A change agent is someone who is easily able to make changes in their lives and also the lives of others.  They are often considered to be people of great influence and very likable.  They seem like natural leaders.  These desirable traits can be built and enhanced quickly in just a single step.  That step is to learn and build a belief in yourself that you can easily change your own beliefs.  Think about that for a moment.  What bigger transition could you make than to fully believe that you can change anything?  Wouldn’t that empower you to take on any challenge, overcome any obstacle and outperform any expectation?  That is what a change agent needs to do and they need to be able to instill that in others as well to not only change themselves, but also those they interact with and teach.

The Belief That You Can Easily Change Your Beliefs

My last article, I talked about the foundation of beliefs and how using the power of emotions associated with pain and pleasure can have you steer your beliefs and build the ones you want.  Well, that applied with practise and consistency will lead a person to believe that anything can be changed.  That one belief is the driving force behind every great change agent.  Only if you believe that something can be changed, can it.

The Power of That Belief

People with strong beliefs for changing things not only have the confidence in their own ability to change but also the ability to make change happen and to help change others.  This confidence is visible from anyone interacting with them and it helps to brood more desire and willingness to change.  This is what makes them successful, there is no room for failure if the belief is there and strong enough to make the change happen.

Showing That Belief to Others

Unfortunately, the world we live in forces us to see and hear negative discussions and disengaged people from both their work and lives every single day.  People often float through life considering themselves to be victims without taking on any responsibility for what they have immediate control over.  Well, that is a choice to live that way and its also a choice to not only change that, but also to become a change agent to move away from that shift.  I know that if you are willing to change your own beliefs to have a bigger impact in the world without simply sliding through life dealing with what gets dishes your way, you are more likely to grow, learn, build your own beliefs, steer your own life and influence others.  That kind of attitude is contagious and attractive, especially to those that are on the verge of a similar discovery but needing one more example or person to demonstrate that yes, it is possible.

I encourage you to make yourself a change agent but working to show the things you have accomplished, the things that are difficult to change but you have learned to overcome and then to help others do the same in their lives.  That can lead to making a big change in the world by living not just for yourself, but in a way that changes the lives of many!

Posted by Mike King under Business | 6 Comments »

Everyone has some kind of foundation for their beliefs.  Each of the things you believe in came about from some experiences, some actions, some relations or thoughts that led you to consistently thinking a certain way about a particular subject.  Every time you are reminded of that item, your thoughts have reinforced themselves more and more in your mind to the point where it is completely natural.  It’s there without you meaning it to be and you automatically feel some kind of attachment to that thought.

How Beliefs Develop

Beliefs are reinforced over and over and not generally immediately developed.  In fact, they are learned.  Anything that is learned is possible to be unlearned then as well.  This is an important point to remember as have a certain set of beliefs shouldn’t be a roadblock or accelerator in your life that is never expected to change.  As you change the things that lead to you having the belief, you also change the belief itself.  To understand this we need to look closer at what made the belief in the first place.

Beliefs you develop are from many sources:

• Parent
• Schooling
• Advertising
• Repetitive Actions
• Life Experiences
• Social Influence
• Relationships
• Senses

These all feed our minds with things that stimulate us.  They train our minds to see similarities and results based on those inputs.  These form our beliefs.  The interesting thing about all those sources is that we all have then yet we each form our own unique set of beliefs in life.  This is because the beliefs we each have are learned!

Beliefs are Built Two Sided

The two sides of building beliefs are the associations with pleasure and pain .  Everything that happens that leads to a belief turned into or stems from some form or pleasure and/or pain.  I’ve written about using pleasure and pain to explore both goal setting and passions in previous articles and wanted to elaborate here more.  I learned this concept from Anthony Robbins in his books and motivational speaking.  He knows and teaches that pleasure and pain are the root of not only our beliefs, but ALL of our actions in life. Its essentially the balancing scale used for all decisions in life.  It isn’t limited to having only one or the other on the scale, their are often many factors.

The way that beliefs are built using pleasure and pain is by conditioning.  As you do things that you enjoy you link pleasurable feelings with that activity or thoughts or feelings you had while do those things.  From then on, your brain remembers that and associates them together when its repeated to a point where you simple BELIEVE in the result when the same steps lead up to it.  This occurs for simple actions, life changing decisions and everything in between.  You will automatically be forming these beliefs based on how you feel at the time.  Either how you feel about the decision, the action, the people involved, the result,and even all the feelings about doing one thing instead of another.  On the flip side, the same thing occurs with experiencing pain.  Those events and actions that cause feelings of pain lead to beliefs as well.

Pleasure

If you know that pleasure is an important factor in building beliefs, you need to look at how to use pleasure in your life to reinforce the beliefs you actually do want to have.  If you don’t want them, then there is no point in looking for any pleasure associated with it.  Pleasure is not something that either exists or does not exist however in your actions and events.  Its something that has to be looked for and reinforced.  Something like doing chores or errands might not seem at all pleasurable if it limits your free time available or takes time away from your family.  However, you can easily look at the pleasurable sides like the fact that it makes you  more organized, helps you to feel good about catching up on outstanding work, gives you a chance to complete and accomplish some tasks and perhaps it even puts a smile on someone else’s face when they know what you have done!  All these pleasures can be used to remind yourself of the joy in doing chores instead of the pain.  This kind of method to find pleasure in things helps you to have beliefs of accomplishment and completion in things.  It also reinforces the beliefs of how staying organized and helping others with chores and errands can be a benefit to them as well and put a smile on their face.  These are all pleasurable associations to make with something as simple as doing chores.  If you use this method in any area of your life, you can develop a set of positive beliefs around the things you know you have to do and ultimately enjoy them a whole lot more.

Pleasure can be used to stop doing things as well.  If you think of some of your bad habits you want to overcome or feelings that you don’t want to have like worrying or fear, you can learn to associate new feelings and positive results when those events occur.  Perhaps things like, you feel a sense of security if you can overcome a fear, or a sense of freedom.  Perhaps you look for the pleasure you would have if you break a habit or accomplish some goal that seems like a painful experience (loosing weight).  You can look for the pleasures that will come about in the future after you overcome something to reinforce the belief now so that you know it is worthwhile and valuable to put your time and focus on.

Pain

Pain can be used to steer your beliefs just as easily and in as many creative ways as well.  If you remember the feelings of pain (like jealousy, fear, anger, resentment, sadness, and hate) when you have experiences, it will build your beliefs that you don’t want those to occur.  The power of this is when you use it to build the beliefs you want.  If you want to start exercising regularly but have only ever experienced pain in doing that, you need to re-frame that pain around how you will feel if you don’t start exercising and how others will see you if you don’t take care of your body.  Doing that can give you a sense of MORE pain in NOT doing it, than in taking action and getting to a regular exercise program now.

The pain you cause others in your actions can also be used to associate that with things you want to stop doing.  You could take something that is pleasurable to you (like an addiction) and highly associate all the pain it causes to others to help you build a belief that you not only want to stop, but need to stop in order to prevent all that pain.  You can do this to overcome your own pleasures and make sure that you really know the painful emotions it causes to others.

Steer and Control The Beliefs That You Build

All this understanding of the foundation of beliefs puts a lot of power in your hands to control the feelings you choose to associate with your actions and experiences.  If you use these techniques you can easily create and reinforce only the beliefs that you want to have.  Doing this enables you to make changes in your life and learn to connect the emotions you experience to build the beliefs you want.

Posted by Mike King under Life | 2 Comments »

Author : Lee Strobel

I wanted to read another of Strobel’s book as I thoroughly enjoyed his "God’s Outrageous Claims " book and I wanted to explore a bit more of the evidence and entry level apologetic views to help defend Christianity.  While the book is really just an introduction to some of these issues, its also a personal account of a portion of the author’s journey in finding faith in Jesus himself.  That is an important aspect of all of Strobel’s books and is one of the main reasons I think he has had so many best sellers.  He presents his case and at the same time, attaches his own feelings and impact of what he’s learned along the way.  Exactly what I like to do in reviewing a book myself.

This book covers 15 questions that Strobel asks an expert on each subject to explore in detail.

1. Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?
2. Do the Biographies of Jesus Stand Up to Scrutiny?
3. Were Jesus’ Biographies Reliably Preserved for Us?
4. Is There Credible Evidence for Jesus outside His Biographies?
5. Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus’ Biographies?
6. Is the Jesus of History the Same As the Jesus of Faith?
7. Was Jesus Really Convinced That He Was the Son of God?
8. Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?
9. Did Jesus Fulfill the Attributes of God?
10. Did Jesus – And Jesus Along – Math the Identity of the Messiah?
11. Was Jesus’ Death a Sham and His Resurrection a Hoax?
12. Was Jesus’ Body Really Absent from His Tomb?
13. Was Jesus seen Alive after His Death on the Cross?
14. Are There Any Supporting Facts That Point to the Resurrections?
15. What Does the Evidence Establish – And What Does It Mean Today?

I found the information revealed to be quite informative and for me, largely new as I’ve never researched these areas directly.  There is plenty of evidence presented on each topic and Strobel uses each interview to explore a number of angles from the skeptics perspective to ensure he looks for answers to the most common questions that relate to every interview topic.  The experts range greatly but are primarily scholars and authors of various books with published content on each relevant topic.  They have years of research and study on each area and are well suited to answer Strobel’s questions.

The format of the book is written as a narrative description of these interviews with each expert.  I found this part a bit of a stumble as it doesn’t carry much between each topic.  There is some reference between the chapters and evidence presented that builds on previous findings but they are large separate individual chapters.  This made the book a bit harder for me to really get since aside from the particle topic in each chapter there wasn’t any kind of story and building component to the book.  This still worked very well and definitely makes a focus on purpose to address each of the questions, it just took more to keep me interested.  I think some of that was due to the historical nature, as I have little to no interest in history and find it quite boring to read about so I got more than my share in one or two chapters.  There isn’t too much of this historical componetn though so it didn’t hold me back from continuing through the book and exploring each of the questions with great interest.

Overall, I definitely enjoyed this book and I certainly recommend it to anyone wanting to examine any of these questions that are covered and also for a beginning some study of apologetics or simply general interest or skepticism in Christ.  I’m not sure the book on its own will drive too many people to believing in Christ but it can certainly give more evidence and reason to believe.  I wouldn’t say its inpiring or motivational, however, it is very informative and great opportunity to learn.   I think there could have been a bit more examination of the personal impact on each of the experts lives in study Christ.  That leaves a bigger mark on my heart when there is a direct experiencial story around each topic, not just the facts.  I’m happy to know more about these areas now and to match them to my own experience in knowing Christ which just helps to strengthen that belief.  I hope you may find the same in reading it!

There’s Always Skeptics, Aren’t There?

Now, since every trial or case should have both sides, I just want to point out one more thing.  While there are certainly no shortage of skeptics out there about Christianity and some of those towards Strobel’s book, I found the book to be exactly what it titles, a Case FOR Christ.  The skeptics argue that he did not interview objectively to get the full debate and views available and while that may be true, the whole point of the book is to build a case that supports the belief in Christ and he does a fine job of building that case and exploring the sides that support this.  There are plenty of books available to read the constrasting arguments and they examine the case against Christ so you need to remember that in reading this book.  This book is not intended as a debate, its a one sided argument from one perspective.  Now I’ve read some skeptical and athiest comparisons of this book (just at a review level) and I don’t find them to provide much other than their opinion either, so I’ll choose the one I want from what I know and live happy with my decision to believe.  I’d rather have believed and been wrong than never to have believed in the first place.  I think someone a lot smarter than me said that?  I can’t think of who right now…

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews & God | 5 Comments »

Whatever you believe, you are right in that. Everything is what you believe and everything you do is because of your beliefs. So, if you want to change the things you do (to get different results) then it all leads back to your beliefs. This article covers a few different angles of beliefs but focuses on how you can create, reinforce and use your beliefs to impact your life in a positive way. The beliefs that I am writing about here are core beliefs that drive you with reason to do the things you do. Not simple or dispositional beliefs like statements or opinions on a subject such as "Do you believe a tree makes a sound if it falls where no one is there to hear it?". These core beliefs are not easily changed and are not formed by a simple thought or guess, they are developed over time.

The Root of All Beliefs

Some people feel that you can develop beliefs by choosing them (I certainly agree with that) and others feel that beliefs come about only through experiences that train you to think about things a certain way, which eventually becomes a belief. Looking at both of these options, there are obvious arguments for both side as to which happens most often, but I look from the perspective of which I want to happen more often and that is certainly creating or choosing my own belief. I don’t really like the idea of waiting for things to happen and then root a belief around that, I much prefer the idea of building a foundation based on decisions and choices that I make. This seems to latch more responsibility and personal accountability to the belief since it is something I deliberately made. So, even if I choose and develop my own beliefs, that is just the root of it, it says nothing of the way that belief will actually affect me. And if I choose my own belief, aren’t I then empowered to use that to steer my actions in a way that’s pleasing to me?

Whether you say you can, or you say you can’t, your right. Anthony Robbins

I love that quote from Anthony Robbins. It’s an argument he uses where people look at making an excuse as justification for not being able to do something. If you don’t believe that you can do something, then you can’t, so it’s not really needing an outside excuse, since your own belief is what prevented you from being able in the first place! Associating your beliefs with your thoughts, your mind set and what you say are all critical elements that all affect each other. You can easily see this with individuals with low self esteem for example, they will constantly say they can’t do something and they actually believe that themselves which just feeds a vicious circle as they think it over and over.

You can certainly learn to change that thinking for yourself to avoid being in that circle of thought you don’t want to be in. I recently wrote about how to do that by mastering your state of mind , which will definitely help you in controlling your beliefs so I recommend reading that article if you haven’t before.

Creating Your Beliefs

Beliefs are not usually something people hunt down and look for in life. They are often just felt or learned through experience over the course of time. What I find very interesting though is that its possible to deliberately create your beliefs instead of just waiting for them to show up. There is a lot of value in this and it helps you focus your attention in many areas on your beliefs. Doing this in goal setting for example, helps you focus on goals that are based by your beliefs, which are much easier to achieve and more valuable in your life as these are also the areas that lead to passions. I’ve written in detail about using your beliefs to find your passions , but I believe it works both ways. You an also use your passions to create new beliefs.

Looking at ways to create new beliefs before there is an experiential basis for them can be done with a number of simple steps.

• State new opinions – This helps you to begin agreeing with your own opinion.
• Research areas of interest – Doing this will often give you strong evidence and expert opinion to help you firm up a new belief.
• Question everything – Questioning things leads to a deeper understanding. Deep understanding is a strong foundation for a belief as it is harder to sway a belief that is well known.
• Continuously Learn – Learning new information, improving oneself and exploring new topics can often trigger new beliefs and is wonderful way to create them.
• Share your beliefs with others – Relationships are an invaluable source of new experiences, discussions and great emotions. These are great ways to discover new beliefs about yourself and others.

Reinforcing Your Beliefs

The Placebo Effect is a when the outcome of an action or event changes due to the individual expecting or believing a particular outcome. This is often discussed in relation to health and drug use, where a patient reacts positively from taking a drug that they think will help, even if it is a fake drug like a sugar pill. The Placebo Effect is real and there is much evidence to support its impact. It is also something to take advantage of. Having a belief will inevitably make that outcome more likely, so you should also look to reinforce the beliefs you want and focus on the positive beliefs you have so that they help drive positive outcomes. If you have a lot of negative beliefs, those are just as likely to cause the Placebo Effect but unfortunately, with a more negative outcome.

Look to reinforce the beliefs you want to have and change your beliefs around the ones you don’t want. This is really a case of the classic "Glass Half Full, or Glass Half Empty" mindset. There are many techniques to changing your beliefs and here are just a few you might want to use if your beliefs are not positive or particularly strong.

• Write down your beliefs you want and review them regularly.
• Before bed, review your day and think about each time a positive belief came to mind.
• Share your beliefs with others – This helps discover new beliefs like I mentioned above but its also very useful to identify similar beliefs with others as shared beliefs will definitely help you strengthen them.
• Affirmations work for many people and can help you reinforce existing and new beliefs.
• Turn your negative beliefs into a positive by looking for something you can learn from it, or a new opportunity from a negative event.

Using Your Beliefs

I’ve mentioned a few areas that beliefs relate to and its great to be able to use your beliefs with those. This includes many areas about passions , identifying and setting meaningful belief based goals , and in sharing your beliefs and opinions with others to build relationships. One additional area that I believe is significantly affected by your beliefs is achievement . The more I learn and read about great authors, experts in their fields, leaders and great teachers, the more I have realized that they all share similar attitudes and beliefs about achievement which has made everything possible for them. They belief in the capability of themselves and others and know that change is possible and that they will have an impact on others. These beliefs are exactly what enables them to do what they do best and it inspires others to develop similar beliefs and make their own achievement and success possible as well.

On the other side of this, humans have created limiting beliefs that hold people back in many areas as well. For centuries no one believed that the earth was round and it limited people from daring to explore past known areas from the fear of falling off the earth! People believed it was impossible to fly something heavier than air and this limited progress for decades. Often the unknown or fear of it creates a strong negative belief which not only limits you, but others around you from achieving what is thought to be impossible. There are great examples of this in sports and the human physical capabilities. It is constantly changing nowadays with records and speeds being broken every year by great athletes and competitors using nothing but the human body. It has not always been like that however, as beliefs have changed drastically. For decades and decades, no one thought it was possible for a human to run a 4 minute mile. Hundreds tried and they continually failed for years! Finally, after many attempts, one person eventually beat the 4 minutes mile and it immediately change everyone’s beliefs about the human capability. Over the next month, 30 additional runners broke the four minute mile! This was changed entirely because of the beliefs.

So, knowing what beliefs can do for you and how they affect you, I definitely encourage you to work on your beliefs, change the ones you don’t like, refocus them in a positive way, look to develop new ones in areas you want to achieve and share your beliefs with others to reinforce theirs and your own. I’m sure there are other ways to develop your beliefs and I’d love to hear any suggestions!

Posted by Mike King under Life | 8 Comments »

Since your now reviewing your goals on a regular basis, the next step is to actually complete them and close them out. Completing them at this point is simple, its a matter of keeping to the measure you set for that goal and since you’ve kept it up to date and accurate, the measure should be simple. Its as simple as have you reached the goal yet? Yes or no. If not, then your still working towards it and really still in the tracking and monitoring step. If you have reached your goal, hurray! Celebrate! Take note of what you’ve accomplished and keep your record of this goal with the rest of goal tracking you do. Its a great motivator to be able to review the goal success and achievement from completed goals.

Enhance Your Goals

It may not need to be a specific new goal to set, but it certainly can be, and that is to keep your goal active by enhancing it. This might mean doing some measure again or changing the goal a bit to continue to build on what you’ve already accomplished. Perhaps this is simple to keep whatever you accomplished going and not simply loose it now that you reached that point. If this is a behavior goal (and it really should be) then making it a habit and keeping that accomplishment active is very important. Great goals should accomplish more than just a single event or measuring point and root some kind of change, its just important to ensure that change lives on after the goal as well.

Help Someone Else Achieve a Similar Goal

A fantastic way to keep the result of your goal alive is to help someone else accomplish a similar goal. This might be by encouraging them, being a resource to help teach them, give them advice or perhaps mentoring them in similar goal setting steps. All these things can be very rewarding and helpful for you not to forget your goal or changed behavior as well as being able to help someone else achieve their goals.
I believe that goals are only accomplished by truly driven individuals and practicing goals instead of bragging about them is a lot more valuable and less egocentric. Modesty is important if you want to influence others and convince them of how you feel or what you could help with for similar accomplishments. Tell your story of your goals, but make sure it includes the struggle and story of how you felt while working on them. Your doubts, your beliefs that backed them and even the hard work to achieve it. If you had to extend the goal or change it to make it easier, share that with people you tell, its the best way for them to empathize with the goal setting process and realize its not simple. Its hard work, worthwhile if you believe in it and it can definitely make a difference in your life.

Learn From This Goal

Its wise to review the process you used to complete this goal and consider all the areas that really helped or hindered you to keep making progress. Did you have to adjust your goal often? Why? Take a critical look at where things went well and need to be improved as part of your goal setting process. This is just a starting point, but you do need to explore your process to ensure you have success completing others goals and more in the future. Have you learned anything from your goal that is a new belief you never had? How can that be used to feed progress with your other goals? Make some notes for each goal you complete and review them to continue to improve your process.

Next Step after Completing a Goal

So, now that your goal is off your list you’ve got a couple options. Focus more on your other goals to achieve them as well or look at setting a new goal in that category. Go though the process of identifying goals again and tackle the next area you have a strong belief and desire to change behavior. Add some initial tasks for that goal and ensure you continue to work on others at the same time.

So, I hope you can seriously put some effort into your own goals and that you can make good use of this series. I hope that this is helpful to you as I know this process has been very helpful to me. Please, feel free to ask any questions or comments, I would love to continue to help you accomplish your goals!

That’s All!

Goal Setting Series

Part 1: Goal Setting – Introduction
Part 2: Goal Setting – Setting and Identifying
Part 3: Goal Setting – Tracking and Monitoring
Part 4: Goal Setting – Completing and Close

Posted by Mike King under Success | 1 Comment »

Setting goals isn’t easy. Actually, settings great goals isn’t easy. And that is what you want, great goals. Great goals are goals you really desire, have some passion for and will be happy making progress to meet them. If a goal is more about just the end result and you are afraid of what it takes to get their, its not going to be a great goal and its likely not going to work either. So, its best to look at setting great goals. And this article is about a way to actually go about doing this. I use it and it truly works.

Background to Identify Goals

Everyone makes decisions every day in life and everyday those decisions are based on the pain and pleasure that you believe that choice will lead to. That is exactly what leads to your decisions and its helps to really recognize this and to use it to your advantage in goal setting. The process outlined here is based on using those beliefs and really understanding the impact of them in the sense of pain and pleasure to you which will help to better identify the great goals for you!

Step 1: Brainstorm a Categorized Idea List

You first need to have some ideas and areas to explore your goals. Its great to simply do a brain dump here and write down everything that comes to mind. It helps to keep things categorized, and I use these categories for goal setting:

• Spiritual
• Personal
• Financial
• Career
• Stuff

Spend just a few minutes in each category writing down all the ideas you have as goals in those areas. If you don’t have many, that is fine, just write down everything, its common to have lots in one or two categories and not much in others.

Step 2: Note the Pleasure and Pain Related to Each Goal

What is the pleasure you will experience in achieving your goal, what will it feel like, and how is that feeling going to help you or others? What kind of pleasures will you experience while working to obtain your goal? Note all these in point form under a pleasure heading for each of your goal ideas. This will take some time especially if you have a lot of ideas down. Make sure to think about the pleasure you will experience in getting it, having it and holding on to whatever that goal idea is. Think of how it will affect others in a pleasurable way.

Next, do the same thing but thinking of all the pain that will exist getting, having and holding onto the achievement of each goal idea. Write down the pain caused by the work involved, the risks if they will be painful, the pain you might experience to/from others in achieving your goal.

Step 3: What Belief Backs Each Goal

Use the Pain and Pleasures in a positive way. You can do this by turning a current pain into something pleasurable by stating that the goal will help you to avoid certain pain. For example, this can work well in health and dieting goals since there is SO much pain to get to the goal. Turning this around in a more positive way, lists all the pains that can be avoided like health problems, self doubt and low esteem, feeling better by achieving the goal. Not only that, but if you don’t achieve the goal, then there will be even more pain caused by further health problems, feeling bad about yourself and still not being able to control your health. These can be very powerful driving forces for goals and you should use as many of them as you can.

A goal is about a target or end, not a description of how to get there. Which means that you really need a belief as the basis to build a strong and compelling to do whatever it takes to get to the goal, the target. You need to truly convince yourself why that goal is important to you and have the believe to build on it. A belief in something won’t shatter when one step fails, you don’t stop because of little or slow progress and you won’t easily change your mind from outside influence. That’s the reason why every goal should have some deeper beliefs feeding them. Maybe these are moral beliefs or simply beliefs about happiness. Perhaps they are beliefs about relationships or how others will see you, whatever they are, a belief is powerful and can really drive goals, much more than simply thinking that you want something. Or wishing for something or even being hopeful without a real reason. Those types of goals don’t last when things get tough and difficult to achieve.

Record the beliefs you have that reinforce each goal. You may also have beliefs that hold you back from achieving your goals. Turn these around into positives and set your mind on the beliefs you will have when you reach your target.

Step 4: Rate Your Goals

Put a number from 0-10 beside each of the goals to indicate which ones you want the most, 10 being the highest. Next, make another column and put a number from 0-10 to indicate how easy the goals are for you to achieve them. 10 being the easiest. And finally, rate each one again with a 0-10 on how strong your beliefs are that backs each of the goals, 10 being the highest.

Add up the numbers from each goal which is a score from 0-30. This is an easy way to get on the fast track to picking the great goals, which are the ones you desire most, have true beliefs in and are the easiest to achieve). Pick the top 2-3 goals (highest numbers after adding them up) and make these your focus or primary goals. Put the next 5 goals or so on your list as well which will be your secondary goals. Its much easier to only have one or two goals to focus on so keeping the priority ones you main focus will help achieve them faster. Often some of your goals will relate which is great, since you might be able to work on multiple goals at a time.

So, these are your goal topics. Next is to clarify these goals and finishing settings them.

Step 5: Clarify Your Goals

Clarifying your goals simply involves writing them in a way to make them useful. The method I recommend for this is simple and called MT goals, which stands for measurable and time based goals. Measurable means you must have something you can measure your progress and completion by. Without this measure, a goal is vague and not really useful at all. Measurable is something with a number or a simple yes or no answer. This is critical since most people’s goals fail because they don’t have a simple way to measure completion and progress. Make sure your goal has a way to check for completion. For example, here is one of my goals from a previous year:

Have a reading speed of at least 500 wpm by July 1, 2007.

Its simple and easy to measure. There are software tools, online websites or you can simply count words and test your own speed. The other point in the example goal you can see is the time based part. It states when the goal will be accomplished by a specific time. This is crucial. Without a time, you have no urgency and nothing to push yourself for. State a specific date, not some implied time, or relative time, just pick a single day and decide on that day to complete your goal by.

The simpler your goals are the better. They don’t need to be elaborate, long or complex in any way. You know what they are and you already have the ones with meaning to you and in categories you care about. Try to avoid using terms like improve, increase, develop, reduce, help, change unless you have a specific number attached that you can measure. You can usually just replace those words anyway by stating the target you want, not a relative change.

Goal Setting Series

Part 1: Goal Setting – Introduction
Part 2: Goal Setting – Setting and Identifying
Part 3: Goal Setting – Tracking and Monitoring
Part 4: Goal Setting – Completing and Close

Posted by Mike King under Success | 6 Comments »