Get specific about your goals!

One of the 9 things successful people do differently is the way they set goals. Successful people set specific goals. “I would like to lose weight”, that’s a vague goal. “I’d like to lose 5 kilos”. That’s specific. “I’d like to lose 5 kilos by March 31st”. That is even more specific. You get the idea. So why create a specific goal? Research shows, the more specific your goal, the better your chance of achieving it. Specific goals enable you to know if the goal has been achieved or not. Such goals motivate you to take specific actions to achieve them.

However, setting a goal alone is not enough. You can set a specific goal and day dream about it, but that won’t take you anywhere. You need to take actions to reach a goal. And to take actions you need to be motivated to act. So, how do you motivate yourself to act? A technique called Mental Contrasting is the answer.

The technique involves first thinking about how it would feel to achieve your goal and then thinking about obstacles that will prevent you from achieving that goal. The idea is to switch back and forth between thinking about feelings of success and thinking about obstacles. This switching is akin to winding up a watch, it creates within you an urge to act. This is called experiencing necessity to act.

Think for a moment that you are a sales person and you would like to close 3 deals this month. Now imagine the feeling of achieving that goal. How does it feel? Can you hear the praise from your managers and colleagues? Do you see the commission in your bank account? Don’t you feel nice? Now think about the obstacles to achieving that. Think of the competition. Think of the prospects that won’t take your call or those who cut the phone after hearing your voice. Think about your proposals being rejected. Now, tell me, don’t you feel motivated to look for more prospects and make more calls? Don’t you feel motivated to make your pitch better? If you do, you’ve just experienced the necessity to act.

Enough of the gyan. Now, did you experience the necessity to act, does the above make sense? If it did and you’d like to implement the above ideas, here are implementation suggestions from Heidi:

1.      Think of a goal that you would like to achieve. Write it down.

2.      Ask yourself how you will know that you’ve achieved your goal. Try to find specific aspects of the goal that will let you know you’ve reached your goal.

3.      In the light of what you did in Step 2, rewrite your goal.

4.      Now think about how it would feel when you achieve your goal. Write down two benefits of achieving your goal. Also write two obstacles that prevent you from achieving your goal.

5.      Write a few sentences about each benefit that you wrote earlier. Also write a few sentences about each obstacle that you noted in the earlier step

That’s it! Now go ahead and set a specific goal and energize yourself to achieve it.

Halvorson, Heidi Grant. Nine Things Successful People Do Differently. Harvard Business Review Press. Kindle Edition.