How Big Are Your Goals?

How do you really know about making sure that your goals are in play in your business and in your life?

One of the things about the human brain in the way it is set up is that when you set a goal, it's really designed to help you. There's a simple thing called the RAS. It's a Reticular Activating System. To oversimplify what it actually does just for the sake of learning and understanding, let me share based on my personal experience.

I remember when Integras first came in 1986-1987, I wanted to buy one because I didn't see any of these on the road. I just thought how cool of a car it was. Then all of a sudden, I bought it, and then, amazingly enough, I started seeing them everywhere.

Same thing with my current car. It’s a Genesis. I was talking to my wife and said "Hey, I wanted to buy a Genesis" and she said, "What's a Genesis?". Lo and behold, I looked up, and right in front of me us a Genesis. But we didn't see it until I gave it intention and that's really called The Law of Attraction. It means allowing things that we need to succeed to come into our lives.

Let's discuss the three different types of goals that we set.

The first type of goal is called a negative goal. In other words, it's a move away from the goal. It's the kind of goal that you set when you don't want to be broke. "I don't want to get sick." "I don't want to have this problem." It's a negative goal of getting out of a negative situation if you will.

Imagine these goals if you can. These goals are actually really weak. Why? Because, once you've moved out of this negative situation, the goal is gone. There's no way for you to move on or away from it, whatever it is. Even moving away from anything is just the first step.

An example might be is, "Hey, I want to move away from being poor." Well, maybe you want to move away from not having enough cash and then you can sit down and say, "What's enough cash?" It's going to be different from each other's perspectives. But moving away from the goal is generally a fairly weak goal and won't get you really too far in life. However they definitely serve a purpose, and at that time was especially when you needed them, right?

The second stage of goal setting is where we move towards a positive thing. A positive goal is something we’re moving towards. It is something that you really want to have in your life. These could be things, experiences, or personal traits that you even want to develop. Let's say it's a new car. Possibly, a positive goal of moving towards getting a new car. Not just get out of my bad car. It’s "I want to have a good car", right? That's the aim of the game. It's what we're really looking for.

These positive goals are going to serve quite well in our life. In fact, they've been our medium-term goals in life. They're very solid goals in most cases, and they really motivate us to move forward at a very rapid rate. The more that we have, obviously the faster we move. And the more we move, the bigger these goals are going to get, and obviously, the more we got to really challenge ourselves to be able to achieve these goals.

If you don't have those goals written down, it's going to be very difficult for you to experience all the things that you want to experience in your life. If you don't have these goals documented in any way,
you're not really giving your RAS a chance to help you. You're going to need to invest some time and to document and write down these goals, even to get pictures of them if available. Start creating vision boards, and getting some experience to help you know what the goal is that you're after, and the experience that it's going to give you once you have it. The more clarity we have around the goal, the more chance of it coming and manifesting itself in our life.

The third stage of goal setting is where we move the goals that are outside ourselves. For example,
you might have a goal of ending cancer or you might have a goal of doing good things in your community or a goal of taking care of your synagogue or your church. Whatever the goals are they now become about other people and not just you. Generally, these goals will be rather large. It's really quite massive and you're going to have to really challenge yourself to the nth degree to be able to achieve this.

I find a lot of people that are stagnant in their life. They have neither set positive goals or either have not ended up moving their goals in this third stage. They're stuck in "the goal-setting trap." They're stuck with no knowledge of how to move up the goal-setting ladder, from one to the other.

If we take a look at moving into this ultimate goal, that is when we'll get away from the negatives in life. And if you haven't really set any positive goals, then yes, moving is going to slow you down.

If you set positive goals and achieve many of them, you will slow down. It's going to be that way. If you find yourself ever and really in a stagnant moment or if you find yourself ever not moving forward, then you really got to take a look at your goal-setting aspect of your life and start setting bigger & better goals that are going to inspire you to motivate you to move.

These are goals that are not just about your goals. Go and become a value to your community, your friends, and your family. The bigger the goal, obviously, the bigger the challenge. A wise man once said to me, "You'll never be bigger than your competition." So, what's your competition? Is your competition to end world hunger or is your competition just to pay the bills at the end of the week? Is your competition in business with the competitors in your industry or is it to be the best in the world in your industry? This is an interesting challenge.

How do you challenge yourself? Do you challenge yourself against the best part of being the best in the world or do you challenge yourself against the benchmark of what you did last week, better than your nearest competition or better than the person just down the street?

My aim in life and my passion is to help you set these goals is helping you to achieve clarity around them, to make sure you're really getting clear on your goals and what you want to achieve in your life.