Goal Setting Strategies
Goal Setting Strategies
SPE 100
INTRODUCTION
Watching Steve Harvey and Oprah Winfrey talking about vision boards, writing our
goals down and believing we can create anything we want in our lives gave me an
epiphany. Steve Harvey said something that pressed a button in my heart. He said, “If
nine of your friends are broke, you will be the tenth.” That
slapped me awake. I love my broke and nightlife friends. We love to sit and talk about
how broke we are and how depressing it is to work for hourly wages. I had no idea I
could change my life. That I can set goals, visualize, feed my mind with thoughts that
empower and embody the type of life I want for myself. I mean nobody told me my life is
in my hands. I only knew what my family, friends, and society told me about life. So, I
went out of my comfort zone and started hanging around friends who are wealthy
spiritually, intellectually and financially.
Today, we will be delving into three types of goal setting
strategies: visualization with vision boards, the act of writing down our goals and lastly
acting as if we already achieved our goals. Some of you might already be familiar with
these life-changing strategies, but as stated by one of my virtual mentors Tony Robins, an
Entrepreneur, Author, and currently one of the most influential Life and Business
Strategists, “Repetition is the mother of skill”.
GOAL SETTING
This fascinating exercise dates to the beginning of Human beings. The goal to hunt for
food, the goal to stay alive and safe, the goal to evolve. One of the Ancient Greek
Philosophers Aristotle defined goal setting as, “Have a definite, clear practical ideal: a
goal, an objective. Then have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, wealth,
materials and methods. Lastly, adjust all your means to that end.”
I started learning these strategies four years ago and decided to make my vision board
three years ago. I would cut out pictures from magazines, newspapers and print quotes
that touch my heart. Every so often, I change a quote or take down a picture of a goal I
have achieved. It is an empowering exercise to learn.
BODY
I. Knowing what we want and seeing it in our mind’s eye is as old as time. Today
we have the aide of Vision Boards to help us visualize the things we want to
attract in our lives.
A. Jack Canfield Founder of the Transformational Leadership Council and
Chicken Soup for the Soul Empire described Vision Boards as meaningful
collages with pictures of our goals put on a board and placed in an area of
either the living room, bedroom or office that can be seen every single day.
1. Vision boards are also known as Dream Boards. They serve as a
representation of our ideal life and where we would like to be.
2. Creating a vision board cannot make things magically appear in our lives,
of course, it is training our mind to work towards achieving the statements
and images we are feeding our subconscious mind.
B. The important thing I found about using vision boards is the visualization
process that comes with it. The adage, as Mr. Canfield said “A picture is
worth a thousand words” is true especially in this case. The more we see
images and quotes that align with our dreams, the more the information sips
into our subconscious mind.
1. We recreate the things and situations we concentrate on. Our minds
respond strongly to visual stimulations. The goal of visualizing with
vision boards is to strengthen and stimulate our emotions because
emotions are vibrational energy. We want to focus on a definite purpose so our energy will flow where our attention goes. Which is
living a life by design.
2. Another way that visualization with a vision board helps is to clear
the mind from any negativity self-talk. It reprograms the mind to
think differently than it usually does, and it motivates the drive to
step out of our comfort zone.
My Vision Board is in my home office above my desk. It is my goal setting and writing
space. When my daughter is not climbing over my head, I sit here and write down my
thoughts, my goals and create the life I want to live.
II. Writing down our goals in a journal or dream book can be as effective as
visualizing with vision boards.
1. Did you know that you are 50 percent more likely to achieve your
goals just by writing them down? A recent study by Clinical
Psychologist from the Dominican University of California, Dr. Gail
Matthews involved a total of 267 participants to take part in a study.
a. Participants came from around the world and from varied works
of life. The study divided the participants into groups. Some
wrote down their goals and the rest did not write their goals
down.
b. By the end of the study, Dr. Matthews saw
that those who wrote down their goals achieved and accomplished significantly more than those who did not write their goals down.
c. Stumbling on a TedX talk by Cameron Herold a Management
Consultant, he drove the point home with one sentence “If your vision is not in writing, it does
not exist”.
A. Let me ask you a few questions. Why are you here? Why are you in college?
What are you studying for? What are your dreams and aspirations? What do
you want to achieve in your life? Where would you like to be in the next three
or 5 years? What impact do you want to make in the world? How do you want
to spend your life?
1. Goal setting is important because we are creative beings surrounded by an
energetic field. The things we see, what we hear and what we focus on
greatly influence our perception of what we call “the world”.
III. When we act as if we have already achieved our goals, we are priming ourselves
to mentally and emotionally believe and see ourselves achieving our goals.
A. Napoleon Hill author of Think and Grow Rich has a prominent sentence in his
book. (picture of the quote) “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it
can achieve.”
1. The benefit of acting as if is the elimination of pointing out what is
missing in our lives. We are in a society were pointing out our flaws, and
how unworthy we are is a social trend. In their book “Ask and It is Given”
Jerry and Esther Hicks said, (picture of the quote) “When we concentrate
on what’s missing in our lives, we keep the vibration active and it prevents
what we want from coming into reality”.
B. In the Act as If Principal, a book by Richard Wiseman, he said the majority of
us believe that our feelings dictate our behavior. If I am shy, there is nothing I
can do about it. Wiseman argued that rather, our behavior dictates the way we
feel.
1. How you choose to consciously or unconsciously Act directly influences how you
Feel. With authenticity, if you Act like you are grateful for all the
opportunities life gives you, then you will start to feel grateful for life.
This cycle goes on and it beautifully feeds on itself.
2. The Act As If Principal can be the easiest yet the most difficult of the
three goal-setting strategies. After creating a vision board and writing
down our goals, most of us might not believe we can achieve those goals.
Then comes all the chatter in the mind telling us we cannot do it, we are
not worthy or how do we expect to achieve such big goals.
C. The beauty is, the more we practice visualizing and writing down our goals
the more we begin to believe in ourselves. The more we believe in ourselves,
the more we change the self-talk in our minds. This is what Dr. Joe Dispenza
a. Neuroscientist calls The Science of Changing Your Mind. In his books
Evolve Your Brain and Placebo, Dr. Joe explains how “nerve cells that no
longer fire together, no longer wire together”. You can wire your brain to
lose the negative self-talk and adopt a much more positive and productive
mindset to start seeing things differently.
You probably know by now how much I love quotes. Therefore, to wrap up, I will leave
you with my all-time favorite quote from Dr. Wayne Dyer, a former Educational
Counselor and Clinical Psychologist. He said, “If you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change”. Goal setting strategies aids in organizing life in a way that
one can see the now and the endless possibilities to come.
CONCLUSION
In closing, I hope I have given you an understanding of or the curiosity to research how
to visualize with a vision board, writing your goals down and believing in yourself
enough to act as if you have already achieved all your goals. If you noticed, all through
my talk, I did not say achieve your goals for the future or what the future can bring.
Because there is no future, all we have is now, this moment. I hope you use your
moments wisely.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Hill, Napoleon. Think and Grow Rich. United States: Fawcett Books 1960. Print.
- Hicks, Esther, and Jerry. Ask and it is Given. California: Hay House Inc. 2004. Print
- Dyer, W. Wayne. Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life; Living the Wisdom of the
- Tao. California: Hay House Inc. 2007. Print.
- Wiseman, Richard. “The As If Principle: The Radically New Approach to Changing Your
- Life”. Simon & Schuster. 2014
- Leighton, Nick “Five Reasons Why You Need a Personal Vision Statement”. Forbes Oct.
- 2019.
- Marter, Joyce. “How to Make a Vision Board”. Huffington Post. Dec. 2017.
- Canfield, Jack. “How to create an empowering Vision Book”.
- https://www.jackcanfield.com/blog/how-to-create-an-empowering-vision-book/
- Frances Marie Rey, Teacher at Miriam College, Quezon City https://image.slidesharecdn.com/introductiontospeech-140209015013-phpapp02/95/introduction-to-speech-1-638.jpg?cb=1391910642