This article describes how creating a goal or target can help you to succeed in life. I myself want to be successful in life and have read many books on the subject. One lesson and something all the successful people I have read about seem to do, is that they are always setting themselves goals for the future. Setting targets has among other things helped me to quit smoking cigarettes. I hope you enjoy reading my article.

One example I clearly remember from one such book, described a survey that had been carried out for schoolchildren who were in their final year of high school. One hundred people took part in the survey and they were asked to answer a number of questions. The main question the people who commissioned the survey were interested in was about where the children wanted to be in five years time and what they wanted to be doing, for example in their business life.

Not all children of this age are that mature and in the end there were only five answers which were taken as being a true goal for the future. Five years later these one hundred people were contacted again and were asked to fill in yet another survey. The results were quite staggering as the five children who had set a goal for the future had a higher combined net worth than the other ninety five added together. Money of course is not everything in life, however for me this showed, that is if you believe everything that you read, that you are more likely to be a success in life if you set yourself a goal.

I then looked at the aspects of my life with which I was not happy with. At that age, I smoked around fifteen cigarettes a day. This was something I quite enjoyed but which I knew was not healthy for me and something which also cost me a lot of money.

I set myself small targets, I would firstly reduce my intake to only ten a day and after two weeks reduce it down to five. I would then try to totally stop smoking after around a month.

This sounded so simple, however proved to be quite difficult. I was determined to stick to my goals and kept thinking of all of the benefits of quitting smoking. I am happy to say I was successful in my quest to stop smoking, even though it did take rather longer than one month.

I have since followed the same pattern in other areas of my life, to help me to lose weight for example. This attitude has helped me to no end and I will continue to set myself more goals in the future.

Stephen Hill helps to promote a number of websites including:

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MAKING GOALS: Effective and motivational goals engage employees in work they can realistically perform and complete, and which has been shown to be relevant both to the organization and to the employees’ interests.

MAKE THE GOAL-SETTING PROCESS A PARTNERSHIP: There are four kinds of goals you and your employees should discuss and develop together: 1. Routine. This is an extension of what people are already doing. “Last year you produced 20,000 units; this year, you’ll turn out 22,000." “Last period you trained 150 people. This time you’ll train 180.” “You’ve been making 15 new business calls per week. You’ll up that to 18.” There’s some challenge, of course, to improving performance over that of the last time period, even if the goals are not particularly new or exciting. 2. Problem solving. Departmental errors are too high. Missed deadlines are too many. The work flow is sluggish. In short, you have problems. Set goals with employees that will identify problems and, hopefully, solve them. 3. Innovative. Your employees have the know-how to suggest new and better ways of doing things. Putting some of your best people to work on innovative goals makes good business sense and is motivating for employees. 4. Personal. What are your employees doing for themselves? What kind of training and education, skills building, or behavioral change could benefit an employee? What steps could the employee take to advance his or her ability and to become more valuable to the organization? Nothing is more important to employees than their personal objectives.

Copyright AE Schwartz & Associates All rights reserved. For additional presentation materials and resources: ReadySetPresent and for a Free listing as a Trainer, Consultant, Speaker, Vendor/Organization: TrainingConsortium

CEO, A.E. Schwartz & Associates, Boston, MA., a comprehensive organization which offers over 40 skills based management training programs. Mr. Schwartz conducts over 150 programs annually for clients in industry, research, technology, government, Fortune 100/500 companies, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. He is often found at conferences as a key note presenter and/or facilitator. His style is fast-paced, participatory, practical, and humorous. He has authored over 65 books and products, and taught/lectured at over a dozen colleges and universities throughout the United States.

When I was in law school, I was already a well known consultant, very busy professionally, and there were lots of times I asked myself, especially when hitting the books: “Why am I subjecting myself to this misery?”

That’s when I would remind myself of a saying that I first heard from a client: “Inch-by- inch it’s a cinch; Yard by hard, it’s hard!”

Unquestionably, this saying tells us the wise way to get anything big, challenging, magnificent, or unprecedented, done. You have to break it down, into bite-sized morsels.

If you try to devour the project whole, or bite off more than you can chew, it will finish you off in record time.

Right now, I’m dealing with a current challenge that requires the same, take one step at a time, approach: writing articles.

My goal is very challenging. I’m committed to writing hundreds of pieces, being more prolific than ever before. But I realize, having completed major tasks in the past, if I focus on the grand number, the ultimate goal, it will seem too far away and daunting.

So, I’m taking the inch-by-inch approach.

I tell myself that the big number will arrive soon enough, if I simply commit to continuing to make forward progress, no matter how slight or miniscule.

So, some days, I make take off completely from writing, but I’m still considering what my future topics will be. That’s progress, still, and I need to interpret it this way, to stay positive.

If I stop to question the merit of the overall project, I’ll retard my progress, so there’s no questioning the original decision. It must stand.

Having committed, truly given myself over to the task, I can actually slow down, being more casual, more happily incremental about my progress.

It works every time, this small-is-beautiful approach, and I recommend it to you!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone®, You Can Sell Anything By Telephone! and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

We live in a busy society. We may have demanding jobs, children, families and many other “important” things that hoover up all of our time, and before we know it, Christmas is looming once more and we’re muttering about another year just passing us by.

How many times do you say, “I’ll read that book later when I have more time” or “I’ll finish listening to that audio program when I have more time” or something very similar?

You may want to create the life of your dreams, but it just seems so very difficult with so many other things that just have to be dealt with. You may not have the time to spend an hour a day meditating and an hour a day working on your personal development and an hour a day working on your business. In fact, for some of us, we’re lucky if we can even find time to sleep!

However, the key is not the spend time “doing” personal development work, but to just do it!

This means live it; make it a part of your life; something that you do every moment of every day in everything that you do with everyone that you meet.

You can sit on the bus or train to work, close your eyes and work on releasing emotional blocks. You can become aware of what people are reflecting back to you about yourself in your conversations and interactions. Being aware of your problems brings you much closer to changing them.

You may want to find more time to listen to audio programs or some of my hypnosis CD’s. My hypnosis CD’s you can put on when you go to bed to listen to. You don’t need to use headphones to listen to them, nor do you have to be awake. The subliminal versions can be listened to anytime, even when you are working and doing other things; so you can still get the benefit of the programs.

For spoken word programs, what about listening to them on your commute to work? Or if you spend your evening sat in front of the television, turn it off and put one of these programs on instead.

Look at how you are using your time. How much of what you are doing is constructive and something you absolutely must do right now? Are there times you are not doing constructive things? Could you combine activities, for example, watch the television whilst doing something else working towards your future?

Everyone promotes their own time management system. Have a look at a few of them, try them and find something that works for you. This could even be a combination of different systems. It doesn’t matter so long as it saves you times, keeps your organised and helps you to get things done.

At the end of the day, you need to decide what is most important in your life.

Is it more important to do the ironing right now and make sure you don’t miss the latest episode of your soap opera?

Or is it more important to sit down and spend some time planning and working towards creating the life of your dreams?

Working on changing your life can appear to be very daunting, particularly if you are not in the best of places to start with. You look at everything that you want to change and want to deal with and wonder where on earth you are going to start.

In these cases it is best to “chunk” down the tasks and the goals you have in mind. This means break the big goal into smaller chunks, or take baby steps. Take it one step at a time, and before you know it, you will be where you want to be.

How many people get to their old age and say, “I wish I had spent more time at work” or ironing, or watching soap operas, or …

So what can you do to find more time

Look at what activities you are engaged in and decide which you can cut out for the sake of creating the future of your dreams Combine some activities so you are doing more than one thing at a time

Focus on what is important to you. Is half hour in front of a soap opera more important than a half hour working towards your future?

Prioritise creating the life of your dreams

Right now, stop saying, “I’ll start tomorrow” or “I’ll sort that out when I have time” or “I’ll deal with that later”. It’s never going to happen; never going to work. Just do it and make it happen right now.

The perfect situation for change will never happen. You will always find distractions, excuses and reasons not to make the changes or take the action. You can spend many miserable years waiting for that perfect situation and you know what? There’s never going to be a perfect situation, only the now.

As the advert for the trainers say, “Just do it”. That’s what you need to do too. Stop planning, putting off and thinking you’ll do something when you have more time. Just do it today

“We are all born with the same amount of time. Nobody will ever get any more than 24 hours in a day; nobody will get more than 365 days in a year. It’s your choice whether you will use this time to create an amazing life or fritter it away uselessly. It is this choice that makes the achievers stand head and shoulders above everyone else. What’s your choice? Jason E. Johns

“Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan” Margaret Thatcher

“Look to this day … for yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision. But today well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.” Sanskrit

Jason E. Johns is a personal success coach specializing in helping you to set and achieve your goals. Discover more about how you can create your dream life through this innovative approach at his goal setting website, http://www.LivingMotivation.com

Have you ever wished that you were a God, creating anything you could possibly want, and destroying the things that you don’t want? Have you ever wished that you could wiggle your nose, and a pile of money would magically appear? Or, maybe make a wish upon a star, and it comes true?

Wishing upon a star may or may not work, but wishes can come true, hence the saying, "Be careful what you wish for." So, if wishes can come true, then just what is it that makes this happen? Wishes are just thoughts, right? Then there must be some sort of force, or energy in thoughts, that enables them to become things. In fact, all things have energy, even thoughts. It’s just a matter of harnessing that energy, and properly directing it into something solid.

There is a term for this concept, and that term is manifestation. The act of creating something visible, like money, out of something invisible, like thoughts. It is the subconscious mind that turns wishes into reality, not the concious mind. You will probably be waiting for a long time if you simply just state your wish, like wishing upon a star. It has to be deeper than that. You need to be dreaming about your wishes. You need to see pictures of your wishes over and over again. This is why subliminal messages are so powerful, because images are flashed very quickly, and your subconscious mind picks up on that.

So, putting up pictures of what you want, or signs with simple words, can really help your subconscious in figuring out what it is you want. If you want money, put up a picture of money, and look at it frequently. If you want a better body, put up a picture of what you would like to look like. Your subconscious will then understand that that is what you want. You will need to look at these pictures frequently, and especially upon waking. It is also recommended that if you wake up in the middle of the night, the time when your subconscious is most active, that you look at the picture, close your eyes, look again, close your eyes, and repeat this process, until you get what you want.

You can create virtually anything, changing your life. But you need to believe that you can do it, set your goals, and remain positive that it will happen. There is an indescribable amount of power behind thoughts, and one just needs to learn to use this power to changes their selves, and their lives for the better.

If you are interested in these concepts, and would like to change your life for the better, then please visit my website, where you will get access to the FREE ebook "The Manifesting Mindset." You can find the my website address below

Author: Cheryl Hammer My Website: http://www.hammersmagicalsecrets.com

Did you know that you see with your mind as well as your eyes? The mind stores memories and highlights of past experiences as well as color intensity, hue and a variety of other details. How you see (your eyesight) and how the brain makes sense of what you see is at the heart of a total visual experience.

On Being Eye-Minded…

Human beings are eye-minded. This means that in our waking lives we are likely to think, imagine and remember in terms of what we see. Just think about that! Scientists report that being able to read as well as reading on a regular basis:

• Promotes brain cell production.

How to Develop a Reading Habit

When you form a regular reading habit, you reap untold benefits. Unfortunately, most of us just don’t seem to get around to it. So what’s a professional to do in this era of information overload?

Here are a few tips to jumpstart your reading routine and develop an "oh-so-necessary" reading habit:

1. Start with your reading basket. You know, the one that’s on your credenza or desk. You’ve been collecting articles, newspapers, and magazines for weeks now—planning to read them when you get a chance, but the chance never seems to come, does it? Why don’t you go through this basket, skim the articles for those that concern you and discard the rest or forwarded them to others who may be interested in the subject matter. Plan to read an article or two from this pile each day and develop a method to manage it more effectively.
2. Read a newspaper or listen to radio or television news every day. This will enable you to discuss current events (the morning or evening news can provide topics of interest). You should keep current on local business news as well as what is being covered in national business publications. Even when you travel, keep informed about any news that may impact your industry, company or customers.
3. Read a variety of books–business as well as fiction, biographies, and history. Write your ideas and observations down to clarify your thoughts and develop opinions you can embrace and share in conversations with co-workers or when networking and at business related events.
4. Listen to articles and books on tape. A good time to do this is during your commute. A huge variety of seminars, presentations, articles and books have been created in audio tape format. This eye-minded habit will help you reap more than you can imagine.
5. Consider attending the opera or theater. That’s right! Develop or rediscover your interest. Get a copy of the story line for the play or opera and read it in advance to increase your enjoyment. Research any reviews or critiques to inform your expectations of the actors’ performances.
6. Discover new hobbies. Pick ones of interest that you know nothing about so that you can thoroughly investigate them. Read as much as you can and apply what you have read. Not only will you increase your knowledge, but you will develop new and thoroughly enjoyable skills.

Since vision is our dominant sense, it is probably the most compelling way we communicate with others. As we read, we bring images into play in our minds and the minds of others; we speak a visual language of wisdom and insight.

Often our greatest successes come when we look at pictures of information, apply wisdom and insight gained from these visual experiences, and see the results in our mind’s eye. So…GO AHEAD! FORM A Read-and-Reap HABIT TODAY.

Althea DeBrule, entrepreneur and seasoned human resources executive, has focused for more than 30 years on helping people achieve their career goals. Creator of The Extreme-Career-Makeover™ and a founding partner of RADSGroup Organizational Consultants, she is recognized for her bottom line and practical application of career development and management strategies in a way that penetrates hearts and compels action. She speaks and teaches with inspired talent, humor and contagious zeal at management conferences and leadership retreats nationwide, and has been featured in CFO Magazine, Strategy@Work, Human Resource Executive Magazine. Althea is the author of Bosses & Orchards, a compelling and candid book about how to make your work relationship with your boss succeed. To discover how you can take your career to a new level, visit http://www.extreme-career-makeover.com/

Has your life become an endless string of days slogging through the same old mediocre rut that you have awakened to every morning for years and years? Can you even remember the hopes and dreams you had for yourself when you were younger? Have you noticed that the harder you work at setting goals and putting in overtime, your situation never changes?

Do you look around and see people who seem to have everything and who seem to cruise through life with little apparent stress or effort? Have you ever wondered what esoteric knowledge is tapped into, that you have no access to, by creative geniuses like Twain, Edison, Mozart and Steinmetz? Were Jesus, Gandhi, and the Buddha really made of stuff more holy than the rest of us?

The fact is that the super successful people of the modern age, the truly happy people in your neighborhood, the creative geniuses of ages past, and our holy teachers have all had one thing in common, whether they were consciously aware of it or not. That one thing is this: they tapped into the power of the universal laws of creation which we are all subject to and they aligned the creative energy that is in all things to manifest the reality of their own lives. Whether consciously or not, they lived not as if the outside world was something happening to them, but as if they were happening to the outside world. They created their own reality.

You can apply the same universal laws to your own life and create the reality you want for yourself. The fact is that you already know how to align yourself with these laws. You have simply forgotten how to do it.

This is not to say that all you have to do is wish for good luck and riches and it will come to you. As in all other things, there is no free lunch. You have to work for it. The good news is that there are many mentors out there who have discovered these secrets (or, have actually discovered that there are no secrets, there is only faulty memory) and who are standing ready to lead us along the paths they have already trodden. All we have to do is ask the right questions and really pay attention to and apply the answers.

We really can manifest the lives we want and by doing so, we can change the world.

Join me on my path to learn from the world’s greatest manifestation mentors by visiting me at http://www.universallawsseeker.com

Nothing gets done unless an action is completed. Everything we do is an action step. Of course some are so routine they don’t really need to be written down or remembered. They are simply habit or ingrained in our daily lives. Wake up. Go to the bathroom. Say your prayers. Read the sports section of the newspaper. Take a shower. Brush your teeth. Get dressed. Drive to work. Do you have these tasks written down in your planner? Of course not. But they are still action tasks. You don’t get cleaned until you wash up. You don’t know how the Phillies did last night until you read the sports section.

The trick to moving forward and accomplishing goals, dreams and completing projects is, you guessed it, action steps. Let’s say your goal is to bill a million dollars. How are you going to do that? What steps are necessary to achieve this goal? Working from the goal itself backward to today you might list these steps to bill one million dollars: increase sales staff to 10 people, train new sellers, hire new sellers, interview candidates, schedule interviews, review applications received, advertise sales openings, call newspaper for ad rates/info. This example clearly shows what steps need to be taken to reach the goal. And most importantly it tells us what the very next action step is - call the newspaper for ad rates and placement info. Do you treat your projects this way?

Taking the time to identify your projects, goals and dreams and then breaking them down into bite sized steps will help you become more productive. Let’s talk about planning your business goals.

Mike Shannon is the owner of Shamrock Business Coaching, a coaching practice that helps business owners increase profits. You can visit Shamrock Business Coaching on the web at: http://www.ShamrockCoaching.com.

Have you developed a great set of goals ? Have you written them down ? Great ! Congratulations, you’ve made a tremendous start. But goals are nothing more than dreams , until you put them into action. That my friend takes planning, and commitment.

What you need to go with your list of Goals, is what I call A Goal Action Plan. In this article we’re going to teach you how to put this tool together.

1) How do your goals relate to each other ? In making you list you should have already separated your goals into short, medium, and long term goals. If at least some of your short term goals don’t feed into medium term goals, and then into your long term goals, you already have a problem. Its only natural that your goals build upon each other. If this were not true long term goals worth having would be way too intimidating ! Maybe you’re having trouble developing short term goals that build into your long term ones.. Try this break your long term goals down, into the steps it will take to accomplish them. ( More about this in the next section.) Consider if some of these steps, are not actually goals. If so they belong on your short or mid term list.

2) Break your goals down into the steps required to accomplish them. This may be true with goals from any of the three time frames. You will most likely come up with additional goals as part of this process. The idea here is to get your mind around what it will take to make your goals a reality. This is a good place to start visualizing. As you think about each step that is needed to accomplish a goal, actually imagine your self accomplishing each step. It sound silly, but it works !

3) What do you need to make it happen. Start with one of your easier, shorter term goals. List the goal on a sheet of paper. Then list each step it will take to accomplish that goal. ( Hint: leave lots of room between steps.) Under each step list the things it will take to make it happen for you. Will it take more time ? Will you need more money ? Will you need someone else’s help, or cooperation. ? Do this with each goal you have established. Start with the easier, shorter term ones and work your way up to the longer term goals. One reason to do it this way is by the time you get to some of your more complex, longer term goals much of your work should already be done. I call this your Goals Resource List.

4) Taste Success ! Pick one or two goals from your short term list, and get them done ! Nothing motivates like success. After all these short term goals, are your goals. You wanted them anyway.

As you’ve been going through this process, you should be writing all this down. What ever you do don’t shove everything in a drawer somewhere, and forget it. Put it somewhere you’ll see it. Take it out at least every week and examine your progress. Constantly re-examine the steps to each goal, your changing circumstances, and what you need to get from where you are, to where you want to be. Trust me, it gets easier with practice. After all what worthwhile thing doesn’t? What better way to achieve success than to practice it ?

Robert A. Crutchfield is president of Kingdom Relationship Ministries. He is a minister, public speaker,and success/relationship coach. He holds the Competent Leader Award from Toastmasters International, and is a Brainbench Certified Trainer. Get your free personalized goals report, when you visit him at http://www.kingdomrelationships.org

To achieve success you must narrow your vision on your plan. The question you should consider, is it focus or tunnel vision?

The former refers to bringing into focus, to adjust the focus of (as the eye or a lens), to concentrate attention or effort on the most urgent problems

Tunnel vision is constriction of the visual field resulting in loss of peripheral vision, like looking down a tunnel, unaware of what is going on around you. The expression "tunnel vision" may also be used as a metaphor for narrow-mindedness or to describe researchers or investigators (such as entrepreneurs) who pursue an investigation with their conclusion already decided and proceed by only accepting evidence that supports their conclusion and excluding any evidence that contradicts their assumptions.

Adjusting the focal length brings what you are viewing into a sharp focus. At the same time it makes everything else fuzzy. The mind is much like the eyes and adjustable lenses. If you go forth like a horse with side blinders on, ignoring your peripheral vision, you may miss danger signs or opportunities.

Sometimes we stare and unconsciously hold our eyes open without blinking. This causes strain and a feeling of dry and tired eyes. Keeping the eyes moving and changing the focus is the way to break this cycle. The mind can be put in a trance when we concentrate at one thing for a long period of time. This can produce a zombie like feeling and hamper production. Use your imagination to explore different ideas. This will keep you alert and you just might discover a gem.

It is necessary to focus on the area you are working in, but be aware of what is going on around you. One can get caught up in his creativity and think it is brilliant until it is compared with the competition. Concentrate on what you are doing, but don’t let it hypnotize you.

Your mind will be sharper if you feed it with a variety of things. Think about your plan, but always consider how you might improve it. You need to rely on your strengths and beef up your weaknesses.

Are you concentrating on your method so intently that it makes everything else blurred? Focus on other methods occasionally and then go back to yours. You might see something that you could adapt into your system to make it work better. Don’t ignore evidence that your plan is flawed. Inspect it closely and determine how to correct it.

Is your advertizing plan the best it can be? Do you track all areas to see which area is best and which is weakest? Have you compared your website with others to see how you measure up? What are they doing that you don’t do? How could you make yours more appealing?

Being an entrepreneur is about using your mind in the right way. It is easy to get to thinking the wrong way and make wrong decisions. Look at it from several perspectives to analyze it correctly. There must be a balance between performing your routine and doing research into the best methods. Spend time reading, but don’t be overwhelmed with an overload of information. There are many good articles and other sources available. Pick some of the best and learn from them.

Concentrate on your work but don’t focus so sharply that it becomes tunnel vision. Spend time relaxing with family and friends. Sometimes you get so close to your work that your mind becomes frozen. Taking a break will help you reset it, so that the course of action becomes clear.

This article may be published if the resource box is left intact. It would be appreciated if you notify me when you do at lynn_b2@yahoo.com.

Lynn Bradley is also the author of the book, “Climbing the Heavenly Stairs.” You were created for success. Discover what Jesus said about doing seemingly impossible things. Learn how to live life to the full. Read more by clicking on the following link. http://www.thelynnbradleybook.com