The only thing that’s preventing you from achieving the business of your dreams is you. This may sound incredibly harsh but it is true. There is a very good reason why Henry J Ford said “whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right”. Your self-belief system dominates your drive to achieve your goals. I’m often asked “how do you know whether a goal is achievable”, which leads me on to another one of my favourite quotes by Michelangelo “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving it.”
The key to successful goal setting is that we need to believe the goal is achievable and that it will require some stretching to achieve it. The reason for this is two-fold:
1. If we don’t feel the goal is realistically achievable then our mind will ignore it.
2. If we feel the goal is too easy our mind will also ignore it.
The power of our sub-conscious mind is huge. Have you ever noticed how there are times when you’ll keep spotting certain things? Maybe you’ve been looking at buying a new car and you seem to keep seeing that particular car far more often than you ever used to, or maybe there’s a certain business you are thinking about and you keep seeing references to that business all over the place? In reality there has not been a sudden increase in the number of these occurrences that actually exist, but what has changed is that your sub-conscious mind is pointing them out to your conscious mind. This is because your sub-conscious mind believes it’s now important that you notice them. I know this sounds a bit odd, but think about it logically. We are constantly surrounded by thousands of bits of information and the way our brain functions is that most of these are filtered out by our sub-conscious brain as our sub-conscious brain has decided they are not relevant to us at this point in time. When we focus on a goal that we feel is achievable with some effort our sub-conscious brain will start to feed relevant information through to our conscious brain to help us achieve that goal. Now the reverse is also true…if the goal doesn’t require any significant effort to achieve it then our sub-conscious brain won’t get triggered into activity. This is why finding that goal setting sweet spot is so important if you are going to achieve your goals.
The way this works for business goals is that once you have defined your goal and your sub-conscious mind feels it is achievable and will require some stretch to do, it will start to feed relevant information into your conscious mind. Again I know this sounds a bit odd but have you ever had it happen that an excellent opportunity comes up out of nowhere, or a great idea just pings into your head that helps you to achieve your goal? These happen because your sub-conscious mind is on the look-out for things to help you achieve your goals and when it sees something that it feels matches your needs it pushes it into your consciousness.
What makes a goal realistic will vary for everyone so you need to think carefully about your business and where you want it to be in the next 1 to 3 years. At this point you need to allow yourself to dream big and then work backwards and see whether it feels realistic to reach that point within that timeframe (remember the Michelangelo quote!).
There are some other helpful things to consider when setting your goals for 2013…make them SMART!
SMART stands for Specific (tightly define your goals as much as you can), Measurable (you’ll want to know if you have achieved it!), Achievable (would it be possible for someone to actually achieve it), Realistic (remember what you’ve just read and don’t play it safe in this one) and Time-bound (set a date by which you need to achieve it). Using this formula will help to give you great goals that your sub-conscious mind will help you to achieve.
This leads on nicely to the need to take action to achieve your goals as unfortunately just stating your goals isn’t enough on its own to make them happen. Keep posted for another blog on that topic coming up in the next few weeks. In the meantime click here to request the From Employee to Business Owner Vision & Planning workbook.
If you want to learn more about how to make your sub-conscious mind work harder for you check out “Think your way to success” by Mark Rhodes.