I have two wonderful friends who absolutely detest the idea of setting goals. At the mere mention of my interest in the topic of goal-setting, they shriek, “Nooooo!” and hurry me around the bend to any other topic of conversation.

A lot of free-spirited, creative, right-brained types among us are like that—rebelling at structure, at the notion that their lives should be hemmed in by detailed lists of what to do and schedules proclaiming when they must do it.

I take my friends’ resistance of goal-setting in good humor. I understand wanting not to be caged—even when the cage is of your own design and making. I understand, too, that their attitude about goal-setting is based in their beliefs about what goal-setting is really about.

I think that they reflect the almost universal belief that it is about imposing chafing rules on yourself, or forcing yourself through sheer will-power to structure your life according to rigid schedules. They see goal-setting as a thief of spontaneity, robbing them of the opportunity to make delicious life-discoveries as they go with the flow wherever life may lead them.

What they don’t understand, and what you all-too-seldom hear about goal-setting, is that it’s one of the most liberating paths to self-discovery and self-expression going. At its core, goal-setting is about honing in on the things that are in truest harmony with your most authentic self. It’s about taking the time and making the effort to decide what really matters to you, what gives your life significance and purpose. It’s about narrowing down the countless possibilities available to you until you find the ones that bring real zest to your life and make it a grand adventure.

Goal-setting starts, after all, with identifying what you really want. You name it, and then you choose to focus on it as a kind of touchstone for all the rest of the choices that enter your life. In a nutshell, that’s what the whole process is about.

Everything else—the lists of actions you think will bring your goal more fully into your experience, your choices of how much time to devote to materializing your objective—is totally up to you. The “discipline” of goal-setting is simply a resource for you to use in discovering ways to make your choices more wisely, a guide that tells you the tricks that have worked well for others. It’s not a religion. And there are no rules—beyond those that you set, freely, for yourself because you see how they will help you be more fully the person who is living your dreams.

As the beginning of a new year unfolds, most of us give some thought to the ways we move nearer our ideal lives. We think about the weight we want to lose, how we can find or get closer to our partners or family members, how we can improve our finances, how we can do, for find, better work or build our careers. And good for us! Holding pictures in our minds of the things we want to achieve is a great first step toward making them a real part of our life-experience.

That’s the good news. But how do we keep from being overwhelmed as we look at all the things to which we want to give our attention? How do we maintain enthusiasm for a whole plate of goals at once?

One way to do it is to assemble all the goals into a picture of your life as it will be when you attain them all. Imagine, for example, a slimmer, trimmer you relating to your partner with more intimacy, appreciation and joy than every before, getting a kick out of your family, making increasing progress in getting ahead financially, genuinely excited about the work you’re doing and the opportunities it offers for continuous personal and professional growth. Develop this image as fully as you can, and allow yourself to visit it frequently, deeply enjoying it. And when you do, tell yourself, “This is the life I get to create for myself. This is what I intend my life to be!”

A collection of goals is what I choose to call a dream. It’s your vision of the ideal, a sacred gift from your higher self, calling you into the future. And the joy of it is that it represents a very real version of your life that can guide your every choice. If you nurture and revere it, if you look at it with happiness and gratitude for the joy it offers, it can be your guiding light. As you make your moment-to-moment choices in alignment with your vision, you create it, step-by-step, as your genuine reality.

Your focus, as you go through your days, will shift from one aspect of your guiding dream to another. But the overall vision will color even your smallest choices. While you’re focused on the tasks your career development involves, you’ll remember to choose wholesome foods to nurture you. You’ll be more aware of your spending and limit it according to your guiding vision of yourself as having greater control of your finances. And returning home after a day of doing your best at work, you’ll let thoughts of work give way to thoughts of the joys your home life offers, ready to enjoy the pleasures of family, to revel in the affection you share with your mate.

Your dream encompasses your highest priorities for all the aspects of your life. It serves as your compass as you choose between all the possible actions you could take at any moment, guiding you towards those that will lead toward bringing it more and more into your actual reality.

The key is to give yourself fully to whatever aspect of it time presents. When it is time to be at work, give yourself fully to that. When it is time to relate with friends, give them your undivided attention. Time will lead you naturally from one aspect of your dream to another. Be fully present with each one of them, giving them your best, extracting from each experience all the meaning and richness each moment offers you.

In the morning, when you first awaken to the day before you, review the overall picture of your dream and give thanks for it, for the vision of what you will be creating in the coming hours. As you fall asleep at night, review your dream, allowing it to sing you to sleep filled with the joyous picture of all you are privileged to live.

In the idle moments of your day, let your dream play out in your mind, reminding you of the life you are creating, the self you are becoming more and more, with every choice, with every turning of the page. “This I am. This I am.” Let it be your happy mantra as you follow your dream’s guiding light.

Do this, and all your goals will dance in harmony, each finding its right moment as the days unfold.

Now that the New Year is less than a week away, I’ve noticed that people are starting to ask each other, “Set any New Year’s Resolutions yet?” Subject lines in my email are mentioning resolutions, too. That’s “Resolutions.” With an “s” on the end. Meaning “more than two.”

If you create a whole list of things you intend to achieve in the coming year, are you setting yourself up for failure? Not necessarily. But if you’re serious about your intentions for transforming some aspects of your life, investing time to plan how your goals can work in harmony will yield some hefty dividends for you. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself with scattered energy, a distracted mind, and no clear idea where you really want to go.

Because sharp, clear focus is one of the main keys to attaining success in any endeavor, the best way to ensure you reach a goal is to give your undivided attention to one objective at a time. But if you take time to understand your goals and to think out a coordinated plan, multiple goals can work together to create a synergy that helps you move forward with increased enthusiasm and energy.

To boost your chances of success with multiple goals, follow these pointers:

1. Know Your Priorities

Once you have your list of the things you most want to accomplish in the coming year, decide which ones mean the most to you. Let your emotions, rather than your logic, be your guide. Which ones inspire or excite you the most? Which ones would it be the most fun to accomplish, or represent the biggest adventure? If you knew you could accomplish them all, which ones would bring you the most satisfaction? Which ones really wouldn’t matter all that much in the long run.

After you have a good sense of their meaningfulness, rate each goal on your list on a scale of 1-5, with one representing the goals that appeal to you the most.

2. Look for Harmonies

Next, see what area of your life each goal represents. Is it related to improving your finances? Does it address career success? Improved health? A better family, social or love life?

Which areas do the goals you rated most important address? If they tend to fall into one or two areas, you have a good clue about the parts of your life that are asking for your attention right now. Look to see how many of the other goals, the ones you rated 3,4 or 5 fall into these areas of primary interest. As you do, you may begin to get a vision of how some of your goals can work in tandem to enhance these aspects of your life.

3. Consider Putting Foundation Goals First

Which goals, when accomplished, will make the others easier? Do any of them represent obstacles that are keeping you from attending to the others? Creating better health first may give you more confidence and energy for changing careers. Getting the spare bedroom cleaned out first might provide a workspace for starting a home business.

4. Match Challenge with Ease

If you have followed the first three pointers, you should be getting a good picture of which goals, and which areas of your life, you most want to develop, and you are probably getting some ideas about where to start with your list.

One more angle from which to look at them involves the degree of complexity each one holds. Can you break some of them down into smaller goals? Will you need to assemble resources, knowledge or skill development to accomplish them, for instance? Are some of the goals simple, but based on tasks that have had you procrastinating?

As you decide which goals to work on first, try matching some of the more challenging ones from your Category 1 goals with some of the less appealing but more easily done goals. Use the passion the Category 1 goals generate as a stimulus for getting the smaller goals out of the way. Crossing them off you list will be motivating; it will show you that you’re capable of progress toward your objectives. And the smaller goals can also serve as a break from the more challenging ones. Sometimes working on more menial tasks gives your subconscious a chance to be forming plans for the larger challenges while your attention is focused elsewhere.

5. Focus on Groups of Multi-Goals by Theme

See the article “Dream Themes in 4-Quarter Time” posted below to get some ideas about how you can group a set of goals together over a 90-day period of time. Once you have a rough map of the year ahead, you can begin planning in depth what you need to accomplish each week in order to reach your objectives by the end of the quarter.

Working on several goals simultaneously can be a highly motivating and energizing process. It’s like having a whole team of horses to pull your wagon up the hill. If you take the time to make sure the horses are well-matched and can harness them into a team, you can achieve wonders. Rent the movie “Pursuit of Happiness” to see how it’s done. It’s not for everyone. It requires genuine commitment and determination. But if you want to cover the greatest amount of ground in the least time, or if you’re faced with multiple responsibilities, it may be the approach for you.

New Year’s Day. The beginning of a whole, fresh, brand-new year. It sounds like the perfect time to launch your own new beginnings. But is it really?

It’s no secret that only about 2 people in a gazillion are still on track with their New Year’s resolutions by January 10th. Lots of factors contribute that phenomenon. Mostly, I suspect, it’s because their resolutions were little more than momentary wishes made in response to social pressure to name a resolution. They weren’t genuine goals at all.

But let’s say you have in mind a few well-considered desires that you’re truly eager to manifest in your life. Let’s say you have given them some thought and made the decision to shape your thinking and actions in harmony with them so you can actually draw them into your reality. Is New Year’s Day the best time to begin?

It could be. The whole idea of a new beginning that the day epitomizes might be just the stimulus you need to light your fuse. If so, go for it!

But if you haven’t already begun inner preparations, if you haven’t yet laid the mental and emotional foundations for your new venture, the fact that the calendar says it’s January 1 will do nothing to ensure your success. In fact, New Year’s Day may be one of the worst days to launch your life-transformation plan.

After several weeks of scrambling in preparation for the holidays, pushing yourself through the stress of decorating, shopping, gift-exchanges, partying, special events and overindulges of all kinds, chances are what you really need is a little time to wind down and find your equilibrium again.

Once you have reestablished your accustomed routines and returned to your normal sleeping and eating patterns, you’ll be in a much stronger position to initiate major changes.

Why not give yourself two weeks to orient yourself toward the launch of your New Year’s goals? Athletes spend time in warm-ups before they begin an event. Orchestras warm-up before the symphony begins. Instead of rushing into your goals headlong, let yourself ease toward your new beginning. Use the time to shift your thoughts toward the things you intend to accomplish and begin rehearsing them in your mind.

If you haven’t yet written out a statement of what you want to create, use these to weeks to develop one. Begin practicing visualizations of your goal before you fall asleep at night, and reminding yourself about it first thing in the morning. Keep a little notebook where you can jot down ideas related to your goal whenever they come to you. Let yourself daydream about the ways in which your life will be different as you begin drawing your objective into your life. Imagine how you’ll feel when your goal is accomplished and the ways in which it will enrich your life. Begin feeling gratitude for the presence of your goal in your life and for your faith that it will one day be your reality.

Because moving toward your goal and doing the things you need to do to make room for it in your life will require doing different things than you’re doing now, use your two-week warm-up to practice twists on your daily routine. Sit in a different chair than you usually do. Park in a different area of the parking lot at the grocery store than you usually do. Take a different route home from work. You’ll be amazed at the way that making small changes opens you to listening to hunches. And you’ll be training yourself to break free of unconscious habits, to notice more possibilities for alternative actions. In other words, you’ll be exercising your ability to choose. And making choices is what self-direction is all about.

So give yourself the luxury of easing into the new. Warm up for it. Give your new beginning its best chance. Your goals deserve it.

Here’s the lowdown on goals that get you going: You gotta love ‘em.

If you’re serious about creating the greatest life you can create for yourself, your goals have to rise from your gut.

In my last post, I suggested you pick out four areas of your life you most wanted to develop and that you devote 90-days to focusing on each one.

Of all the people who read that advice, chances are you’re not the one person who actually bought a notebook and started writing things down. But if you are that one, what I have to tell you today might mean ripping out the pages and starting all over again.

Why? Because unless you have taken time to think about what you really want, your first impulse when it comes to writing goals for the coming year is to write down the things you think you “should” do. You know, the things that will make you a “better” human being. The things you think life’s winners do.

And you know what? That’s a bunch of crap, and it won’t work any better this year than it has all the years up until now. Not only are “shoulds” the bottom-feeders of motivation, they actually work against your achieving any meaningful success.

“Shoulds” constantly tell you that you’re an inferior specimen. They program you to think of yourself as falling short of some idea of perfection that you’ve chosen to entertain. “Shoulds” feel like heavy weights bearing down on you. They sound like nagging inside your head. They’re joy-robbers, and they suck the life right out of you.

Let’s say you decided that you’d spend the first quarter of the year focusing on developing your physical fitness. Losing weight, getting in shape, and stopping smoking rank among the top resolutions people make every January 1, after all. And if that’s your dream, good for you! But is it your dream? Is it your dream? Are you really excited by the idea? Are you just hankering to have the buffest body you can generate? Does just thinking about it make you want to do a set of push-ups? Can you tell me why the idea really turns you on and gets your juices going? That’s what real dreams do.

Real dream-themes scintillate with excitement. They set your mind sailing out after undiscovered ways you can make them come true. They lift your spirit and feel as if they’re singing your name, calling to you like some siren, to make them your own. They don’t nag at you to move forward; they lure you on. They curl like wisps of dawn into your thoughts and daydreams, beckoning you to behold their beauty. And as you move more and more in their direction, you thrill at the realization that you are increasingly living your dreams.

Your genuine dream-theme may very well be among the most-chosen goals people seek. Or it may have nothing whatsoever to do with standard resolutions. What matters is how it makes you feel when you think of it.

Maybe the realization that you can reclaim your future by hammering down your debts sets you on fire with a passion to make it happen. If so, go for it! But if what really lights you up is the idea of kayaking around the Great Lakes, or restoring music boxes, or learning to parasail, or discovering a cure for cancer, go for that!

My friend Patricia just achieved what turned out to be an enormously challenging goal: She located a color-fast ink that would work in painting gourds. Definitely not one of your typical goals! She’s been at it for months. And what she has to say on her blog about her journey captures exactly the thrill of following an authentic dream-theme:

It feels awesome to set a challenge before myself and persist through to completion. I discovered so many interesting techniques and products along the way. Sometimes it was fun to explore the alleys and byways of crafting I will probably never do. . . The search has been as much fun as the eureka moment.

Following the goals that rise from your genuine passions leads you on a grand adventure. Despite confronting the frustrations and dead ends that litter ever goal-seeker’s path, at it’s end, Patricia realized the journey itself had been as rewarding as finally reaching her goal.

When you choose to let your real dreams guide you, life becomes an adventure. Regardless of the twists and turns along the way, the goal-getter’s journey produces satisfaction, life-enrichment and joy. And that’s what it’s all about.

Writer and commentator Ben Stein put it this way, “”The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.”

That’s the key: Come from your heart. Listen to the voice deep within. And, by all means, ditch the “shoulds.”

Imagine waking up on January 1st knowing exactly how you were going to use the year ahead. Forget hazy, half-hearted resolutions; this year you have definite destinations in mind and an air of excitement over reaching them.

Really! Think about it for a little while. What if that was you on New Year’s morning? How do you think you’d feel about the fresh, new year that stretched before you? Pumped? Confident? Alive?

One way to make that happen is to start a “Things I Get to Do This Year” notebook. It can be a paper one or digital, whichever is more comfortable for you. If you prefer to use paper, I suggest you get a 3-ring binder and a package of dividers so you can section it off and keep the ideas you’ll be creating organized.

Next, create four sections in your notebook, one for each quarter of the year, and name them March, June, September and December. Create a fifth section and call it “Possibilities.”

The Possibilities section is like a nursery for all your baby dreams, the little wishes you might want to grow into full-fledged dreams someday. It’s a stash of thoughts about things you might decide you want to have, or do, or become someday, about ideas you might want to develop later on.

If can’t already name four things that you’re excited about accomplishing in the coming year, the Possibilities section is where to begin. Start jotting down everything you can imagine that you would really love to do in your life. Be playful and let your imagination soar. Don’t limit yourself to what you think is within reach. The purpose of the Possibilities section is to help you capture a vision of your dream. Write down everything that tickles your fancy, that sounds fun, captivating, inspiring or thrilling to you.

When you’ve written down all the ideas that come to you, go about your normal routine. But pay attention! New thoughts will keep streaming into your awareness for days. When they do, capture them immediately, before they vanish. Keep a scrap of paper and a pen (or, my new personal favorite, a small digital voice recorder) handy just to catch them as they float by.

Writing down your wishes helps you tune in to what you would most like to create in your life. When you look over all the possibilities, you’ll feel more resonance with some of them than with others. Some will feel more important, brighter, more enticing. From these, pick four that you want to bring into your life over the course of the coming year.

You don’t have to define them in detail them yet. But get a general sense of four specific things you want to achieve.

Then decide which one you’d like to experience first, write a description of it on a fresh piece of paper and file it in your “March” section. Put one of the remaining three ideas in the June section, and the other two in September and December.

Why work in quarters? Because it’s a short enough period of time to hold your focus, and long enough to create absolute miracles in any segment of your life. 90-day goals keep you challenged and excited. They provide just enough urgency to motivate you to take action on a daily basis, and enough flexibility to let you adjust your plans when inevitable obstacles pop up along the way.

If you do only the things I’ve just described, your chances of achieving your goals are exponentially increased. There’s magic in knowing what you want in your life. And putting a target date on your dream-theme makes it real. If you do only the things I’ve just described, you’re already on your way. And while I’ll be here to coach and support you throughout the coming year, once you know what you want, doors will open for you, coincidences and opportunities will begin to dot your path, and plans will begin to emerge all of their own accord.

You have the power to make the coming year the best one yet. Why not begin honing in on the dream-themes you want to live right now? Six weeks from now, you could be waking up to the New Year knowing it truly would mark the beginning of a whole new way of life for you, a life you intentionally created for yourself out of the fabric of your genuine dreams.

What if you really did it? Imagine how you’d feel, waking up on New Year’s Day . . .

Here’s what doesn’t work when it comes to picking your goals for the New Year: naming the first thing that pops into your thoughts when somebody asks you what your resolutions are. But in reality, that’s the depth of thought most of us give to what we want to create in the year ahead.

Inspired by the thought of a fresh new year, we pick something out of the air that we wistfully hope we might find the gumption to achieve. But truth be told, we pretty much expect things to go as they’ve gone, and hope for a bit of luck that will make them a little better.

Last year, Gary Ryan Blair published a survey of the top ten responses people gave when asked to name their New Year’s resolutions:

1. Lose weight and get in better physical shape
2. Stick to a budget
3. Get rid of debt
4. Spend more quality time with family & friends
5. Find my soul mate
6. Quit smoking
7. Find a better job
8. Learn something new
9. Volunteer and help others
10. Get organized

You may have named a couple of them yourself. Probably you heard a few of them named by co-workers, family members or friends. And chances are very high that neither you nor they followed through.

Every one of these categories are rich with life-changing possibilities. If you were to choose any one of them as your focus for the coming year, you could grow exciting, genuinely motivating goals, capable of guiding you to a whole new level of life-experience.

But a dream-theme isn’t a wish that you make on New Year’s Eve in the hope that the sweep of the second-hand on the clock will magically materialize it as midnight passes into morning. Dream-realization requires forethought, deliberation, and conscious decision. Genuine goals are something you review over and over, refining your vision and methods, renewing your commitment as each day of the new year dawns.

A good way to begin is by giving thought now to the areas of your life you would most like to develop and transform. Take a look at the dream vision diagram here as a guide. Then begin playing with ideas about the kinds of changes you would like to make and jot down your thoughts as they come to you.

The more you think about what you want to create in your life, the more real the possibilities will become. If you nourish them with repeated thought, a moment will come when they’re no longer simply fantasies, but images of genuine realities that you can actually generate in your life. And that’s the moment when the real magic happens, the moment when you suddenly see that you can make your dreams come true.

Here in western Pennsylvania, falling leaves of crimson and gold are giving way to falling temperatures and occasional flakes of snow. In the fields, the harvesters run, gathering the last of the corn. Hunters, clad in neon orange, slip through the woods, bows in hand, stalking deer for their families’ freezers. Overhead, great V’s of geese send noisy calls as they begin their travels to warmer, more southerly waters.

Not only nature tells the tale. Since October slipped away, I’ve noticed the steady and growing creep of holiday decorations onto store shelves, the proliferation of gift-buying messages on radio and TV.

Clearly, the year is coming quickly to a close.

In the rhythm of the year, this is the quiet moment when I like to look beyond the coming holiday frenzy and begin defining my focus for the coming year. I start jotting notes about the areas of my life I most want to develop, adding details as they occur to me, refining my vision bit by bit, letting my dream take shape behind my conscious awareness as I busy myself with the emerging season’s mandatory tasks. By the time the New Year arrives, I’ll know the direction I’m going and will have a broadly painted plan.

Defining your direction can be as simple as setting a theme for the next year (or month, or season). Last January, my friend Patricia Zulkosky decided that instead of making resolutions, she would pose a seed question for herself and spend the year asking “Why do I love my life so much?” The practice ended up stewing her path with countless gems of appreciation as the year unfolded.

Once you set a theme, whether it’s abstract like Patricia’s or something as concrete as achieving financial stability or attaining ultimate physical fitness, you’ll have a point of focus to guide you. You can move in harmony with your focus point as Patricia did, by adopting a seed question to ask yourself continuously, or by planning in as much detail as suits you how you will shape your days.

Nothing says you have to plan a year in advance, or that New Year’s Day has to mark new beginnings. In reality, every moment is a new one; you can begin anew from right where you are at any instant you choose. But if the New Year means new beginnings for you, now is the time to begin defining what would make 2008 a great year for you.

Start with identifying the major themes you want the year to hold. What do you want the coming year to be about? What pursuits and accomplishments would bring you the greatest satisfaction? A year from now, as you’re looking back on 2008, what would you like to see?

Open your mind to the possibilities and let your imaginings begin. Set aside a small block of time each day to jot down your thoughts. You aren’t writing in stone or making any commitments. Be playful with possible designs. Let yourself be surprised, amused, challenged and inspired as ideas come to you. Then, at the end of a week, read through your list and see which themes resonate with you, which ones strike a note from deep inside you.

Your theme may be a continuation of the direction you’re already headed, taken to a higher level. Or it may be the discovery of an entirely new path for you, one singing with a spirit of rightness and daring. Either way, by identifying your direction, you’re opening the door to a successful new year, one guided by your own authentic dreams.

Happy exploring!

I’m going to tell you the truth about goal-setting. It doesn’t matter what method you use, or even whether you formally set goals for yourself at all. Despite the reams of theory and discussion about the ways that good goal-setting speeds you down the road to achievement (and it does!) they’re like the peel without the banana by themselves.

I watched Nic Askew’s film-of-the-week today. ( If you haven’t discovered Nic’s powerful Monday morning gifts to the world yet, they’re at www.monday9am.tv, and you owe it to yourself to check them out.) I’d wager that the man in today’s vignette knew all about setting goals, about disciplined focus on sharply defined objectives. He’d risen to the top, after all, and no doubt owned a boat-load of goods to show for it.

His only trouble was his fear that someday someone would find out it was all a sham. All peel; no banana. No substance; all show. And inside, he was dying. Day by day, the music inside him faded. The face in the mirror grew more haggard and aged. “I was living somebody else’s success,” he says. “It was someone else’s success, not my own.”

Aha! There’s the magical revelation. Success isn’t about achieving what somebody else says you should achieve. It’s about finding and living your own dream. It’s about learning to expand your vision of what’s possible for you. It’s about paying attention to the things that excite you and compel your interest and following those clues. In my ebook, Winning the Tomorrow Game, I call it following your inner compass.

Once you get an inkling what your heart’s true dream is, you know the direction to go. That’s when goals take on meaning, when the techniques for achieving them become exciting tools. Goals based on someone else’s agenda are hollow frauds, and so is the illusion of success that results from attaining them. But find your dream, and genuine goals will rise as naturally and golden as the sun and you’ll reach for them with eagerness, and passion, and joy.

Watch Nic’s film: waiting to be found out. See for yourself what happens when a man claims his dream.

“If you are not now making the progress you want to make and that you are capable of making, it’s simply because your goals aren’t clearly enough defined.”  That insight comes from Paul J. Meyer, a brilliant businessman and leader who is widely regarded as the father of modern day goal methodology.  It was Meyer who first coined the acronym “SMART” as a formula for framing great goals.

If you haven’t run across it before, the letters represent Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Tangible.  At least that was their original meaning.  They have gone through countless permutations since Meyer formulated them.  But you will have to search long and hard to find a version that alters the “S” part.  And there’s a reason “specific” comes first.  It’s the quality that will put you on the fast track to achievement far and above all the others.

Specific goals are detailed.  They leave no room for ambiguity.  They’re the bullseye on the target at which you’re aiming.  They program your brain to focus on exactly the thing you want to achieve, to search for the means and methods that will get you where you want to go.

 “I’m going shopping for a flaming red satin floor-length backless gown with a plunging neckline” is a far superior goal than “I’m going to buy a dress.”  Knowing you intend to be Vice President of Marketing for XYZ Company will guide you far more efficiently than merely knowing that you want to “get ahead.”

Teach yourself to think in details when you think of your goals.  Ask yourself questions that let you quantify and qualify your aim:  What style?  What type?  How big? How many?  How much?  What color?  What options?  What features?  Where?  What materials?

Specifically name all the parameters of your goal that you can.  Engage all your senses.  What will it smell like?  How will it look?  Taste?  Sound?  Feel?

The clearer and more detailed your mental image of your goal, the more motivated you will be do move in its direction.  But more than that, by fully defining it, you are giving precise instructions to your brain to select from the countless bits of data it processes exactly those pieces you need to move forward.  Having a clearly defined goal will alert you to resources and ideas that otherwise would go unnoticed.

Meyer included one significant element in his definition of “specific” that many goal specialists consider so important that they altered the “T” in the SMART formula to give it a place of its own: Time bound.  Specific goals need a when:  I’ll find that dress by 3 o’clock this afternoon.  I’ll be VP of Marketing two years from today.

Putting your goal in a time context gives it a sense of urgency and allows you to work backwards from your target date to create a plan for what you need to accomplish between then and today.

Few things you can do will benefit you more if you’re serious about reaching your destination in the shortest time by the most efficient route.  Few things will lace your goals with more motivating energy.  Take time to begin outlining the specifics of your goals today and you’ll see for yourself how turbo-charged they become.  Details give goals their power.  Neglect them, and you’re missing out on one of the most significant keys.