Be Specific

This is the second in a series of five posts pertaining to my initial entry “Five Tips For Making Goals That Stick.“Overview. Five Tips For Making Goals That Stick

Part 1. The “WHY” Matters More Than The “HOW”
Part 2. Make Powerful Goals
Part 3. Make Specific Goals
Part 4. Use Peer Pressure To Your Advantage
Part 5. Reference Your Goals Daily

Make Specific Goals

Ambiguity is a major source of fear in our lives. Don’t let this fear keep you from dreaming big and setting big goals. The trick, is to not only set big goals, but to get super-crisp about them. You should do whatever it takes to get clear about what it that you wish to achieve or bring into your life. You should get to the point where you can literally smell, touch, taste, see and feel it. Even better, you should be able to clearly envision yourself having already achieved the goal on a literal and emotional level.

The challenge with doing this is two-fold. First of all, you need to actually figure out what it is that you want. Secondly, you need to develop your mental and emotional “muscles” to the point where you can experience achievement at a very deep level without having actually achieved anything. This is possible for everyone, but it might take a little practice.

1. Get Clear About What You Want

Make a commitment to strike vagary from your manner of speech. After you have determined why your goal is important, you need to get clear about the finer details of the goals.

For “thing” goals (tangible goods you want to bring into your life), you would want to describe the item in more detail. For example, if you have a goal to be able to afford a new home in the next year, you would want to get specific about the style of home (Crafstman), size (3200 sqft), color/materials (wood/steel; green/grey), etc.

For an experience goal (something you want to learn or achieve) you will want to get clear on the specific level of competency you want to achieve, the timeframe required,etc.

For a financial goal, like growing your net worth; get clear about a specific dollar amount you want to see, and a time frame in which you expect to see it in.

Getting clear on a goal will often require you to set some boundaries around

• amount/quantity you want
• level of competency or quality you expect and
• time frame you give yourself to achieve the goal

The important point is not to belabor all three points so that progress stalls, but to get a reasonable level of clarity on all three so that you can move forward with purpose and conviction and not worry so much about the unknown.

2. Visualize Success

You can experience success right away, right now. All it takes if a strong enough emotional connection to the state of being that achievement will bring. Some people are naturally very good at visualizing. They are natural dreamers. For many others, it takes a bit of work. The good news is, that we are ALL capable of doing it. With a little practice it will become easy.

There are couple techniques that I use to improve my ability to visualize success.

Color Technique.

This is a generic technique to work on your ability to remember colors and visualize more effectively. Stand at a window or in a good sized room…and look around for about 20 seconds. Take it all in.

Now…close your eyes, and have a friend (you can do this yourself, but works best with someone else) call out a color. Try to recall all the things you saw that matched that color….now, open your eyes and try to find all the objects with that color. Repeat this exercise a few times. You will notice a new appreciation for the variety in everyday scenery, and your ability to visualize richly and deeply will greatly improve.

Mirror-Mirror Technique.

Sit in a comfortable chair, and close your eyes. Begin breathing slowly through your nose. After a few minutes, imagine yourself standing, with your eyes closed, in front of a large mirror….ONE YEAR FROM TODAY. Slowly open your eyes and look at yourself in the mirror. Imagine that everything you want to have achieved over the past year has been done. In fact, you have surpassed your wildest expectations.

Stand and visualize yourself in the mirror. Look RIGHT INTO YOUR OWN EYES. Think how you would think. Feel how you would feel. Breath how you would breath. Feel all the sensations that you would feel in future having achieved everything you wanted. Look into the mirror….and visualize yourself stepping into the mirror and into the image…you are now just one being, and you are looking out into your future life from a first person perspective. Say “thank you”….and open your eyes.