Much is spoken about in self-development circles regarding goal setting and its impact on a person’s results or achievements in life. In this article, we’re going to consider why goals are important to your success and what we can do to make them more effective.
Many people who talk about goal setting refer to either a Yale study of 1953 or a Harvard study of 1979. You’ve probably heard about these studies already and if not, you probably will. You should know though, that they never happened! The studies from Yale and Harvard are both Urban Legends. However, due to the prevalence of the resulting statistics in various reference books and training material, the Dominican University has undertaken some research and validated the results quoted in the original stories.
So what are these results?
It’s been shown through study that people who set goals are more likely to achieve success than those who don’t. This may seem obvious when written down in this way, but more than 90% of the population simply don’t bother. What isn’t obvious though is that setting written goals and making a public commitment to reach them increases the likelihood of achieving your goals by a considerable factor!
We also know through research that we engage more fully with something when we take action to involve ourselves in it. With goals, thinking: “I will lose 30 pounds by the end of the year” may be a reasonable goal, but it’s just in your head – in other words, it’s a daydream! However, as soon as you write your goal on paper, you automatically become more involved.
Try it:
Think of a goal that you’d like to achieve – preferably one that would be a stretch. Consider how you feel whilst it’s just in your head. Now write it down and put a date against it when you plan to hit the goal. Feels more scary now, doesn’t it? Now go and tell your best friend what that goal is, and ask them to hold you accountable!
It’s that last step that gives us the real power in goals. The more people you tell about your goal, the more your subconscious mind will push you to achieve it in order to keep your actions congruent with the words that you’re saying, the words that you’re reading (you do read your goals every day, don’t you?) and the thoughts and images that are going through our minds relating to the success that we’re anticipating.
I would encourage you, if you don’t already, to start embracing the full potential that goals can bring into your life by writing them down, setting a deadline, then broadcasting them to your world. If you do this, you’ll achieve more than you ever thought possible and you’ll come to appreciate just why goals are so important to success.
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