The Power of Goal Setting

THE POWER OF GOAL SETTING
By Paul J. Meyer

Goal setting is the most important aspect of all improvement or personal development plans. It is the key to all fulfillment and achievement. Confidence is important. Determination is vital. Many different personality traits contribute to success. But they all come into focus in goal setting.
If you asked me to list everything that has gone into the achievement of my own personal success, probably 75 percent of what I would have to say would involve goal setting.
Let's begin by making this statement: If you are not making the progress you would like to make and are capable of making, it is simply because your goals are not clearly defined.
If you are not making the progress you want--if your life doesn't seem to be fitting together, it is simply because your goals are not clearly defined.
A goal is a target toward which you move, but it is something more than that. There is something almost mystical about a crystallized goal when you have developed a plan and set a deadline for its attainment.
Such a goal produces in you a burning desire, intense self-confidence, and a firm determination to follow through.
In some miraculous way, a crystallized goal brings everything into the shape, form, and focus necessary for its achievement. Whether it be people you need, or money, or ideas -- all the ingredients of success seem to fall into line right on the exact timetable to hit your target date.It has happened to me a thousand times. It has happened to other people who have mastered the art of goal setting. Let me just share with you some of the stories that I have collected over the years about people who set goals.
One day many summers ago John Goddard sat down in his bedroom and thought about all the things he would like to do when he grew up. It wasn't a particularly extraordinary flight of fancy for a boy of 15, but Goddard carried it a bit further than most. First he wrote down everything that occurred to him -- every adventure, every journey, every challenge, every pleasure. Then one by one, year by year, he set about accomplishing them.
Some of the 127 goals that he wrote down seemed easily attainable even then.
Becoming an Eagle Scout -- that was number 5 on the list.
Type 50 words a minute -- that was number 21.
Visit a movie studio was number 10.
Hold my breath under water for 2 1/2 minutes -- number 23.
Others seemed considerably more difficult.
Milk a rattlesnake -- Number 9.
Read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica -- number 50.
Sail the South Seas in a schooner -- number 117.
Learn to speak French and Spanish -- number 78 and 79.
Many seem downright impossible.
Climb Mt Everest -- number 8.
Visit every country in the world -- number 89.
Find Noah's Ark -- number 57.
Go to the moon -- number 127.
John Goddard has real perseverance. He has now reached 107 of his goals, only 20 more to go. It is not really all that crazy as it sounds, as he sits in the den of his home surrounded by hundreds of souvenirs he has brought back.
Here is the key: "I had a wild imagination," Goddard says, "but it was also very disciplined and organized." So you can see he added some "do it now" and he added "action". Procrastination obviously is not a part of his mental makeup.
I believe that we can see from this illustration that it is important not only to fantisize and dream and visualize and make that a part of what we do for goal setting, but to put it down, organize it, and then get into action.
Goddard goes on to say, "Even today I make lists of all the things I am going to do every month. It is only natural that I would make a list of what I was going to do in my whole life."
Goddard is quite unusual, isn't he? Few of us have formulated such a comprehensive list of dreams and then developed a plan to achieve each one of them.
But actually, that's all there is to goal setting. It is simply writing down your dreams, crystallizing your thinking, and then developing a plan with a deadline for its attainment. Goddard decided what he was going to do in his lifetime; he set it out day by day, week by week, and month by month, and then crossed the items off of his list as he achieved them.
Anytime in my life that I have ever made a list of what I wanted to do or wanted to achieve, I have always accomplished it. I have never written down anything that I wanted to do that I haven't been able to do. You may say, "Well, maybe you have some extra talent." But that's not really true.
I have seen it happen time and time again; it's simply a matter of putting it down and then just developing a plan of action for its attainment, looking at the obstacles that are in the way, and developing ways around the obstacles.
Several years ago, Nelson Burton, a leading moneymaker on the on the bowling circuit, was interviewed about his phenomenal success. He said, "Well, I don't remember ever missing them," he was talking about the pins. They asked, "How about when you started?" Burton said, "Well, I had an exceptional father who knew a lot about goal setting and about building an environment of success."
They asked how that related to bowling, and he told how his father made some small sized pins for him when he was little and a smaller ball.
Second, Burton said, "He knew that the ball would probably go in the gutter, so he had the pin boy set the pins up in the gutter. When I stopped rolling the ball down the gutter and rolled it in the alley, then they moved the pins back in the alley. I don't ever remember missing them."
I tell you what, that's a key. Let me tell you what you want to do for your children. Let them succeed, no matter what they are doing. Move the basketball hoop down where they can hit it. Move anything around where they can hit it. Put the bar low enough so they can jump over it.
Help them achieve little victories -- small successes -- then slowly, but surely, build self-esteem and self-confidence.
People who grow up in this kind of environment have an unbelievable advantage -- a real head start for a successful life.
Johnny Bench, at age 23, was declared baseball's most valuable player. His dad gave him a catcher's glove when he was three years old, and started playing with him every day.
A.J. Foyt, one of auto racing's all-time greats said, "There is really nothing else I wanted to do but race." He had a single-minded purpose and dream.
An Oklahoma newspaper told about a young millionaire who has it all figured out.
"After graduation from Wheaton, Illinois, College with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics and Chemistry, Maxfield mapped out a 44-year program for himself with an immediate objective of earning more money in 10 years than most men do in 44. He was a millionaire in ten years.
He not only fantasized, he not only daydreamed, he not only imagined, he not only visualized his dreams, but he put them down in black and white; then, he took every one specifically and developed a plan of action with a deadline for its attainment. He listed obstacles -- the roadblocks -- and the way around them. Then he got to work.
One of the top professional basketball players told me that he had learned from his father to throw a tennis ball into a tin can at the age of two. When he looks at a basket he doesn't visualize missing it; he can't remember ever missing it.
I have in my collection a clipping about a man regaining his pilot's license which he had lost. The headline says, "Double amputee flies plane again." This pilot lost both of his legs above the knees, but in just a few months he was back in an airplane with a flying license. he rigged the equipment he needed to do the job he loved.
Jean-Claude Keillly's name is almost synonymous with skiing. When he was 14 years old, he set a goal to win three gold medals in the Olympics in the next 10 years, then he did it.
My friend P.M. Johnson, who was mayor of Waco, Texas, a few years ago, told me about an old school friend of his who went into the service during World War II. This young fellow worte P.M. that he intended to win every medal offered.
He is the only winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor who planned in advance to win it. This young man was Audie Murphy, the most decorated serviceman in World War II.
You can't stop a person who wants to go some place. You can't beat somebody who won't be beaten.
Pilot James Benson Irwin is a good example. He suffered two broken legs, a broken jaw, and a brain concussion that wiped out his memory. He spent two years with psychiatrists who used truth serum and hypnosis to help him bring back his memory, and then he went back in the cockpit.
He applied to the Corps of Astronauts, was rejected, tried again, rejected, tried again, rejected, tried again, rejected. But he wouldn't give up. He was the eighth man to walk on the moon.
That doesn't seem extraordinary to me. Does it to you? It doesn't seem extraordinary to me because I know what goal setting does to a person. The attitudes, the success conditioning, and the confidence that come from goal setting make anything possible.
Let's apply this principle to the operation of a business during an economic downturn. If you are goal directed and you know what you're going to achieve, then any temporary adversity or any difficult obstacle doesn't dim or dampen your enthusiasm, nor does it subject you to fear, worry, and indecision or negative thinking. All it does is intensify your desire, increase your confidence, and multiply your determination.
Then when the obstacles are overcome, you are stronger because you learned from that temporary setback. When you reach the success you planned for and determined to achieve, it will be 10 times bigger than you thought it would.
Without adversity, you can achieve your goal almost exactly as you describe it. But fortunately, even when you encounter adversity on the way to your goal, it doesn't defeat you; it merely strengthens you. When you finally reach your goal, your achievement is multiplied over and above your expectations.
I want to sell you on the benefits of adversity and temporary defeat. If you refuse to be discouraged by adversity, success comes in unpredictable multiples. It has happened to me many times.
When I first started in the insurance business, I had a goal to write a million dollars worth of business. But I could get only one sale from 14 presentations. As a result, my highest monthly income during the first eight months was $87. But I believed in my goal. When I finally began to acquire the selling skills I needed, I expected to make $150. I didn't. The ninth month I made $3000.
If you believe in your goal enough to stick with it, when you finally do put it all together, success will come in bunches. It will be much bigger than you expected. Of course, I sold the million; and the second year I sold almost four million.
It's true for personal goals as well as business goals. Several years ago I started playing tennis. After a few months, I began to wish for a tennis court in my backyard. I set a goal to build a tennis court in my backyard, and began to make the necessary plans. My only problem was, my backyard was sloped down to a lake. There wasn't a level spot big enough for a checker board much less a tennis court.
I wanted the tennis court so much that I even hired an architect and an engineer to give me an estimate on what it would cost to put some concrete piers in the backyard and build the tennis court on the piers like you would build a bridge across the river. They told me it was possible, but the price estimate was so high that even as bad as I wanted a tennis court, I couldn't justify spending that much money for it. But I didn't abandon my goal. I just decided to wait until some opportunity to make it come true.
A few months after that, a woman rang my doorbell and said she wanted to buy my house. I laughed and told her that it wasn't for sale, and she asked me if she could just look at it. I didn't see any harm in that, so I invited her in to look at the house. She said, ""This is exactly where I want to spend the rest of my life -- and I know exactly the house you need to move to. It has just come on the market. It has four acres of land around it, with plenty of room for a tennis court."
I don't know who she had been talking to about my goals, but she certainly got my attention. We got into my car, and drove about a mile around the shore of the lake to look at a house she had told me about. In a month we were moved into the new house and a brand new tennis court was fast taking shape in my yard.
But wait! That's not all. a few months later, I heard of a small private tennis club in our city that was going to be sold and turned into another type of business. I had belonged to the club since it was established, and thought it was a wonderful place for family recreation. So I bought the tennis club, and now have 11 additional tennis courts, When goals are achieved, success is much bigger than you have ever expected.
Never take your eye off your goal. Do not be diverted. Do not be discouraged.
There is the story of a Persian prince who was born a hunchback. On his twelth birthday his father asked him what gift he would like to receive for his birthday. The crippled boy looked at his father and said, "I would like a statue of myself."
At that point I would imagine the father was sorry he had suggested a gift, sorry that he had thought of it, and wished he hadn't even remembered the boy's birthday. "Surely," the father said, "there must be something else you want."
But the boy said, "No, I want a statu;e of myself. But wait, I do not want it to show me as I look now. I want a statue of myself standing straight."
Well, his father thought that was even worse. The son went on to say, "I would like it placed outside the window in the garden where I can look at it every day."
Finally the father gave in and had the statue made. Every day the boy went to the garden. He stretched and he pushed.He pushed and he stretched. He did this every single day for nine years. On his twenty-first birthday he stood with his shoulders erect and his head straight and he looked the statue in the eye.
I'm telling you that's not mere fantasy; that's not just a story; that's an illustration of reality. Such belief in a goal is concrete, meaningful, and workable,
I am thankful for every single roadblock I have encountered, every single obstacle or adversity.
If you are self-motivated and goal directed, obstacles merely intensify your desire, multiply your energy, and make you 10 times the person you would be without them.
When you face obstacles or adversity, it's a blessing in disguise. See obstacles and adversity as steps toward your goal. Learn to say, " I have a problem. what's good about it? How can I use it to move me toward my goal?"
Get in the habit of being thankful for any adversity. All you have to do to succeed anywhere is to overfill your plate, and then you can keep on going and keep on going. Make one less mistake every day. It's that simple.
Boss Kettering, the inventive genius, wanted to prove conclusively the power of visualization and the power of goal setting. He bet a friend $5000 that if the friend put a beautiful ornate birdcage in the foyer of his home that he would soon have a bird in it. The friend took the $5000 bet even though Kettering told him in advance what the obstacles would be. He hung the birdcage in his foyer.
Soon his friends began to notice the ornate birdcage in the foyer. They would say, "That is a magnificent birdcage. Where did you get it? He would say, "Well, I went to a furniture mart with a decorator and we looked at all of them and picked this one out because it ties in with the decor of the rest of the home."
Then his friends would say, "Where is your bird?" The man would say, "I don't have a bird. No, he didn't die; no, I didn't intend to get a bird. I don't know; I guess everybody is hung up on something. With me it's birdcages."
He kept seeing the birdcage, until finally he couldn't stand it any longer. He put a bird in the birdcage.
I'm just saying, be careful about the kind of birdcage you look at. Be careful what you think about because you will surely achieve it. You will surely possess it.
A survey taken a few years ago revealed that three percent of people have specific written goals, and are heading directly toward them. Another 10 percent, equally as well educated, just as determined, do just as much thinking about their goals; the only difference between group one and group two is that those in group one have written specific goals while those in group two merely think about theirs. Those in group two achieve only a fraction of the success enjoyed by the top three percent.
That is the power of a written goal. A written goal keeps you on track. It serves as a checkpoint. It keeps you from being overwhelmed by outside distractions.
The next group in the survey was composed of more than 60 percent of the people in the country; they are what I call the people next door. They limit their goals, for the most part, to extremely short-range objectives: the next raise, the next promotion. They spend more time planning their summer vacation than they do planning what they are going to do with their lives. They are barely getting by.
The balance of those surveyed -- nearly 30 percent -- have never considered what they want out of life and seldom thinbk about it. They are dependent, or at least partially dependent, on others for subsistence.
A hazy goal wil produce, at best, a hazy result. An indefinite goal will produce, at best, an indefinite result.
Several different types of goals are necessary.
1. There are short-range goals or immediate goals. For those inexperienced in goal setting, a short-range goal would be one that can be achieved in a week or perhaps even a day. For one who is experienced in goal setting, short range might be a maximum of six months.
Do not make the mistake of dwelling on the distant future only. Focus on an action you can take today if it is no more that listing on a card the jobs you are going to do today.
The habit of setting goals is developed just as any other habit is acquired. You must consciously choose to set goals and practice doing it until you have internalized the process and it is automatic.
2. The second type of goal is a long-range goal or ultimate goal. Long range goals can be a year or five years, or ten years or even a lifetime for some parts of your goals program.
3. Third, there are tangible goals. Tangible goals deal with both tangible needs and tangible wants.
A tangible need is just a necessity like income or getting your hair cut or just simply a "do list " of things that need to be done this week. Tangible wants are anything you have ever wanted in your lifetime. Goddard put down his tangible goals when he was 15.
4. Finally there are intangible goals. An intangible goal is simply a personality characteristic that needs to be changed to help you achieve tangible goals.
We always want to have something materially, but we often fail to realize that we need a goal "to become" something internally. It is obviously important to set tangible goals, but it's equally important to set goals for the personality characteristics that are needed to achieve tangible goals. Your goal must be something that you want personally if you ever expect to achieve it.
If you have a fantasy today or tonight to go climb Mt. Everest, then write it down. If you have a desire to visit 100 countries, write it down. It doesn't make any difference what it is you want to do or how riduculous it sounds to somebody else, put it down.
It is at this point we often fail in goal setting. We use our intellect and our education and our logic and our reasoning to judge whether we have the capacity or capabability to achieve this goal. We put on a judge's robe and we think, " I can't do that."
Think about it a minute. My mother and father have never done it. Nobody in my block has done it. I don't have the money to do it. I don't have the education to do it, and I don't have the experience to do it.
So we decide not to try and justify that decision by saying, " I am an intelligent person; I'm using logic and reasoning. I'm not being foolhardy about this thing."
And that's not the way it works at all. Write down anything that comes into your mind. I don't care what it is, or anything that you want to be. You cannot judge it in any way, shape, form, or manner, whether you have the capacity or the capability to achieve it.
Another factor that inhibits dreams at the beginning is the feeling we are not worthy. Some people turn down promotions in a company even when the management can see that they are right for the job. When opportunity knocks, they say, "No, I had rather stay where I am." If they are pressed to try, they resign.
I met one individual with excellent qualifications who had hopped from one company to another until finally the industrial psychologist in one company where he worked did an intensive psychological survey.
The psychologist discovered that a long time ago somebody had pushed him into the water and he had almost drowned. Ever since that time, he was afraid to "get in over his head." He took swimming lessons, at the suggestion of the psychiatrist, and learned to swim. The new confidence in himself that resulted let him take the job, and he became an outstanding success.
The motivational blocks in your past must not be allowed to limit your dreams. That's the key. You must write down everything that you have ever wanted.
Suppose you are 42 years old and you have never made more than $25,000 in a year, and you say I would like to make $100,000. Put it down. Many people will tell you, "That is not realistic." But I tell you, at this point, reality is unimportant.
Initially, just get out a pad of paper and write down everything you've ever thought about, everything you've ever wanted. Use the whole pad, and if it is used up, get another one. And if that's used up, get another one. Your personal brainstorming session can go on for a lifetime.
Once your first dreams are recorded, you are ready to develop a plan for achieving them. Some of your dreams may be achieved quickly, others may be postponed until a more convenient time, and still others dropped from your list for various reasons.
As you move toward your goals, you may want to use the five points that I call my "Million Dollar Personal Success Plan." They are criteria that I use to measure my goals for every goal I undertake. I do not go after anything until I ask these questions:
1. Have I crystallized my thinking about it?
2. Do I have a plan and a deadline for its attainment?
3. Do I have a burning desire -- that white heat of passion down inside myself that says I must move forward.
4. Do I have confidence in myself and my ability to succeed?
5. Then, do I have an iron-willed determination that says I'm going to pay whatever price I have to pay to get thie job done, regardless of circumstances, situations, criticism, or what other people say, think, or do?
When you can answer "yes" to those five questions, then ask one more. Is it worth it to me? If it is, then go after it. You know that you have what it takes to accomplish your goal, no matter what happens, no matter who criticizes, no matter whether you have the money, no matter what you now lack in experience. You have what it takes to get there.
When you set goals without setting arbitrary limits, you are free to move as far as you want to go.
Look around you at the abundance our Creator placed in the Universe for our use. You can decide for yourself how much you want to take from the storehouse of life.
Some people go to the storehouse with a sieve and they come away with nothing. Some go with a teaspoon and barely taste the sweetness of life.
But if you dream, you can go to the storehouse with a huge steam shovel and load up the riches and abundance of life into a fleet of trucks or a string of railroad cars and carry it with you to enjoy and to share with everyone you meet.
Now when you begin to work toward your goal and you are heading toward a planned destination, and you meet an obstacle or you meet an adversity, what do you do? You do the same thing the pilot does when he is flying an airplane and runs into a thunderhead. He does a 180 turn back to sunshine and good weather.
You do exactly the same thing. You do a mental 180 back to remberances of past successes and past pleasures. You don't turn around and run physically; you don't leave the scene; you do a mental 180 turn back to remembrance of past success.
That's why you write down the goals. That's why you record your progress along the way. You are never promised that the road to success is totally smooth.
But you will discover that it's not what happens in life that is important. It is your attitude toward what happens to you. The space you occupy in life is determined by your mental attitude -- no more, no less. You are where you are and what you are because of the dominating thoughts that occupy your mind. That's what controls your destiny.
When you set a goal, you begin where you are now. You look at your strengths and your weaknesses as assets and liabilities. Assess your persent position, and then pick a target date, a destination. Aim toward it and start to move.
People then ask, "Where does motivation come from?" or, "What motivates you?" The thing that motivates you is the end result, the benefits, the end result benefits. You are motivated by that.
People without goals are motivated by not changing, by doing what is comfortable for them. They want to play tennis only when that is the only game they have ever played. They are stuck in a rut. They settle for mediocrity because they refuse to try anything new.
They put a governor on their minds when the Creator said to have a supercharger. They'll never walk in the high country. They'll never travel the Milky Way and walk among the stars.
To succeed in reaching your goals, there are five factors to consider:
1.They must be your own personal goals; that's an absolute must.
2.They must be stated positively instead of negatively. You can say anything in a dozen different ways. So it is a simple matter to state your goal positively instead of negatively.
3. Your goals must be written and specific. As you write down your dreams, they must be general in nature. But as you develop a plan to reach them, goals become more and more specific.
It's like taking a picture: first you have an idea about what you want, and then you begin to focus the lens and make it sharper, and sharper.
That's all there is to it. As you keep moving closer and closer to your goals, they become more and more specific. By the time you get down to deciding what you will do this month and this week to move toward your goals, you're down to meticulous detail.
4. Your goals must be realistic, compatible, and attainable. There is no conflict here with what I said earlier about not judging your dreams. In the brainstorming or dreaming session, in the fantasizing and writing session, you will put down everything. But when you come down to what you are going to do this week, this month, and this year, then you must be realistic.
Don't be confused. There's nothing wrong with saying you want to make $100,000 a year. The only time it is wrong to say, "I want to make $100,000 a year," is is you are 25 years old and you made $25,000 last year and you want to make $100,000 this year. I think that's foolhardy because you don't have any pegs to hang it on. That's looking for a get-rich-quick scheme, or looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.
Now a realistic goal for someone who is 25 and now making $25,000 would be $30,000. That is a 20 percent increase. You could believe that. Of course, it's only paper and ink. It isn't going to be etched in steel; it's going to be paper. Paper is cheap, and you can tear it up if you want to.
A realistic approach would be to set that goal for $30,000. Then if you make $8,000 the first quarter, you can raise the goal to $36,000 for the year. As you grow, you increase the goal.
How do you think the champion who jumped 7 feet 7 3/4 inches got started? He started at about a foot, and then he kept raising it. But he raised it by only an inch or half inch at a time. I think that's realistic; it is based on present visible limits.
In addition to being realistic, goals must be compatible. Compatible means that each goal has to fit into your personal value system and fit together with other goals that you want to reach.
5. Your goals must include certain basic personality changes. If you want to have, and to do, you must also learn to be. You must develop attitudes and habits that are consistent with the goals you wish to achieve.
An attitude is a habit of thought. All you have to do to change your attitude is change the way you think. All you have to do change the way you think is learn how you came to think that way in the first place --by affirmation -- by the things you tell yourself.
A creed is an affirmation; the Boy Scout oath is an affirmation; a Proverb is an affirmation; a Bible verse is an affirmation.
If you are being hampered by negative attitudes, start a positive program of feeding positive affirmations into your mind by constantly repeating positive affirmations. In shorter time than you would believe possible, those affirmations will replace your old negative attitudes with new postive ones.
But 99 percent of the people believe down in their gut, their heart, their soul, that they can never come out from underneath the hindering circumstances that have stopped them. They don't believe that they can possess abundance of life. So they never take any action to make their dreams come true.
They may think about their dream occasionally. They dream about it in the shower, or riding in the car, or maybe in a social group sometimes. But when it is time to take action, they devide to get a good night's sleep and forget about it.
For the most part, they remain in a smog-like haze. They crawl into the tomb of security where they can be comfortable because nothing ever happens. Then that grave becomes the place where they live out their lives. Their tombstone could say: Died at age 20 --buried at age 60 -- lived a lifetime in a mummified condition.
Is it just a matter of bad luck that so many people go through school, receive a diploma, get selected by some company or the federal government, and are then filed away in an envelope some place in a personnel office?
Don't feel ashamed if that has happened to you. That has described a lot of us at one time or another.
It happens because we have been conditioned. We are conditioned by our parents. We are conditioned by whether our skin is black or white. We are conditioned by whether we are from the North or the South. We are conditioned by the country we come from. We are conditioned by our education, by our religious faith, by anything and everything that we have met in our entire lifetime. It's conditioning, conditioning, and conditioning.
I grew up in San Jose, California and went to school with some Japanese boys whose family raised Bonsai trees, little trees about two feet tall. Once a year they would dig up the trees, cut back the roots, an then clip off the top. Well, I ask you, if someone regularly chopped on you on both ends, wouldn't you be a mental and emotional midget?
Have you heard about the experiment at the Aqua Marina in Florida? Two scientists at the University of Miami took a container, filled it with water, put a glass partition down the middle, and placed a Spanish Mackerel on one side and a Barracuda on the other side. The Barracuda kept trying to get through the glass. He bumped it, and bumped it -- over and over. Finally one day he gave up and did not try anymore. They took out the glass partition, and he still didn't try.
In Imperial China they used to bind the feet of little girls because they believed that a woman's feet to be beautiful must be tiny, even if that meant being crippled.
Today, we bind the brains of young people by teaching them to fit into a single mold, to follow a single path, and to think in a single pattern. As a result, they come out of school ready to step into a career, and they are already condidioned to fly with the rest of the flock. They are just like the swallows that return every year on March 19th to San Juan Capistrano and leave on October 23rd.
Or maybe they are like the buzzards that arrive every March 15th in Hinkley, Ohio. Their arrival is so predictible that the people in Hinkley have Buzzard Day every year on that date.
What I'm trying to say is that any wall or ceiling, any calendar or schedule that we regard as a limit to our success is a figment of our imagination and our low self-concept. It does not exist. You can't reach up and touch it; it isn't there.
I used to go over to Sarasota, Florida with my children and watch them train the circus elephants at Ringling Brothers. They tie a big elephant with a light rope to a small peg, but on the baby elephant they put a steel chain fastened to a metal stake six feet in the ground. You would think they had it backwards. But the big one isn't going anywhere; it has already been condidioned not to move by years of being chained. Now when it feels anything around its foot, it automatically believes it can't move.
That is exactly what happens to us through the conditioning process. We become shriveled up, or petrified. We are crowded into a shape that we are not intended to be.
I read a story one time in a Chicago newspaper. A suburb town was suffering from a water shortage only seven years after they had built a big new reservoir to alleviate the water shortage. They began planning a big new project to provide more water when someone discovered that the three main valves governing the water supply had never been fully turned on. That is a true story. Isn't that unbelievable? But more shocking is the truth that the main valves in our lives are only half turned on. All we have to do to enjoy the full benefit of our potential is open the valves.
A friend of mine in California went to work for the gas company when he finished college. He gave his mother a new gas stove. She had never had one before. So he hooked it all up and showed her how to work it, and went away to a new job. She was a little hesitant about the stove, but she tried it one time. It didn't work.
The son did not come back home for three years, and she hade never used the stove. When he came back, he tried the burner, and it didn't work. He lit a match and it didn't work. So, he started to bump the burner a couple of times, then relit it, and it worked perfectly. The pilot had gone out. The capability of the stove was down the whole three years. It was just dormant. It was not used because no one believed it would work.
The next time you look in a mirror, say to yourself, "I am a burner that is capable of burning. I am a person who is capable of being of service. I am capable of producing. All I need to do is light the pilot."
I used to make a talk years ago and end it with an illustration. I'd have a Bunsen Burner under a fishbowl with a one foot opening at the top, an inch of water in the bowl, and a frog in it. The illustration fits people. If you light the burner and turn it wery slowly, the temperature increases slowly. The frog can jump four feet or five feet in one leap, but he will sit there and stew until he is boiled to death. Do you know what it takes to make him jump? All you have to do is thump the side of the bowl and he will jump right out of the bowl.
This is what intensified goal setting does for you. It eliminates procrastination so you won't stew and worry in frustration. It is the "thump on the bowl" that gets you into action.
Listen closely to this story:
"He always wanted to say things but no one understood. He always wanted to explain things, but no one cared; so he drew. Sometimes he would just draw, and it wasn't anything. He wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky. He would lie on the grass and look up at the sky, and it would be only him and the sky and the things inside him that needed saying.
"It was after that that he drew the picture. It was a beautiful picture; he kept it under the pillow an let no one see it. He looked at it every night and thought about it. When it was dark and his eyes were closed he could still see it, and it was all of him and he loved it.
"When he started school, he brought it with him -- not to show anyone but just to have it with him like a friend. It was funny about school; he sat in a square brown desk like the other square brown desks, and he thought it should be red. His room was a square brown room like all the other rooms. It was tight and close and stiff. He hated to hold a pencil and the chalk with his arm stiff and his feet flat on the floor, stiff with the teacher watching -- and watching -- and watching.
"Then he had to write numbers, and they weren't anything. They were worse that the letters that could be something if you would put them together. The numbers were tight and square and he hated the whole .
"The teacher came and spoke to him. She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys. He said he didn't like them, and she said it didn't matter.
"After that he drew. He drew all yellow and it was the way he felt about the morning and it was beautiful. The teacher came and smiled at him. "What's this? she said, "Why don't you draw something like Ken is drawing? Isn't that beautiful? It was all questions.
"After that his mother bought him a tie, and he always drew airplanes and rocket ships like everyone else. He threw the old picture away and when he would lie alone looking at the sky, it was big and blue and all of everything he wasn't anymore. He was square inside and brown, and his hands were stiff and he was like everyone else. The thing inside him that needed saying didn't need saying anymore."
This describes you and me so closely it is frightening.
Here is a beautiful illustration from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self Reliance:
"A popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the Duke's house, washed and dressed, laid in the Duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with great ceremony like the Duke and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes well the state of man who is, in the world, a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince."
What keeps us from habitually acting out our true nature? It is self-imposed bondage?
We must think on high things. We must think of the future. We must forget the past and press forward toward our goals. That's what the Apostle Paul said. Don't look back unless you want to go that way. Press forward. That's goal setting.
What happens inside your mind? You take in information and impressions in the light of your own present mental attitude. If you are full of fear, indecision, and negative thinking, you tend to reject any new ideas you hear. The first time you hear something new, a big "NO" comes screaming up out of your subconscious. The second time, the "NO" is a little smaller, the next time the "No" is a little smaller, the next time the "No" is a little smaller, a little smaller, a little smaller, and then one day there is a tiny "Yes" that begins to grow until it crowds out the "NO".
Call it brainwashing; call it anything you want to call it; conditioning is what has made you and me. But this same process can be used to overcome the old negative attitudes that bind us by feeding in new positive ideas. It is this process that allows us to break the success barrier and have what we want. We can come out from underneath the hindering circumstances that have previously stopped us. Then we begin go look to our strength instead of our weakness.
We can choose. We can see the sunshine or the rain.
We can smile or cry.
We can look to our power of dwell on our problems.
If we choose the positives over the negatives, we find courage to venture out a little bit more. We dare to attempt something new. We choose to do it without giving any kind of mental recognition to the possibility of defeat.
This is where like starts calling to like. This is where something almost mystical seems to happen. Now you begin drawing to yourself the money if you need money, or the people if you need people, or the ideas if you need ideas.
What happens then at this point? You may perceive a conflict between your ability and your tendency to "pass judgement" on your ability. But as you dare to use your abilities, they become more familiar -- more believable.
Your pre-judgements and your actions stop contradicting eaach other. You start believing in yourself and stop doubting yourself. You learn to withhold judgement.
People seek you out and ask your advice. Your perception is better, your judgement is better, you insight is better. Your insight, your intuition, your imagination, and your ability to visualize grow, and you become more creative.
Then you can relate the normally unrelated; and that's where you start making sparks, and you start making fire, and you start growing. That's where you really get turned on.
Begin looking for the positive forces in life. Pay attention to the pluses.
The power of goal setting begins just as any other experience begins. When you first consider trying it, your conditioned reflexes respond with:
"DISBELIEF"
DISBELIEF
Disbelief
"disbelief"
disbelief
But if you keep feeding your conscious mind with positives, your unconscious mind will finally begin to accept and then respond with:
belief
"belief"
Belief
BELIEF
"BELIEF"
Then you have internalized the real power of goal setting. It's like setting a thermostat on "automatic". The power is ready and automatically flashes into action at the first signal of need.
I have a premonition that soars on silver wings,
A dream of your accomplishments and other wondrous things.
I do not know beneath what sky
Nor where you will challenge fate.
I only know it will be high.
I only know you will be great.

Editor's note: Paul J. Meyer was the founder of Success Motivation Institute, Inc. and Leadership Management, Inc. He has been the mentor to millions, including myself. His program, "The Dynamics of Personal Leadership" is responsible for my becoming the total person I am today. It virtually saved my life by giving a strategy for overcoming the bad habits that would surely have done me in by now.