This is so because this message is to achievement what breathing is to life-the core without which the centre cannot hold. And the invitation is an invitation to greatness. It is this message and this invitation that I bring you. Ignore it at your peril.

Statistics reveal that:

• 3 % of the people in the earth govern and rule the other 97%
• 3% of the people earn as much as the other 97% put together
• 3% own as much real estate as the other 97%.
• 3% of the people in the world have goals that are written down, the other 97% does not.

Which group would you rather belong to? If democracy has trained us to believe that power belongs to the majority, these statistics tell us that wealth and real success are being enjoyed by an infinitesimally small fraction. Many aspire to win but in reality few are winning. Why is this so?

Perhaps the most revealing exposition on the importance of goals comes form a Harvard study. A synopsis of the study that was conducted at Harvard Business School between 1979 and 1989 is presented below. In 1979 the graduates of the MBA program at Harvard were asked a simple question: “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” The results were very interesting. 84% had no specific goals at all, 13% had goals but they were not committed to paper, and only 3% had clear goals and plans that were written down. In 1989, a good ten years after the first phase of the study, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. Their results were even more startling. The 13% that had goals but not written down were earning twice as much as the 84% that did not have any goals. An even more interesting statistic is that the 3% who had written down plans and goals were earning on average ten times more than the other 97%. Further more the mere act of writing a goal down on paper increased its chances of being accomplished by a staggering 90%.

However, there is still another shocking and some what contradictory message from statistics. Most people who have New Year’s resolutions and who try to attain their goals fail dismally. This is particularly true of behaviorally anchored goals such as losing weight, quitting smoking, and procrastination cessation. It has been established that the majority of people who seriously embark on a weight loss program actually lose weight for a time, but after a year or so they balloon back to or even beyond their original weight. The same is true for those that try to quit smoking, the employee who sets the goal not to be late for work, the tight rope walker who determines not to fail, the subordinates who are told to reduce defects and mistakes. Those that try not to fall into wrong relationships, more often than not fall into wrong relationships. The same is true also for those that try not to be nervous or clumsy.

We are goal seeking and pleasure seeking organisms. If you take a homing pigeon and blind-fold it and drive it or fly it in circles to any where in the world and then release it, it will fly straight home. It has an inborn home-seeking mechanism. Humans have an inborn goal seeking mechanism.

The human mind works in pictures and not words. Once a goal statement is fed into it, the mind instantly converts it to a picture and then relentlessly seeks information and creates circumstances that will result in its fulfillment. Once you determine that you hate or like red cars, isn’t it strange that you start seeing them all over the place? The mind does not create a picture of the verb in the goal statement, in this case “like or hate” but of the object and its adverb (red car).

What You Resist will Persist
There are two types of goal setting approaches. These are negative and positive, or problem reductionism and benefit increamentalism, or away from and towards. When a goal such as, “to lose weight or quit smoking” is fed into the mind it creates the picture of the object who happens to be overweight or a smoker and seeks to make this a reality. If your goal is not to fail or to come out of debt, it creates the picture of a failure or a debtor. The rule is, “What you resist will persist. What you desire and picture in your mind will become your reality.” Most weight reduction programs are sound and actually work but they need to be augmented by the right psychology. If the physic and the psyche are at loggerheads, the psyche always triumphs. It is easier to substitute an undesired habit with another than to break it. Fulfilling a goal couched in negative terms is a monumental assignment only rarely achieved both by individuals and organizations. For this reason most self improvement programs and organizational performance management systems rarely achieve the intended results. The intentions are perfect but the psychology is flawed. Negative goal setting stems from an excessive preoccupation with risk to the exclusion of benefits. On an organizational level many deals stall because of losers focusing on what could go wrong instead of the benefits should things go well?

In setting goals losers focus on risks, but winners on benefits. The magic of achievement lies in positive goal setting. Below are examples:

1a) To lose weight (negative and wrong)

b) To fit into a size 30 skate by 31 December 2008 (positive and correct)

2a) To reduce the number of late deliveries by 10% (negative)

b) To deliver 90% of the orders on time

This week I invite you to make positive goal setting a weapon in your armory. Ask not what if things go wrong; rather ask what if they go well. Ignore it at your peril.

About the author 

  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it