How Sarah Helps You Achieve Your Goals
Do you know where your company is going? Do you have a vision of
where you want to be?
Often in an attempt to get company staff to have a shared view
of where they're all going a vision and mission statement are
prepared.
Unless you're a large company it's a waste of time.
Mainly because your company works to the beat of your drum.
You're the one who sets your own company's agenda. Whether you
realise it or not.
Your whole attitude to risk, customer service, planning,
budgeting, recruitment and cost control are being followed by
your employees.
They want to stay on the right side of the boss don't they?
They're not likely to rock the boat. But more than that they
don't see why they need to do what you say unless you do what
you say too.
The staff may influence you to a certain extent. But when the
buck stops it's with you.
Maybe you have excellent staff and you can leave them to get on
with lots of stuff in your absence. Maybe they produce brilliant
results.
Great.
But if you had some goals I guarantee you'll all achieve more.
Lewis Carroll said "If you don't know where you are going, any
road will get you there."
Without goals you can either take the short road or the long
road and you'll still get nowhere.
One thing you need to understand about your brain is that it
will go all out to help you achieve your goals. Your Reticular
Activating System (a little group of cells that are probably the
most primitive in your brain) is the driving force for you to
get your goals. It filters all communication to your brain and
stops you going mad from information overload.
The good news is that the Reticular Activating System (RAS) can
be programmed to achieve the goals you want. That's done by
using visualisation and "faking it before you make it".
By that I mean fooling your RAS into thinking you've already
achieved your goal. It works to make sure that you get the
benefits accruing from that goal. Which means that you then
achieve it! Simple, eh?
It's so great I call the RAS the "Goal Scorer".
So how do you set goals?
Firstly dismiss the thought that they're just for January the
1st. Or you set them once and then forget them. Goals don't work
that way. A little later I'll explain how you can use a method I
call SARAH to help you check your goals.
Now what are the most important things about setting goals?
The most important is that ... it must be important to you.
If it's not no amount of goal setting will make you achieve it.
Do you have something worthy but boring that you'd rather not
do? You can put it off forever can't you?
When you set goals you must promise yourself that you'll achieve
them. If it's a boring goal tie it to something interesting. I
can't emphasis enough how important importance is to your
achievement of your goals.
Next you need to clearly decide what it is that you want to
achieve. An all embracing statement such as "All areas of my
life will work well" isn't much use as a goal. It's much too
general for your poor "goal scorer".
Instead you need to make each goal specific and so that your
goal scorer knows when it needs to be achieved you give it a
time limit.
The other secret to using the goal scorer is to phrase your goal
as though it's already happened.
For example: "I've got 5 new clients who each paid me a