Setting Goals

Wishing is the most powerful force at our command. But most of us don’t know it exists; let alone how to command it.

The secret is this: Don’t just make a wish; make it presentable. The power of your wish comes from the way you present it to your conscious and subconscious. If you present it effectively, you will harness the genie-like power of your mind and cause your wish to come true. If you present it ineffectively, your mind will shrug it off as just another one of those good intentions, ill-timed and unachievable.

What follows are eleven steps that will help you make your wish (goal) so presentable that your mind will just naturally make it come true. As you learn about each step, apply it to the wish you have decided to work on first.

1. Write it.

   If you think your wish is fixed so clearly in your mind that you don’t have to put it on paper, you are fooling yourself. Write it, or kiss it good-bye. When you write your wish, you give it the kind of clarity, focus, and urgency that you can’t give it any other way. You hang it out their in the world right in front of your eyes. You turn it into something real, something that stares back at you from the page and dares you to make it come true.

   If you want your wish to come true or to succeed with your goal, whether long term or short term, write it down. If you don’t want to make it come true, then don’t write it down.

2. Be specific.

   A presentable wish is specific down to the last detail. When you can picture precisely what you want - when you can feel it, hear it, touch it, smell it, and taste it - that’s specific.

   The more specific you are, the better your chances for getting what you want. If you want money, how much money? By when? If you want a new house, what kind of house? Where? How many rooms? If you want a better job, in what field? At what pay? For what company? If you want a richer relationship, with whom? What will it feel like? Sound like? Look like?

   When you make your wish specific, you give yourself a host of powerful advantages, such as:

   • You can track your progress. If you don’t know what you want, how will you know when you get it?
   • You avoid unintended results. Vague wishes can be dangerous because they can be granted in unintended ways. For example, if you wish for “more freedom at work,” you might find yourself fired. If you wish to “lose weight,” you might find yourself with a serious illness, one symptom of which is weight loss. If you wish for “lots of money,” you might find yourself the beneficiary of a large life-insurance policy, but the person you love the most had to die for you to collect it. Wish for exactly what you want, and you won’t find yourself with what you don’t want.
   • You focus your brainpower. Have you ever noticed that you tend to pay attention to the things you’re interested in? You buy a new car, and you begin to notice how many other people are driving the same car. You read a book about nature, and you begin to notice the sunsets and the songbirds, though both have always been there.

   When you’re specific about what you want, you alert your brain to notice all the people, information, and resources that can help cause your wish to come true. Everywhere you look, you discover helpful coincidences - what the rest of the world calls luck - but these coincidences you have made possible by being aware of exactly what you want. The more specific you are, the more luck you will create.

3. Set a deadline.

   A wish or goal without a deadline is just an idle daydream, with no beginning and no end. A deadline imparts a sense of urgency, the way you feel when you’re about to leave town. But a deadline isn’t meant to make you panic, it’s meant to make you focus. Don’t wear it like a straitjacket. If you find you’re going to miss a deadline, go ahead and change it. Be comfortable with it. But keep your eye on it. If you want to make your wish come true, know exactly what you’re shooting for - and when.

4. Make it something you can measure.

   You can be winning and think you’re losing because you aren’t keeping score. Measurement is your way of keeping score. Measurement lets you see how much progress you have already made and how far you have to go. If you can’t measure your wish, you won’t know when you’ve made it come true.

   Some wishes or goals are easy to measure, such as making a certain amount of money or losing a certain amount of weight. But how do you wish for things that aren’t measurable, such as a better marriage, or a more satisfying job, or a sense of inner peace? It’s easy - just turn those wishes into something you can measure. Turn them into specific actions.

   For example, suppose your goal or wish is to have a better marriage. To turn this unmeasurable wish into something you can measure, ask yourself these questions:

   1. What specific changes can I make in the way I act toward my partner in order to improve our marriage?
   2. Will I make these changes all at once or gradually?
   3. By what date will I complete them?

   Once you have identified specific measurable actions you can take to improve your marriage, you can phrase your wish in terms of these actions. For instance, instead of wishing for a better marriage, which you can’t measure, you might wish to rub your partner’s back a couple of nights a week. You might wish to cut the grass every other week instead of letting your partner always do all the yard work. You might wish to take the kids to soccer practice on Saturday mornings so your partner can sleep late. You might wish to take out the garbage, or wrap the Christmas presents, or clean up after dinner three nights a week - anything to lighten the load on your partner and sweeten the relationship.

   The same approach applies to wishing for a state of mind, such as happiness, joy, or contentment. You can’t measure these things, so wish instead for the specific actions that will lead to the state of mind you want.

   For example, if you wish to feel fulfilled, and you feel it most when you’re performing community service, wish to spend more time serving your community. If you wish to feel happy, and you feel it most when you’re with your family, wish to spend more time with your family.

   Wish for something you can measure, and you will consistently measure success.

5. Wish only for what you can control.

   A wish or goal is about what you do - not what anyone else does - because that’s the only thing you can control. There is no place in your wish for what you want someone else to think, or do, or feel, because you can’t make those things happen. Concentrate instead on the things you can make happen.

   For instance, you can’t wish to be loved, because you can’t make that happen. But you can wish to be loving. You can’t wish for that heartthrob next door to go to dinner with you, because you can’t make that happen. But you can wish for the courage to ask that person to dinner. You can’t wish for someone else to make you happy, because you can’t make that happen. But you can wish to spend more of your time doing the things that make you happy.

   If you wish only for what you can control, then success will always be in your hands. If you wish for something you can’t control, then success will always be in the hands of someone else.

6. Wish for what you want, not what you don’t want.

   Your mind moves you toward whatever you think about. If you think about what you want, you’ll move toward it. If you think about what you don’t want, you’ll move toward that instead.

   Rather than saying, “I wish I wasn’t broke,” tell yourself, “I choose to have $10,000 in the bank.”

   Rather than saying, “I wish I wasn’t fat,” tell yourself, “I choose to lose thirty pounds.”

   Rather than saying, “I wish I wasn’t stupid,” tell yourself, “I choose to educate myself.”

   Rather than saying, “I wish I wasn’t so lonely,” tell yourself, “I choose to make some friends.”

   Ask for what you want and you’ll get it. Ask for what you don’t want, and you’ll be stuck with that instead.

7. Begin your wish with “I choose.”

   The real secret to success is not self-discipline; it’s choosing to succeed. The moment you make a choice, you eliminate all the doubt and hesitation that exist when you’re trying to make up your mind. Instead of worrying about what to do, you just do it. You throw a little switch in your brain that commands you to do whatever it takes to carry out your decision.

8. Make it emotional.

   Your wish should include an emotional payoff so you can use the power of that emotion to help you cause your wish to come true. For instance, if your wish is to improve your marriage, you might say, “I choose to lovingly help my partner with the chores.” If you wish is to get up each morning at six, to give yourself some personal time before you go to work, you might say, “I choose to cheerfully rise each morning at six.” If your wish is to increase company revenues by 50 percent, you might say, “I choose to joyfully increase company revenues by 50 percent.”

   When you build an emotional payoff into your wish, you tend to work harder at it because you enjoy it more. The harder you work, the more likely you are to make your wish come true. Before you know it, you’ll enjoy the work as much as you enjoy the results. From that point on, the results will take care of themselves.

9. Be brief.

   Less is more. The shorter your wish, the greater the emotional impact. A single short sentence is perfect. To keep your wish brief, act as if each word costs you $10,000.

10. Believe in it.

    Why would a gardener take the trouble to plant a seed, water it, fertilize it, and tend it - perhaps for weeks - before seeing any return at all on the effort? Because he believes the seed will grow into something worth the effort. Perhaps it will turn into a flower, or a fruit, or a useful vegetable. Whatever the expected result, the expectation must come before the result. The only gardens we bother to tend are the ones we believe will grow.

    When you make a wish, you have to believe you will succeed, or else you won’t be willing to make the effort. With belief comes action. With action comes results. Without belief there is neither action nor results.

11. Take immediate action.

    The final step in making your wish presentable is to send your brain the most powerful message of all: Act now. If you don’t, you’ll fall prey to the Law of Diminishing Intent: the more time that passes before you act, the less likely you will be to take action.

    Before you get up from your chair, do something to put your wish into action. Make a phone call, create a plan, read a useful article in a newspaper or magazine, write a letter. Do something to get the ball rolling. Do anything. The important thing is to take some kind of action right now, before you lose the moment, and with it your chance to make your wish come true.

If you haven’t already been doing so as we’ve gone along, take the time now to go back and make your wish presentable. Take it through each of the eleven steps we’ve just discussed. Write it. Make it specific. Make it measurable. Make it all the things it needs to be in order for it to come true. Then take immediate action to start you on your way.

If you’ve come this far and still don’t know what to wish for, then make this your first wish: Wish to know what to wish for. Make it an official wish. Make it presentable. Take immediate action. DO this now, and you will be launched into a lifetime of making your wishes come true.