Be wary of making otherwise perfectly reasonable goals unattainable because of stringent time frames.  When you set a goal, you will most likely set times for achieving certain steps along your way to achieving your final goal.  Even if you don’t set the time frames formally, you will probably have a pretty good idea of how long you are giving  yourself.  It’s wise to sit down and formally set these goals.  Think about it and  give yourself reasonable time to achieve them.  Make a deal with yourself to view these time limits as flexible.

Don’t get discouraged if things don’t work out as planned.  Sometimes finding our place takes both time and error.  All of us experience failures of one magnitude or another.  The key is to view the failures as a learning experience – if nothing else, failures teach us what not to do.  Remain flexible.  As long as you keep focusing on your strengths and potential, the right thing will come along – and probably sooner rather than later. But don’t quit at the first sign of boredom.  Even if you have truly found your niche, you will not feel enthusiastic 100 percent of the time.

Don’t worry about others – don’t compare your progress with that of others. No matter how successful you are, there will be someone else who, to you, looks like she’s got it made – who looks like she’s getting where you want to go faster and easier than you are.  Maybe she is.  Maybe she isn’t.  Who cares?   Focus on your own achievements.  Work to develop your skills and talents to their full potential.  Compete with yourself – your short term goals should be based on today’s accomplishments.  If you have reached Point A today, make Point B your next objective – improve yourself and don’t worry about the other guy.

OK.  You have decided what your ultimate goal is.  Make sure it is a definitely defined goal.  “Someday I want to be famous” just won’t cut it. Define exactly what you want to do.  Define a reasonable time frame.  Know what you have to do to get there.  You don’t need to know every little detail, but you do have to have the big picture and many of the details. If you have a goal in mind but don’t know what it takes to reach it, then you need to find out.  Do some reading, talk to people who know, ask questions and LISTEN to the answers.  Think that sounds like a lot of work? Well, remember what you are preparing for – your success and happiness. Surely you want to put a little effort into that!   Anyway, a little reseach into what it will take for you to reach your goals isn’t too difficult.

Train yourself into making this “research” the next focus of your life. You will be focusing on your strengths, on your purpose, and on learning and doing.  If you have chosen a goal that is right for you, focusing on these things and devoting the necessary time should not be too difficult. It may take a bit of self-discipline at first, but your determination and interest will carry you through until the focusing process becomes a habit. When you have a real desire to accomplish something, initiatative should only require an occasional shove – but you may need to give it a nudge now and again.

Get into the habit of visualizing your success.  Now sitting around and daydreaming in generalizations about it is not what we mean.  You need to visualize specifics.  To return to the basketball example, daydreaming about being carried off the court on your teammates’ shoulders is just daydreaming.  Picturing in your mind how you will work a play if your opponent makes a particular move, picturing your exact response to it, is visualizing specifics.  If you run through specific moves in your mind, you will be prepared when the need for those moves arises.

Don’t be afraid to use your imagination to visualize new and better ways to accomplish things, as well.  Here in your mind, you can try doing things in ways that are different from the usual.  This is a creative process – you may have heard of creative thinking.  Training yourself to think creatively is largely learning to let your imagination work on methods that are different from the “way things have always been done.”  It’s breaking away from the idea that a thing can be done effectively in only one way.  It’s looking at a problem from all angles.  Just play a game of “what if.”  Ask yourself, “What if I did this thing this way?”  It’s OK to get a little crazy sometimes.  But, you must also spend some of your thinking time at specific visualizations of the moves you need to make to accomplish your goals.

Visualizations are important but actual physical practice of your skills is important, too.  Practice the boring little skills that are necessary as well as the skills that you enjoy.  Don’t let yourself rely on just the things that come naturally and easy to you.  Develop your limited potentials as well as those that you feel are your assets. Work on developing the more general attributes that are important to almost any goal:

Success comes more easily to those who have a pleasing personality.  This is not to say that you should bend to eveyone’s wishes or scrape and bow. Rather, develop an attitude that is respectful of other’s opinions but true to your own beliefs.  Be flexible – don’t be so rigid that you can’t accept another’s opinion when it is superior to your own.  Be willing, even eager, to learn from others.  Changing your opinion in light of more facts is a sign of strength of character, not weakness.  Be willing to extend a helpful hand, be a team player.  Develop a sense of humor.  Be polite and caring – but be your own person.

Learn to guard against emotional responses.  You are susceptible to errors of judgement when you let your emotions get in the way.   Of course, everything we do is done based somewhat on our emotions, but strong emotions have little place in decision making.  Hold your emotions in check.  Try to delay decisions if you are in an emotional state.  Learn to ignore your emotions and use reasoning to arrive at your decisions.

Develop the habit of enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm works like a magnet – it draws people and success.  It’s a pleasing personality trait that people like to be a part of.  It seems to be contagious – the people around you become enthusiastic, too, and become more cooperative.  Enthusiasm sparks initiative and singleness of purpose.

We’ve talked of working to develop habits – the habit of focusing on your goals, the habit of focusing on your strengths, the habit of learning and “researching,” the habit of visualizing, the habit of enthusiasm.  Now we will talk of habits in a little different light – breaking them.  First, assess your habits looking for the ones that may be displeasing to others. Offensive habits can hold you back from success – they are often a part of an unpleasing personality.  Look for things like grumbling or grunting at people instead of answering, gazing at anything but the speaker when conversing, smirking or sneering when you don’t agree – anything that is an automatic, displeasing mannerism.  It will be very difficult to assess your habits accurately.  After all, a habit is something that we do without thinking much about it.  You will have to spend some time at this and be very conscious of yourself.  Ask someone you trust to help you with this assessment.  It may take a lot of work to break yourself of displeasing habits.  Try substituting a different, more pleasing behavior for the habit you wish to break.

OK.  You have set definite goals, you have a definiteness of purpose, you have researched and know the specific steps to take to achieve the goals, you have resolved to be flexible and to develop a more pleasing  personality.  Now what ??? continued

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