Goal setting skills and 'how to eat an elephant'

Why do we set goals?
Imagine for a minute a pilot of a Jumbo Jet or the Captain of a Luxury Cruise liner. What is their aim or goal? That's right it's the destination airport or harbour that they need to get to. So to do that they have to follow maps, shipping lanes and listen to the people in the control tower.

Basically they need to know where they are going or chances are they may end up going round in circles.The same applies to your business. You need to know where you are going then follow a plan to get there.

Having the right Mindset and How to set goals:
Setting goals is not difficult but there are a few things you need to do otherwise it won't work.First of all sit down and think about the things that you really want in life. This can be anything from a 7 bedroom house in the country to a brand new BMW parked in the drive to 3 luxury Holidays a year to a million pounds in the bank. Let your imagination run a little wild here and don't hold back.

Getting your emotions and feelings involved in this process is absolutely crucial. It is really important that the things that you think about and desire are things that you really really want and not just a passing whim or wish. For example If you can imagine yourself living in the dream house, touching those expensive granite kitchen work tops, entertaining friends in your private home cinema and indoor swimming pool and get goose bumps thinking about it then you are going in the right direction.

Napolean Hill describes this process in his book Think and Grow Rich and one of his famous quotes from that book is“ Whatever the mind of Man can conceive it can achieve”Don't ask me how it works but it does but only if you put your feelings and Emotions into it.Once you have thought about what you want you will need to write it down somewhere.

Now sorry for repeating myself but I'll say that again just to stress how important it is Once you have thought about what you want you will need to write it down somewhere.Writing your goals down is really important because if it's written down it is more tangible and there fore more likely to come true.

Think of it as a written statement or promise to yourself that you are going to get something that you really want. You have to write your goals down anyway because it is also important that you review them at least twice a day. For maximum effect the best times to do this are just before you go to sleep and just after you wake up.

This is because your subconsious mind is more active when you are asleep and just as you wake up. It is all to do with feeding your subconsious with the things that you concieve and by doing this you start to believe that is possible and so start to make it happen.

That's a difficult one to explain so I hope it is clear because it is so important for your ultimate success believe me.Setting a time limit on achieving your goals is important because like the pilot you want to know where you're going but also when you will get there. Putting a time limit on achieving goals is important for speeding up the whole process by forcing you to take much stronger action.

'How to eat an Elephant':
Once you have established what you want and written it down the next thing to do is to make a plan to get them. This will be your route just like the pilot or captain of the ship.
Working towards your goal write down the steps that it is going to take to reach them and just take one step at a time.

It's true that looking at your goals can be quite daunting and a bit like eating an elephant. Here's the clue. Anyone can eat an Elephant so long as they eat it a bit at a time.

This means that to accomplish big goals you have to break down the things you have to do and say to yourself:-Say It's a really big goal like owning a million pound house then it is very easy to break everything down even to exactly when you will achieve it if you can work with some real figures both monetary and time scale.

So going back to eating the elephant what you do with your plan is break it down and ask yourself what you have to do this year, what you have to do this month and what you have to do today to reach your goal.

That way you set yourself little targets which eventually eat away at the big goal until you get there.It's like anything. Take weight loss for example. If I want to lose 20lbs say I know that if I eat x amount of calories a day and do y amount of exercise a day I will burn off z amount of calories until I am thin.

If I want to be a lawyer I know I have to go to college for 5 years and if I attend every lecture every week, take good notes and pass the exams at the end I will eventually be a Lawyer.And that's how it goes and I know It's going back to personal development but if you want to get paid a lot for something you have to be good at it and that includes education and practice.

Take Bethoven for example, he practiced 10 hours a day at the piano and ended up being one of the greatest pianists and composers of all time. When his friends were out playing ball he was inside practising the piano and of course it paid off.

Dimagio the greatest baseball player of all time didn't like the piano, he liked Baseball and so it goes all through history people who were dedicated to their chosen niche have gone on to make great successes of themselves.

This brings me to another important point about goal setting and that is don't give up if you fail to reach a goal. Just learn from it and ask yourself why, learn from that and move forward.
Thomas Edison failed 1000 times whilst inventing the electric lightbulb but instead of looking at each attempt as failure he simply viewed it as he had discovered just one more way that didn't work and kept on trying until he found the right way.

Set specific goals for yourself and plan out the actions that are required to achieve each one. Once you start accomplishing them you’ll feel a sense of satisfaction and this will fuel your determination.