Goals!

Imagine you had a superpower that enabled you to succeed in anything you did. What would you choose to do? If you think this sounds like a fantasy, think again. We all have the power to succeed, in any area. All it takes is the right mindset.

Your thoughts are more than just hopes or wishes; they’re also creative. They shape your world in a surprisingly concrete way. With time, your reality starts to look like whatever you spend your time thinking about. So, if you spend your time thinking about being successful in your chosen field, then eventually you will be.

The key message here is: Use the power of your mind to transform your life.

When successful people are asked what topics consume their thoughts, one response is the most common. They spend their time thinking about two things: what they want and how they can achieve it. In essence, they dedicate their inner headspace to thinking about their goals. And so should you.

In contrast, unsuccessful people spend a whole lot of time thinking about what they don’t want. They think about their worries, problems, and who or what is to blame for their failures.

But it's not enough to just think about your goals; you need to write them down, too.

The power of writing down your goals was discovered by a Harvard University study in 1979. Researchers asked recent Harvard MBA graduates a simple question: Had they set any specific goals they wanted to achieve in the future? The researchers discovered that only 13 percent of the graduates had set clear goals. Just 3 percent had written their goals down. The rest of the graduates had no goals at all. Ten years later, in 1989, the researchers followed up with the graduates. They made an astonishing discovery. The graduates who’d set themselves goals were making, on average, twice as much money as those who hadn’t. As for the graduates who’d written those goals down – on average, they were earning ten times as much!

Why does this simple act of setting goals and writing them down make such a difference? Well, goals provide you with direction and meaning. These are things that many people lack in their lives. And with every goal you achieve, you feel more confident and capable of tackling even bigger goals in the future.