Destiny and destination both refer to a place to go or to
end up. Neither is attained without first embarking on the
journey. Of course, if you just set off on a journey without
a destination in mind and without a map to follow or
directions on how to get to the destination, you will end
up who knows where. This is simple advice, so simple, it
should not be even necessary to impart.
Nevertheless, for some reason, that is exactly how most
people live their lives… without following a road map or
a set of specific directions. Some are offered maps and
directions and perversely, refuse or fail to follow the
certain path to their stated destination and choose instead
to wander around for years, hoping that they will
stumble upon their destiny.
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That approach may result in some exciting adventures
and discoveries of unknown places, but seldom results in
arrival at the chosen destination.
In order to successfully arrive at a chosen destination,
there are three critical pieces of information you must
have:
1. Your point of embarkation. You must know where
you are starting from—where you are at. Imagine this
scenario… I have made you unconscious and secretly
transported you to some unknown place on Earth, in the
middle of some jungle. When you wake up, you discover
a note and a key. The note explains that the key will open
a specific safety deposit box in a certain bank in London.
It goes on to explain that there are $100 million in bearer
bonds and stock certificates in that safety deposit box
that can all be yours. All you have to do is get there
within 48 hours. Your fortune awaits you. Your goal is
clear… get to London as fast as possible.
What is the very first thing you must figure out?
Yes, you know the answer. You can’t get there from here
unless you first know where the heck you are. A great
many people, who set specific goals about where they
want to get to in life, never actually make the effort to
figure out where they are starting from.
Without knowing where you are at, it is impossible to
chart your journey even with the best of maps.
2. Your destiny. You must also know the location of your
destination. If you do not know where London is located,
you cannot arrive, except by some very remote chance.
But that is just the example. You have not woken up to
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find that note about the bank in London. You must
design your own destiny. You must create your ideals in
your own imagination. You must decide where you are
going in this journey through life. Unless of course, you
are content to wander around aimlessly, hoping to
stumble across King Solomon’s lost mines.
3. A plotted course or directions. Even if you, in this
jungle, were to discover a perfect topological globe of the
world with a big read 'X' marking your location, but
without roads, towns and airports marked on it and
without a compass to guide you, you would likely never
escape the jungle. You must have and follow a specific
plotted course. You must be able to know what direction
you are traveling. OR, you must have a guide who does
know the way and you must be willing to follow the
guide.
Again, very simple stuff. Strangely, in this journey
through life, most people do NOT know where they are
at, do NOT have a map to follow (or stubbornly refuse to
refer to a map that may have been provided) and do NOT
have a clear idea of where they are headed, where their
chosen destination is actually located.
Let's see if we can remedy that…
Embarkation Destination
I have found that most people are only interested in the
map. How do I get there? (You are probably reading this
book in the hope that this is the map that will lead you to
your success.) People want the arrow, but they don’t
know where to point it to and they don’t know where it
is pointing from. They seem to forget, perhaps ignore,
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that you need to know where there is and you also need
to know where here is.
The first thing you must do after you have defined and
envisioneered your success (which is the description of
your destination), in order to create your success, is to
figure out where you are starting from. Only a fully
honest and critical self-evaluation can accomplish that.
And that is something that only you can do for yourself.
And then, you must set clear and specific goals. You
must know what steps to take as you embark on your
journey.
If your ideal is your destination, then the steps along the
road to your destination are your specific goals. If your
ideal is to travel to Mars, then one of your first goals
would be, of necessity to build or procure a spaceship,
then another of your goals would be to break free of
Earth’s gravity well.
Similarly, you cannot just expect to jump straight to the
fulfillment of your ideal, you must have specific
identifiable intermediate goals. I’ve heard a lot of talk
recently that having specific goals are not necessary; that
all you need is the clear powerful intention and the
universe will magically supply the means. Nonsense.
Drivel. You can’t just intend to go to Mars; you need to
decide how you are going to get there and then take the
necessary steps. These intermediate steps are your
specific goals. Without them, you are going nowhere.
Yes, intentions are important. In fact, the intent you
bring to everything you do in life is one of critical
components of conscious creation. But intentions alone
will not produce the specific results you desire. The old
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proverbial saying that the road to hell is paved with
good intentions should serve to remind everyone that
you need more than the intention. You need the specific
ideal, the profound desire, the intentional thought and
action. How do you get intentional actions? By having
specific goals… the defined steps on your path.
Millions of words have been written about goal setting.
Millions of people set goals. Yet, most goals set by most
people remain unfulfilled. I have distilled (from
experience and education) the eleven essentials of
successful goal setting here for you. Follow these, and
you will accomplish your goals. Fail to follow these and
you probably will not. No hype. No rah-rah
encouragement. No fluff. Just the simple explanation of
how and why to set and ACCOMPLISH goals.
1. Your goals must be original
That does not mean that they cannot be the same or
similar to the goals that others may have; it means that
they must be yours, not second-hand. Many people set
goals according to the hopes and expectations that they
have been programmed to have by parents, teachers,
society and cultural norms.
As a consequence, you do not own these goals. You
cannot generally have or hold what is not yours, or, even
if you do manage to keep it, it will not have any value or
meaning to you. What’s the point then of having it? The
real reason you set and hope to achieve goals is not just
to have the thing idealized, it is to be happy and fulfilled
in the accomplishment.
Set goals that are yours; not something inherited or
assumed. If they are not your own original goals, even if
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you do manage to accomplish them, it will mean very
little to you. Why waste your life pursuing something
that will end up as meaningless?
2. Your goals must be inspirational
They must arouse your passion. This must be a
consuming passion, not some whim or “someday I’d like
to” feeling. You must desire passionately to achieve
what you set as a goal. It must drive you to action and
you must feel fulfilled in that action because you know
that it is leading to the fulfillment of your goal.
It is passion that drives you to move continuously
toward your goal. It is passion that keeps you from
getting distracted. It is passion that keeps you from
getting discouraged. It is passion that fuels your
motivation. It is passion that draws others to you to
assist in your goals. It is passion that inspires you and
others. It is passion that lights your way through the
darkness that you will find along the way.
Get passionate about your goals or get passionate about
someone else’s. Life without passion is not a life; it is
merely an existence.
3. Your goals must be harmonious
Obviously, you cannot have conflicting goals in life or
you will be conflicted. That’s the easy part. Your goals,
however, must also be in harmony with your core beliefs
and your self-assigned purpose in life.
It is easy to understand that to have conflicting goals will
raise your stress levels and frustrate you. Yet, people do
that to themselves all the time.
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It is not so easy to understand that you may have some
deep-set unconscious game plan for your life (whether
from some basic spiritual urge or from some sense of
undefined purpose) and the goals you set may actually
be in conflict with that real — but hidden — game plan.
First, decide who you are and what you are here to do
and then set your goals in alignment with that; or you,
yourself, on a subconscious or super conscious level, will
continually be sabotaging your goals.
4. Your goals must be realistic
There is not much point in setting a goal to personally
live on Mars, if you are today (in 2008 as I write this)
over 95. The goals you set for yourself must be
achievable within the framework of what is humanly
possible.
But (and this is important) realistic does not mean what
the majority commonly accepts as realistic. Most people
did not think that it was realistic to attempt to fly a
bicycle with wings and a motor attached, but two
brothers named Wright did. Most people did not think it
was realistic to build a personal computer for people to
use in their home, but two guys named Steve did.
These 4 guys changed reality for all of us. Their goals
were obviously, in retrospect, quite realistic. Don’t let
your imagination be hemmed in by the crowd.
5. Your goals must be idealistic
They must be idealistic in two ways: they must involve
your personal ideals in the five below-mentioned areas
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of your life and they must be progressively higher or
further ahead than you are at now.
Most people are, in some way, in conflict with the
different aspects of self:
Material and Financial ($$$ and Things)
Physical and Environmental (Health of Body, Home and
World)
Emotional and Relationship (Happiness, Love, Social
Contact)
Mental and Educational (Learning, Awareness, Self-
Knowledge)
Spiritual and Ethical (Unity, Life Purpose, Values,
Sacredness)
If your goals are not in tune with your ideals, you will be
conflicted. This is why people without defined personal
ideals and specific goals are unhappy and why they do
not achieve their highest potential. Set your goals in
harmony with your ideals.
If your goals are not idealistic (in the sense that they are
progressive), you will get bored and unsatisfied. People
(those who don’t understand) often wonder why those
who are already extremely wealthy continue to pursue
more wealth. It is because the ideal is always being
extended or raised. Great achievers don’t rest on their
laurels. Each goal achieved is merely a stepping-stone to
more and greater achievement. It is not the end in itself.
6. Your goals must be specific
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Goals like, “I want to be rich”, are not worth the paper
they are printed on. Rich must be defined. One million
dollars in the bank might mean rich to most people, but
it means poor to many others. It is the same for more
ethereal goals. “I want to be happy” means nothing.
Happy must be defined just as rich must be defined. “I
want to be spiritually fulfilled” is the same; meaningless,
unless defined.
What does rich mean to you? Exactly. What does happy
mean to you? Don’t know? Then how on earth will you
ever even know if you get there? I have met a lot of
people who say they are on a spiritual path. I like to ask
where that path is leading. Most can’t say anything
specific. It is all very nebulous. If your destination is not
defined, how in heaven’s name will you know if and
when you get there?
7. Your goals must be adaptable
One of my favorite jokes (which would offend some
readers so I will not quote it here) involves a guy who
had set a specific goal but when a gal came along to offer
a much better fulfillment, he asked her to help him to
accomplish his original one. Many people miss the better
fulfillment of a goal because their focus on the one they
had originally visualized is too intense and narrow to
recognize the better one when it shows up.
Be sure that you are focused on the best possible
fulfillment of your goal, not just on the method that you
foresaw that goal fulfillment happening.
8. Your goals must be visualized
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If you cannot see it as real and as true and as part of the
way you life your life; it will not happen.
Many folks, when confronted with some seemingly
outrageous possibility or goal, will comment, “I’ll
believe it when I see it made real, not just some
imaginary ideal”. The dreamers, schemers and achievers
of history all had a different approach: “I see it. I believe
it. It is real if it exists in my imagination.”
Tiger Woods ‘sees’ his shots landing on the green a few
feet from the cup before he takes the shot. The average
golfer looks up (usually too soon) from his shot to see
where it went. Guess whose shots end up where most
often. Visualize the reality in your imagination and it
will become real in your manifestation.
9. Your goals must be affirmed
You must tell yourself all day, every day, in your
constant conscious and subconscious self-talk that your
goal is real and achievable. AND, you must tell others
what your goal is so that they can ‘buy into it’ and
contribute to it. If you don’t believe in it enough to make
it a part of your daily conversation and are not
passionate enough about it to be compelled to talk about
it to yourself and others, it is NOT real for you and it will
NOT become real.
You will be surrounded by naysayers. Someone must
speak the truth of the reality of your goal. That is YOUR
24/7 job. Constantly affirm where you are headed and
why. You’ll end up not only convincing yourself but the
world as well.
10. Your goals must be time related
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Everything exists in space and time. If something is not
defined precisely in space and time, it does not exist. A
goal of “someday, I’d like to be financially secure”, or
“someday, I’d like to climb that mountain”, does not,
and it is highly likely that it WILL NOT, ever, exist as
anything other than nebulous, wishful thinking. You
must set specific times for your goals to be made
manifest OR you will be forever going towards your
goals and never quite reaching them.
Almost everyone in developed countries sets the goal of
retirement in financial security, but the overwhelming
majority do NOT achieve that. Why? One of the reasons
is that it is always a ‘someday’ goal, not a ‘by June 21st,
2014’ goal. Of course, it is also likely that these people
are also not applying the other 10 rules of effective goal
setting.
11. Your goals must be written down
If it exists only in your head, it is only wishful thinking.
This is the basic, proven by experience, truth of the
matter: 95% of people who have specific written goals
accomplish them; and 95% of people who have
unwritten goals (specific or not) do not.
If you can read that previous sentence and not begin
immediately to write down your goals, you might as
well resign yourself to the fact that you will not
accomplish what you imagine you want to be, do and
have in life.
Yes there are those few high achievers who manage to
set clear, distinct goals without writing them down and
also manage to stay focused on them for their entire
lives. Don’t kid yourself: you are not one of those people.
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I’ll prove it to you. Tell me (or anyone) right now
exactly, specifically, and in full detail what goals you
held 1,000 days ago.
Write them down. Period. Now. Chart your course or
you will stray off course and not get where you want to
be, not get what you want to do and not get what you
want to have.
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Quick Review:
You can only get where you want to go if you a) know
where you are starting from and b) if you have a clearly
defined destination and c) have a road map or game plan
to get you from a to b.
Direct Action Steps:
Take a cold realistic look at your life. Where are you at
materially, physically, emotionally, mentally and
spiritually?
Material
Physical
Emotional
Mental
Spiritual
&
&
&
&
&
Financial
Environmental
Relationship
Educational
Ethical
Your
current
situation
Your
defined
ideals
Your
specific
goals
Your
Daily
To Do
List
Make a detailed and time related list of goals in all five
areas of your life: material, physical, emotional, mental
and spiritual. Review these every day.
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“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone
else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living
with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the
noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner
voice. And most important, have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition. They somehow already know
what you truly want to become. Everything else is
secondary.”
~ Steve Jobs
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