Ask anybody on January 2nd if they have New Year's Resolutions or goals and nine out of ten will probably say, “Yes!” Ask the same people about their resolutions three months later and they’ll look at you like a small goat discovering a new fence for the first time.
All good intentions aside, exhaustive studies have shown only three percent of the population engage in some form of goal setting and only one percent on average, write their goals down.
It should be noted that there is no small coincidence between the one percent that write goals down and the highest achieving, highest income-earning men and women around the world.
Setting goals is the genesis from which all things great and not so great are accomplished. Read any book on achievement or watch the Biography Channel and see the clear quintessential message: Goals equal Success!
If it’s that simple though, why are most people so unsuccessful in the fundamentals of real goal setting?
One legitimate answer may be our generation is busier than any generation in the past. Life today is not static and our preoccupation with just trying to ‘get by’ runs juxtaposed to the activities needed for maintaining concentrated goal achievement. Fair enough.
On the other hand, these same studies I mentioned are just as clear on the real reason most people – the ones who bother to set goals – will never achieve them. They don’t write them down - relying rather that their goals be left to their memories to manage.
In my soon to be released Thought Book, I wrote: "Your goals are future landmarks on paths created by You."
Goal experts, however, will be quick to point out, “Unwritten goals are nothing more than Wishes”… and we know the world is full of people with plenty of wishes. Go to any lottery office or anywhere they sell things like DotCom Stock. In one place they wish they’d bought more; in the other they wish they hadn’t bought any at all!
Real goal achievement has so nothing to do with merely thinking or wishing for what we’d like to accomplish and everything to do with Not Forgetting.
As the young man once said, “My memory is the thing I use to forget with”. If we buy the precept that we are now the busiest, most preoccupied generation, it’s no stretch to believe the experts when they say, “Goals left only to memory are destined to fade like so many wishes”.
On the next page, Paul Shearstone discusses the fundamental psychology of goal setting. Click to continue reading.
