“GREAT DREAMERS’ DREAMS ARE NEVER FULFILLED, THEY ARE ALWAYS TRANSCENDED.” — Alfred Lord Whitehead
“HUMAN BEINGS, YOU AND I, ARE GOAL–CENTERED ORGANISMS.
WE ARE TELEOLOGICAL IN THAT WE ARE MOTIVATED BY PURPOSES,
BY DESIRED END STATES. WE ARE ENGINEERED MENTALLY
TO MOVE PROGRESSIVELY AND SUCCESSIVELY FROM ONE GOAL
TO THE NEXT, AND WE ARE NEVER REALLY HAPPY UNLESS,
AND UNTIL, WE ARE MOVING TOWARD THE ACCOMPLISHMENT
OF SOMETHING THAT IS IMPORTANT TO US.”
— Brian Tracy, Success Philosopher
“SUCCESS IS TAKING ACTION TOWARDS YOUR PERSONAL GOALS EACH DAY.” — Jim Rohn, Success Philosopher
“FEELING LISTLESS? MAKE A LIST!” — Anonymous
Imagine a beautiful garden with brilliant Sun, crystalline water, friendly insects and rich soil ripe for the planting. A garden, perfect in every respect, except, there are no desirable seeds present because you have not planted them. The only seeds sprouting are those weeds and shrubs planted by others, or by the wind and birds. Yet you continue to tend and cultivate those haphazard plants with your resources. This perfect garden, containing none of your own seeds, is what your mind is like when you have no definite goals. If you have no crop to nurture to an edible state, you drift along with the vagaries, whims and goals of others.
If you are not working to achieve your own goals, you are always working to achieve another’s goals. Everything you do, every day, is actually for the achievement of goals. What you may want to ask yourself is: Are they my goals? And: Are they worthwhile goals?
The mark of a winner is intense goal orientation. Napoleon Hill called this: “definiteness of purpose.” It is a direction you have selectively chosen for your life.
Few realize that a major cause of stress (the great destroyer of health) is having no clear goals, no future to await you, no plan to get somewhere in life. Setting goals allows us to chart the course of our life and control where we are going. The more control we feel we command over our future, the less stress we feel.
The very first step before you begin a journey is an undiminished decision as to where you are headed. If you are determined to manifest the dormant powers within you, first get clear about what you want and where you are going. Decide. Dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to getting there. Chart your course; it is much easier to travel with a map.
If the success you seek is extraordinary, then you must begin immediately to set extraordinary goals. As long as you are going to dream, dream great dreams. As long as you are aiming for prosperity, go for it all! Spectacular success is always preceded by spectacular goal setting and mental preparation.
Release all limitations today! Set enormous goals! If your daily goal is just to make it home, eat unhealthy foods, watch TV and go to sleep, you will achieve that. If your daily goal is to make it home, exercise, work on your favorite projects all night and wake up in the morning with an abundance of energy, you will achieve that too.
Set goals which challenge your brain to think in new directions. Set too many goals. Set 6,000 goals. Set so many goals it will take you a lifetime to achieve them!
And when you achieve a written goal, draw a star or checkmark next to it. Keep track of your progress. Completing and checking off a complex, challenging goal gives one an amazing boost of satisfaction. Your own self-image will become more positive and confident as you check off each accomplished goal.
Work on yourself like a work of art through goal setting. Sculpt your character, physique and future. Plan and determine the final masterpiece in advance. Set down your personal goals with tremendous clarity and intensity.
Set your goals, then plan how you are going to achieve them. Proper planning prevents poor performance.
Consider the following ratio:
Planning to action = 1:5 (1 day of planning is worth 5 days of action).
Prevention to recovery = 1:5 (1 day of prevention is worth 5 days of recovery).
The more you plan, the more effective your plans will become, and the more you can get done in less time. The more you prevent, the healthier you become, and the less time you need to ever spend on recovery.
Within his book, Maximum Achievement, Brian Tracy has outlined twelve steps to achieve goals:
1. Develop an intense desire to achieve your goals.
2. Develop a strong belief in your goals.
3. Write down your goals.
4. Determine how you will benefit from achieving your goals.
5. Analyze your starting point.
6. Set deadlines to achieve your goals.
7. Identify the obstacles that stand in your way.
8. Identify the additional knowledge or information you will require.
9. Identify the people whose cooperation you will require.
10. Make a plan to achieve your goals.
11. Visualize the achievement of your goals.
12. Persist until your goals are achieved.
The present does not spring from the past. The present springs from the future — your vision of the future. To predict the future, assess what is happening in your life now, develop a strategy to reach your goals and create the future.
Humans have the divine ability to visualize, to see the future before it happens. We literally create the future through visualization. Positive, vivid mental pictures activate all of the laws of the universe and send things, people and circumstances to us in harmony with those pictures.
You can go only as far as your vision permits. A common practice in sports psychology is to visualize oneself reaching a goal. In your life you can employ this technique to expand your vision.
To expand your powers of visualization is to recreate the world. Through your imagination you can fly out amongst the stars, scale the majestic mountains of the world, enjoy the lush abundance of the tropics. Your imagination is the key to a brilliant life. Just as you can visualize amazing landscapes, visualize your goals clearly and consistently and they will begin to manifest now.
When goals are visualized creatively, the rest of life is assured to be intensely interesting and endlessly exciting. This is because the sharper and more vivid a visualization, the quicker it will manifest.
Those who think about visionary goals, who use their garden-minds to erect fantastic visions of beautiful orchards, brilliant island vacations, perfect days and radiant relationships, are living the most — they are getting the most enjoyment out of life.
A written goal describes clearly what we are seeking. Writing down a goal is making our desires known to the universe and starts the flow of abundance towards us. When we set down our visionary goals on paper, we give reality to them and solidify their entrance from the realm of pure potential into our lives. Those who set goals are those who achieve them.
Anthony Robbins cites a famous goal study in his book Unlimited Power: “A study of the 1953 graduates of Yale University clearly demonstrates the power of goals. The graduates interviewed were asked if they had a clear, specific set of goals written down with a plan for achieving those goals. Only 3 percent had such written goals. Twenty years later, in 1973, the researchers went back and interviewed the surviving members of the 1953 graduating class. They discovered that the 3 percent with written specific goals were worth more in financial terms than the entire other 97 percent put together … The interviewers also discovered that the less measurable or more subjective measures, such as level of happiness and joy that the graduates felt, also seemed to be superior in the 3 percent with written goals.”
When you take action by actually writing down your goals and reviewing them regularly, you dive into a strong current that will carry you to distant places. Unseen forces will come to your aid.
Writing down a vision, idea or goal makes it a commitment. It tells the subconscious mind what you want to do. It compels the subconscious to figure out how to make your vision become reality. Remember: “Don’t just think it, ink it.” The more often you write down your goals, review them and get into the habit of working on them, the quicker they materialize in reality.
You are capable, at any time in your life, of doing what you dream. Everything you have in your life right now is only a duplication of what you subconsciously believe you deserve. Many people are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel they do not deserve them or that they will be unable to achieve them. You can decide now, at this very moment, that you will avoid this trap. You can decide right now that you will change your destiny. Once you have written your goals on paper, you automatically override thoughts of unworthiness and failure.
Think about your goals continuously. When your goals are clear, all the laws of the universe conspire in your favor to help you. Whenever you feel things are going badly, think about your goals! Uplift yourself by thinking about, visualizing and feeling your goals!
To achieve your goals, you must become the type of person who can achieve those goals.
Like a great strong oak tree, goals put our feet on the ground and our imagination into the stars. Goals allow us to manifest an extraordinary destiny.
When I first started promoting a raw plant-food diet and lifestyle years ago, I was not the type of person who could bring this information to an enormous audience. But, in the process of my own transformation, goal setting and goal achievements, I became a different type of person: a person brave enough, happy enough and successful enough to take this information to the next level.
How you will achieve your unique goals is not always clear. In the same way, when you begin a garden you do not completely understand all of the implications involved. The garden’s growth reveals the full manifestation of the goal. Like a tree that draws nourishment into its trunk, and transforms it with the assistance of Sun energy into whatever it needs (leaf, bark, branch, root, stem, sepal, petal, fruit or seed) to fulfill its destiny, so too will you draw in knowledge and, with the assistance of focused energy, transform it into whatever you need to achieve your goals.
You can learn everything you need to know to accomplish your goals along the way to their achievement. The key is to keep taking action. Action attracts the knowledge you require and makes all things possible.
I tell listeners in my seminars: “Leap and the net appears.” Use The Trial and Success Method: Learn from your past mistakes and adjust your behavior accordingly to achieve your goals — treat your past as a school, a vast resource to learn from to better yourself. Maxwell Maltz called this “Psycho-Cybernetics” in his well-known book of the same title. When the mind has a defined target, it can focus and direct and refocus and redirect until it reaches its intended goal.
Remember: The greater your goals, the greater the challenges which await you! Andrew Carnegie said: “Anything in life worth having is worth working for.” When you set greater goals, you will face greater challenges. When you set the goal to reach an extraordinary level of health, people will oppose you! Peers may criticize you; family and friends will descend upon you; strangers will try to discourage you. You have to leverage your mind to handle these situations, maintain your focus and enjoy the process!
At the bottom of it all, the final goal is that people just want to be happy. When all else is detoxified away, the pursuit of any goal is about achieving happiness.
To achieve the highest levels of health, maintain your happiness no matter what you are doing. Set happiness as your highest goal and organize your life around it. All beliefs, ideas, goals and activities that diminish your happiness also limit your potential. There is something in Nature that always attempts to guide you towards growing and achieving the greatest levels of happiness if you simply tune in, listen to and act upon your intuition.
Always remember to keep your happiness or harmony of mind as your number one value and all else will fall into place. The best way to make others happy is to be happy yourself. Your own happiness allows you to fully enjoy the abundance life has to offer. As long you choose your own peace of mind as your guiding principle, you will never make a bad decision on the way to achieving your dreams.
It is the possibility of having a dream come true which makes life most interesting! Get excited about your goals. Get excited about waking up in the morning! Become an irresistible force of Nature moving rapidly towards each set goal.
As your goals begin to materialize, you will enjoy life more, you will become more confident, you will set into motion an upward spiral of ever-increasing achievement.
As you work diligently toward the achievement of your goals, you may discover the beautiful truth that, as you fill your spirit with positive thoughts, rewards and exciting challenges, all weaknesses are automatically eliminated. Consider the story of business philosopher Cavett Roberts (whose success audio tapes I highly recommend). By middle age, Cavett’s health was failing and he was given a death sentence by doctors. He quit his job as a lawyer, moved to sunny Arizona, started selling real estate and got so busy succeeding and achieving his goals that he forgot to die. He lived into his nineties, and outlived all his doctors!
No matter what your station in life at the present time, you can change your future in a moment with one powerful action. The actions you take, or do not take, each day shape your destiny. Each action or non-action is taking you towards a conclusion, a goal. Remember, you are always heading towards goals. The question is: Whose?
We are journeying entities, traveling in the garden of life, drawn to those destinations that are in harmony with our dominant thoughts. Goals are like orchards filled with ripe fruits, they pull us toward them. They breathe in new fragrant sensations into our being. They activate our imagination.
We are designed to set and achieve goals with the content of our life being the wonders we observe along the way.
The ultimate quest has no ending, and that fact gives it incredible value. The true value is not what we get, but what we become along the way. We journey to a goal, and then realize the journey is the goal.
1 Set a health goal to continuously act upon the information contained within this book. Record this goal in your journal.
2 In your journal, write down 100 goals that you want to attain within the next year. Review them daily.
3 Take your top 5 goals for this year. For each goal write a sentence fulfilling each one of the 12 steps for goal achievement outlined by Brian Tracy earlier in this lesson.
4 Continuously write down additional yearly goals and long-term goals in your journal. 100 goals is a starting point. My goal is to have 6,000 goals!
5 Consider writing down your goals with different colored inks. The human mind tends to remember words that are written in color better than it remembers words written in black. You may even choose to use crayons!
6 Check off each goal as you achieve it.
THE VISIONARY
The beauty of the world,
Under sunshine, mist, snow
Settles upon dreams
Which nestle and grow,
In the slumbering visions
Of the secret and wild,
The supernal gods
In the feral child.
Vision — the strength,
It shapes and seeks:
The glide of the pen,
And a voice who speaks
To the mass of minds
Or a single face, with
Eloquent, astral, eternal grace.
Your vision is the promise,
You shall one day be.
Your ideal is the prophecy,
You shall one day see.
Nourished by seeds,
Of divine inspiration,
You become as great,
As the finest creation.
Vision — the master,
It guides and creates.
It plans for perfection,
And clearly states:
“The dreamers are the saviors
Of the world.”
Those who cherish:
A beautiful vision,
A lofty ideal,
Have but one decision:
Inspire the dream,
To expand and rise.
Nourish that truth
Without compromise.
For those with visions
Of truth and right,
Even alone,
Have strength and might.
Vision — the power,
It molds and makes.
Hold it true so long
And evermore it shapes,
The reasons, minds, and the wills
Calling forth a thousand joys,
Disposing of a thousand ills.
Cherished in secret
Yet coming to pass,
Vision — the calm
In a pool of glass.
Tempest tossed souls,
Wherever you be,
Rest under the wing
Of the visionary.
In the Ocean of Life,
Isles of Bliss lay smiling.
The Sunny shore of your ideal
Awaits your arriving.
Keep your hand firmly poised
Upon the helm of thought.
Hold true to the vision
And you’ll find what you have sought.
THE VISIONARY’S EPILOGUE
To humanity:
The seekers,
Never forget
Your dreamers.
Their ideals
Must never
Fade and die.
They live forever
And carry us high.
See in them
What you shall know.
Take from them
Some seeds to sow.
For musician, poet, painter, sage —
You are the architects
Of the golden age.
