliver and service the product.
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Each product or service that your company produces becomes an input to the
life or work of someone else. If your company manufacturers computers or
photo copiers, those machines become the outputs of your organization and
inputs to other organizations which then use them to produce outputs of their
own.
The questions for you to ask are, “Who must use what I produce? What does
it take to please the people or organizations that have to use what I produce?
How can I best satisfy my most important customers?” We are all in the
business of customer satisfaction.
The most successful people and organizations are those who please the
greatest number of their customers, by giving them what they want in the
way they want it, at prices they are willing to pay.
4. Determine Your Key Result Areas
In setting business and career goals, you must be continually asking, “What
are my key result areas? What can I, and only I do, that if done in a superior
fashion will yield extraordinary results?”
This is a key question for business and career success. “What is it that you
and only you can do, that if done well, will make a real difference to your
organization?”
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This is a task that only you can do. If you do not do it, it will not be done by
someone else. But if you do it, and you do it well, it can make a real
contribution to yourself and your organization.
There are seldom more than five to seven key result areas in any job. Your
ability to perform well in each of the key result areas of your particular
position is the key to your overall success. You could do many of your jobs
in an excellent fashion, but if they were not among your key result areas,
they could actually be harmful to your career. The time you spend on them
will take you away from doing the vital few things that your success depends
upon.
Apply the 80/20 Rule to everything you do. Just 20% of the things you do
will account for 80% of the value of your work. It is essential that you work
on the top 20% of activities that account for most of your results.
5. Practice Management by Objectives
One of the most effective forms of corporate goal setting is “Management by
Objectives.” Management by objectives is a technique that should only be
used with competent people, with people who have mastered the job and
know what needs to be done. This method requires that you entrust an entire
task to an individual.
There are four steps to management by objectives. First, define the desired
goal or result clearly, in discussion with the person who will be have the
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responsibility of achieving it. Take the time to agree exactly on what is to be
accomplished.
Second, discuss and agree on the plan of implementation. What steps will be
taken to accomplish the goal? How is it to be done? How will you measure
success? What standards of performance will you use? How will you know
that the job has been done well? And especially, what will be the
consequences for doing or not doing the job in an effective and timely way?
Third, agree on a time of completion, and set a schedule to review progress
and problems. When is the job expected to be done? The setting of clear
deadlines and schedules is a vital part of management by objectives.
Fourth, leave the person alone to do the job. Once you have assigned a
clearly defined job with output responsibilities and standards of performance
to a competent person, leave the person alone to do the job in his own way.
The key to delegation is to delegate the task completely, and refuse to take it
back. Do not interfere. Give whatever advice, guidance and support is
necessary for the person to do the job, but make it clear that the job is the
responsibility of the person.
One of the most powerful ways to build competence, confidence and ability
in other people is to assign complete responsibility to them for the
achievement of an important task. When a person knows that he is
completely responsible, it gives him a greater sense of personal power and
control. It builds initiative and resolve. It develops persistence and
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determination. It is one of the most powerful of all people building tools
available to parents or managers. And it is a great time saver.
Achieve Your Goals Faster
There are four important thinking tools that you can apply to the
achievement of any goal. The application and use of these tools greatly
improves your competence and ability to accomplish the goals that you have
set for yourself, and for your business.
1. Remove the Obstacles
Identify the obstacles that stand between you and your goal. What is holding
you back from achieving your goal? Why haven’t you achieved it already?
Write down every single obstacle or difficulty that you feel is limiting your
ability to achieve the goal that you have defined.
These may include internal obstacles, obstacles within yourself. They may
be external obstacles, obstacles that are created by circumstances or the
situation in the world around you.
Once you have determined the obstacles that are holding you back, identify
and determine your largest single obstacle. What is the major obstacle that is
standing in your way of completing this task? Resolve to go to work on this
one obstacle and concentrate single-mindedly on it until it is removed.
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Peter Drucker said, “In every complex problem, there is usually a single
large problem that must be solved before any other problems can be solved.”
