PowerGoals / Chapter 3.

Chapter 3: The Power of PowerGoals™

Now that you know why we need goals if we are going to live the life of our dreams, let us delve a bit more into what PowerGoals™ is and why it is so powerful.

But first.

Before I discuss PowerGoals™ in any more detail, there is something you need to do.

By now, I am sure that you have thought quite a bit about your own goals as you read the previous chapters. What things have you been thinking of? What are some of the dreams and goals that you have been reminded of?

If you were an obedient reader, during the first chapter, you started writing down the things that you want. Whether you did it or not, I want you to write down those things now before you read the rest of this chapter.

It is important that you put down a raw, unfiltered list of the things that you want before we go into the details of PowerGoals™. That way, after we have covered the criteria, you can come back to your raw list of wants to craft your PowerGoal™.

If you do not write down your list of wants now, you might start censoring them as we go. We do not want that. We want it raw. I do not want you to get stuck in analysis paralysis.

So, before you read anything else, write down those wants.

Sometimes, we get confused when we hear loaded terms like the word goal. So, to stop you from overanalyzing whether you are writing down.

a dream or a goal or whether it is right or wrong, just ask yourself: what do I want?

What do you want in life?

Do not overthink it. Just write down everything that comes to mind.

Do not censor your thoughts. Do not scratch out or delete anything that you wrote because you think it is not valid or important. Just get it all out. Do what is called a “brain dump”.

If you think but is this even a goal? Or is this the type of dream that Hannes is writing about? 

Write them down anyway.

There is no right or wrong here. Your dreams and your goals are different from other people’s because you are different.

Do not think about me or any other person in your life reading what you wrote. Because, you know what, no one is going to see what you write down. If you ever share any of it, it will only be because you want to. (More about that later.)

This is about you. What do you want – not your mom or your spouse or your children or your cat or your dog or your boss. Not your mentor or your coach or anyone else.

Before you read any further, I want you to put down this book and start writing them down

Workbook Q3.1: Return to question 1.1 in the workbook and do a brain dump of all your wants.

Write it down.

Did you do it? Did you write it out down?

How did it feel? Did it feel good? Did it inspire you? Was it a bit hard? Did it challenge you? Do not feel overwhelmed or discouraged at this stage. We are taking things step-by-step, remember.

I have good news for you: you have just completed one step that takes you closer to turning what you want into a PowerGoal™ – you wrote it down.

Writing down something you want or something you want to achieve does not automatically make it a PowerGoal™. But one of the things that makes a PowerGoal™ so powerful is that it is written down. Studies show that by merely writing down your goals, you are 42% more likely to achieve them than people who don’t. Writing down and reading what you wrote helps to rewire the brain to help you achieve your goals.

It is also important to state it positively. For example, instead of “lose weight”, say “healthy body fat percentage” or, even better, state the specific weight, e.g. 87kg. (I explain why it must be specified later in this chapter.) When you read your goal, you want your brain to focus on where you are going, for example, your goal weight, instead of what you are leaving behind, which is implied in something like “lose weight”.

Desirability.

I asked you to write down what you want and not what other people want or what you think you should want because a PowerGoal™ must be personally significant to you. It must be something that you want. It must be based on your dreams. It must come from that spark of inspiration that I mentioned in the previous chapter, something that is very personal to you.

It must be something that you really, really want.

Desirability is not something that comes from analytical thinking. It is an emotional response. Your PowerGoal™ must have deep and powerful emotions behind it to work.

I always tell my students that your PowerGoal™ must have a desirability level of 10/10. On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is not desirable at all and 10 is extremely desirable, there must be no doubt in your mind that your PowerGoal™ is a 10/10.

That desirability level will be different for different people.

For one person, it might be extremely important to lose weight. It is a 10/10 for that person.

For another person, it might be extremely important to start a cash flow-positive business. For that person, that business is a 10/10.

One of my PowerGoals™ was to fly my own helicopter. Now, for you, flying your own helicopter might not have a desirability level of 10/10. But I really wanted it.

When I was a young man in the police force, I heard a helicopter pilot describe the art of hovering over a helicopter. Among pilots, there is a saying: to fly is heavenly, to hover is divine. When I heard that pilot describe his experience, I thought to myself, I want to do that!

At the time, it was a completely unrealistic dream for me. With my poor academic background, there was no way I could get transferred from the police to the air force.

However, years later, when I was financially free, I found an old journal that reminded me of my dream from many years ago. The idea of it captured me again. It was a new challenge, something which would push me beyond myself. I imagined taking Tanja for flips into the mountains – a romantic picnic for two in some isolated spot.

I got fired up all over again. That spark motivated me to get my helicopter license and to start and build a new business that paid for my helicopter.

For one person, it might be a helicopter or a Ferrari. For someone else, it might be something completely different.

One of my students really wanted to lose weight. It was very important to him. He was not obese, but he was overweight. He only wanted to lose 10kg or 22 pounds, but he battled to do it.

While doing one of my mentoring programs, he went through a process to ask himself why he wanted it. He realized that even though he was not yet 30 years old, he had been diagnosed with high blood pressure. Having a healthy weight is a very important part of having normal blood pressure.

But his blood pressure was not the real reason why he wanted to lose weight. He wanted to lose weight to lower his blood pressure so that he can be healthy and live a long life to see his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow up.

That was his real reason – family. The family was personally significant to him, so when he made the connection between his goal of losing weight and his dream of growing old and seeing his future generations grow up, he was much more motivated to lose the weight.

The person who wanted to start a cash flow-positive business was his wife. Her deepest reason was also family. A cash flow positive business would have enabled her to spend more time with her young children in a very special time in their lives. Because this goal was personally significant to her, it propelled her to action to overcome her limiting beliefs about being a business owner and to start and grow her business.

That is why Chapter 2 calls a PowerGoal™ a worthy goal. It is a worthy goal for you. For someone else, losing weight might be very shallow. Another person might see focusing on your business as focusing on the lesser important things in life. But to those two people, their goals brought them closer to their dream life, and in the process, they became better people.

On the other hand, be careful of goals that you are doing for other people or that you are doing to impress other people. Remember to be, do, have.

Do not fall into the trap of thinking you will be more successful and important if your friends or in-laws or whomever you are trying to impress think more of you because you have that Ferrari, for example. Trying to impress others is not a strong enough motivation. It is not linked to a deeply personal dream irrespective of others.

On the other hand, if having a Ferrari is what motivates you to transform and grow, that is perfect. If flying your own helicopter gets you as excited as it gets me excited and motivated, go for it!

Or maybe you want to give your wife a game farm for her birthday as I did. I really like to make my wife happy by giving her things. Sometimes they are small things, but once I gave her a game farm. It was not about the game farm, really. It was not about trying to win her favor or make her love me more.

Tanja grew up on a farm, and she had many fond memories of her childhood. She always told me many stories about the openness of nature, being present in the moment, and having lots of open space all around.

Being able to make one of her dreams come true was the spark that got me fired up. And it was the inspiration that led me to start my own university, the Wealth Creators University, where we taught classes on that very game farm.

Because of the criteria of desirability, it is important to know yourself, to know what is important to you, and to know why it is important to you.

Workbook Q3.2: How much are you influenced by others?

Do the exercise and read the extra material in the workbook before you continue.

Finding those goals that are truly significant for you is extremely powerful. It is one of the reasons why PowerGoals™ allows you to live a remarkable life of joy, fulfillment, happiness, success, and abundance in all areas of life.

The seven areas of wealth.

I need to interrupt myself here to explain the meaning of the word wealth.

When people hear the word wealth, they usually associate it with financial wealth. But when you look at the root word of wealth, which is the Old English word weal, it means well-being.

And that is what we want. We want to have well-being in all areas of our lives. That is ultimately what we want to achieve, the identity that we want to have. Whom we want to become is someone who has well-being.

So, when I refer to wealth, I refer to a state of well-being. It refers to this joy, fulfillment, happiness, success, and abundance that we are talking about.

That is why I refer to the seven areas of wealth or the seven areas of well-being. They are:

• Spiritual

• Mental

• Physical

• Family & close friends

• Social

• Financial

• Vocational

Vocational covers your profession, your job, or even your business, in other words, what you do to generate income.

You can have different levels of well-being, or wealth, in the different areas of wealth. However, they do influence each other. Take the example I used earlier of my student who wanted to lose weight. His PowerGoal™ was in the area of the physical. However, it had an impact on the area of family.

The seven areas of wealth are important because your PowerGoal™ must increase your wealth, or well-being, in at least one of these areas. Many people focus on financial and physical goals. They want to make more money and be healthier. However, if you only focus on those two areas of life and never on the rest, you won’t have total well-being.

So, yes, make more money. But it is no use you keep on making more money, and you do not have the time freedom to spend it with your loved ones. Or if you focus on your physical health but not on your mental and spiritual well-being, your total well-being will also not be complete.

At a specific time, you might have a reason to focus on one area more than another. But over the course of your life, you want wealth in all seven areas of life.

Difficulty.

A PowerGoal™ is not just any goal. It is not even any personally significant, desirable goal. A PowerGoal™ is a big goal. It is one that will stretch you to your limits and then some. It must scare you. It is what Jim Collins, in another context, calls a BHAG – a big, hairy, audacious goal.

The difficulty level of a PowerGoal™ must be a 10/10. We are again working with a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is not difficult at all with your skills and experience, and 10 is basically impossible. A difficulty level of 10/10 is only possible if you become the person with the necessary skills to do that thing.

The levels of difficulty and desirability go hand in hand. If a goal has a difficulty level of 10/10 but the desirability is anything less than 10/10, you will not be able to achieve it. In other words, you must want this thing so badly that you are willing to become the person who can achieve it to get it.

But why can’t it be an 8/10, Hannes? you might be thinking. Why set yourself up for failure?

Your PowerGoal™ must have a difficulty level of 10/10 for two reasons. The one reason we have discussed already: a PowerGoal™ must lie far enough out of your current abilities that it requires you to transform. If your goal only requires you to do that which you are very comfortable doing, you will not have to transform.

For example, on 15 April 2019, I could have said that I want to make an additional $70,000 or more in a year. But for me, that would not have been a PowerGoal™. I have made that much money in a year before, several times. Even using only $1 or less to make that amount is not a big stretch for me. I know how to make money with nothing. In one of my courses, I teach my students how to start and grow a business with no money at all – which is an infinite investment.

For most people, those two aspects would be entirely outside their ability. Many people do not believe it is possible at all, and of course, for them, it is then impossible. But for me, those things are very possible. Of course, I wanted those things, but to turn it into a PowerGoal™, I had to stretch myself. So, I added components to push me outside of my limits: the portfolio must be in cryptocurrencies, it must support my trip, and it must be worth the same as when I started the trip when we are home again.

Why was it important for me to turn my goal into a PowerGoal™?

Firstly, I want to grow. I want to stretch. I want to transform. It is the most important thing in life to me. I use what I want in life to enable me to do what I believe is most important. Many people think that personal transformation is hard and unpleasant, but let me share a little secret with you: it is the most fulfilling and most fun thing you can ever do. You will never feel as free as when you realize that you can be and do and have anything you want in life. It is amazing. So, I push myself again and again because it is a spiritual practice for me.

But there is another reason. And if you are not yet convinced that you want to transform (even though I believe deep down you want to), this reason will hopefully convince you.

You are much less likely to achieve a goal if you think it is easy than if it is hard.

Of course, it cannot only be a hard goal. If I tell you you must climb Mount Everest, you are probably not going to achieve it because, yes, it is hard, but it is probably not personally significant to you. But if you have a goal that is very significant to you, if it is the most significant or one of the most significant things to you, your best chance to achieve it is not to make it easy for yourself.

You must be captivated by your PowerGoal™. You must obsess about it. You must think about it all day and wake up in the middle of the night because of it.

It must be big. It must be audacious. It must be scary even. But it must inspire you and compel you to action.

Unrealistic.

When I explain a PowerGoal™ to my students, I often call it unrealistic.

I do not mean that it must be completely beyond what you can even imagine. It must be possible for you to imagine you could achieve it.

However, when people say something is unrealistic, they usually mean that it is unrealistic for the general person to achieve. They do not take into consideration how desirable that thing is to the person who must do it. They often also do not consider that person’s skill level.

Many people who hear about the challenges that I set myself, which of course are my PowerGoals™, say that they are impossible and unrealistic. Even if I went to an expert like a fund manager or a financial manager and told them about the PowerGoal™ I set on 15 April 2019, they would tell me I am crazy and that it is impossible. It requires me to have a growth of more than 7,000,000%. A realistic growth in South Africa at that time was around 10%.

But what people mean when they say that my challenges are impossible and unrealistic is that they are impossible and unrealistic for them. Of course, it would be – these are my PowerGoals™, not theirs. Their PowerGoals™ would not be unrealistic for them.

People do not only use the words impossible or unrealistic to describe other people’s goals and dreams. They also use it for their own. When they do use those words about their own goals and dreams, they do so to convince themselves that they should give up on their dreams. But deep down something in you believes it is possible, or you would not have dreamt that dream or have thought of that goal.

People use words like unrealistic when they think and talk about their own goals because they are scared. The thing is, you should be a little bit scared by your PowerGoal™. However, people let themselves get paralyzed by that fear, and then they cover their fear by saying that that goal is impossible and unrealistic.

But you know what? Somewhere someone is probably doing what you think is impossible. To someone else, it is very possible, easy even. And even if no one has ever done something before, it does not mean that it cannot be done. Before Roger Bannister completed the four-minute mile, scientists actually “proved” that it could not be done. But deep down, he knew it could. So he proved it to himself and the world.

And the amazing thing is that in a very short time after he did it, others were doing it too.

So do not let fear hold you back. Do not let others’ opinions and ideas and what the majority of people are doing keep you from living your life the way you were meant to.

You are not the majority of people. No one is. That is why your PowerGoal™ must inspire only you, and it must stretch only you. It may sound unrealistic to everyone that’s listening to you. But for you, it is not unrealistic because it is part of the dream. And that is what is going to motivate you to tackle it. Deep down, you know that you can achieve it.

Therefore, I recommend that you do not share your PowerGoal™ with too many other people, in fact, maybe not with anyone at all. When you tell most people about your PowerGoal™, they will say that it is impossible. Some may even ridicule you and tell you that you should not dream so big. Often, it is the people who love us the most who do it – our family, our spouse, our parents. They do not want to see us get hurt. And remember, for them and from their perspective, this PowerGoal™ of yours is impossible.

Deep down you might know that unless you are going to chase that dream unless you are going to make that dream that is within you a reality by turning it into a PowerGoal™, you are never going to live your purpose and experience a life of abundance.

But the people around you, even the ones who love you dearly, do not feel those things. Simply because they are not you. So be very careful when and with whom you share your PowerGoal™.

But you are sharing your PowerGoals™ with the world, Hannes, you say.

Yes, I do. But I have had years and years of success in achieving such PowerGoals™ to back me up. I have systems in place to protect me from negative feedback at times when I might be vulnerable to it. And I have a few wonderful people close to me who share my dreams and my goals.

Tanja, my wife, was extremely skeptical of some of my PowerGoals™ when we were newly married. But now, after more than 37 years of marriage, her belief system has changed. So even if she does not understand or get my goals from her perspective, she supports me in them.

She has come to realize that what is unrealistic for her is not necessarily unrealistic for me. And she loves me enough to see me grow and stretch and transform and even sometimes to fail. Because she knows that that is actually what life is about.

Workbook Q3.3: Have you allowed fear to rob you of the life of your dreams?

Do the exercise and read the extra material in the workbook before you continue.

The greater good.

A PowerGoal™ must always be good for you, good for everyone involved, and good for the greater good. Contrary to what many people think, true wealth creation is always for the good of all and not at the expense of anyone, whether it relates to money or any other area of life.

It is very difficult and impossible even to make money, love, respect, or good health from another person. Stealing is hard work if you want to do it successfully. It is much better and easier to receive something willingly.

I must clarify that what is good and what feels good are not the same thing. There are four classes of experience:

 A PowerGoal™ should not be a class 3 or class 4 experience. Stealing money, for example, might be a class 3 or a class 4 experience for you, depending on who you are. Starting a business that adds value to its customers, on the other hand, is a class 1 or class 2 experience, depending on your perspective of whether it is fun to start a business or not.

Most PowerGoals™ start as a class 2 experience. If it was fun to do and you truly wanted it, you would have probably achieved it already. Most people do not like to do things with a high difficulty rating because it stretches them outside of their comfort zone. Part of the art of achieving PowerGoals™ is to turn that class 2 experience into a class 1 experience as soon as possible by reframing how you think about the journey of achieving it.

Measuring progress.

OK, so if you have a goal with a desirability rating of 10/10 and a difficulty rating of 10/10. It scares you, but it also makes you excited, as excited as you haven’t been in a long time.

Is there anything else?

Yes. You need to make sure that you are working with a goal and not a dream. Napoleon Hill said that a goal is a dream with a deadline. You must turn your dream into a PowerGoal™ because you must have something to aim for and, more importantly, a way to measure your progress. The reason dreams stay dreams is because people do not take action to make them a reality. That is why you need to turn your dream into something that allows you to measure whether you are making progress to making it a reality. It keeps you accountable for your actions, and it makes it possible to achieve your PowerGoal™.

Let me give you an example. My dream is for my wife and me to travel to Russia and back with 4x4s. It inspires me. It excites me. It is big and audacious – we have never done something like it – and we will love it.

But I can keep on dreaming that dream for the rest of my life, and it will never happen. So, in 2018 we said, we are going to do it! And we decided that we are going to do it in 2020.

Now our dream had a deadline. But how do I measure the progress?

Well, the part of the trip that I am responsible for, the part that will make or break this dream, is the finances. So I took that dream and that deadline, and I turned it into a PowerGoal™ so that I can measure my progress.

And by the way, it is no use if you can measure your progress, but you don’t. Every week I tracked my progress on an Excel spreadsheet so that I can see how I am doing. If the graph went up, I knew I was doing things right so that I could do more of it. If the graph went down, I knew I was doing things wrong, or I was not doing things that I needed to do to offset the things that are beyond my control. And then I needed to adjust and grow and learn.

Negative feedback is never bad, by the way. They are the greatest opportunities for growth. I believe they are worth much more than positive feedback.

A clear target.

To make your progress measurable, you need to have a target. What are you aiming at?

As the saying goes, if you shoot at nothing, you will hit it every time.

You want to set a target that allows you to measure your progress. Your target cannot be “I want to lose weight” because it is not a clear one. Be specific: for example, to decide on a goal weight of 87kg.

Not “I want to make more money” but “a cryptocurrency portfolio of $70,000”.

You want to know what you are shooting at.

Make it clear, but you do not want to limit yourself. Open it up. For example, on 15 April 2019, I said that I would use less than $1 to make more than $70,000. And when I did it, I did invest less than $1 and, on 15 January 2020, I had already exceeded my goal.

To go back to the previous two examples, rather than “weigh 87kg”, I could say “weigh 87kg or less”. Rather than “a cryptocurrency portfolio of $70,000”, I said “a cryptocurrency portfolio of $70,000 or more”.

If you know what you are shooting at, you know on what to focus your actions.

If I want to go from weighing 96kg to 87kg, I know I need to focus on those things that will get me to lose weight. For me, that is exercising daily and making sure I do not eat too much.

And I will be able to monitor whether my actions are helping me get to my results. I might be doing a lot of heavyweights. It is exercise, but I may find that it makes me pick up weight because I am building muscle. There is nothing wrong with doing weights and building muscle. But if it will not bring me closer to my goal, I need to adjust my actions to get to my goal. I might therefore decide to start using lighter weights and doing more repetitions. Or I might swap some weightlifting days for cardio days.

There is no right and wrong here, but if I have a clear target, I can measure daily and weekly whether my actions are helping me get to my goal or not. Being able to measure my progress towards a clear target enables me to shift my actions so that I can get to my goal.

My reality might be the opposite of my previous example. If my goal is to weigh 87kg but I am currently weighing 80kg, I know I need to pick up weight. Doing heavyweights might be a good strategy in that case. And I will want to focus on increasing my calorie intake.

So you can see that knowing where you are and where you want to go allows you to choose the right actions to get you there – and, very importantly, to monitor whether you are moving in the right direction.

Control.

Another important aspect that allows you to measure your progress to inform your actions is that you must have control over the outcome of your goal.

For example, you cannot set a goal that you want your spouse to weigh a certain amount. It might seem like a silly example, but many people feel that if their spouse will do or not do something, or achieve something specific, it will contribute to their dream. But it is futile to set a goal over which you do not have control.

Later in this book, I discuss the Formula for Riches©, which is also called the Formula for Success. I go into much more depth here, but, in short, the Formula can be summed up in three questions:

• Is it possible/legal?

• Can I make it happen?

• Do I have control over it happening?

If you do not have control, you are breaking this formula. And if a formula is broken, you are not guaranteed success. In fact, your chance of not having success is bigger than your chance of success.

To use the example of wanting your spouse to lose weight – your spouse might end up losing weight, and it will seem as if you were successful, or they might not. Whether they achieve success or not is not up to you, though, so it is not that your goal was achieved or not, it is whether it was their goal and whether they did what was necessary to achieve it.

If you set goals over which you do not have control, you set yourself up for failure or at least potential failure. This potential failure immediately eats away at your motivation, which makes you even less likely to succeed. In the end, you feel as if goals do not work, but you were setting the wrong goals.

Here is another example: you want to increase your income by $20,000 a year. For you, that is personally significant because it will bring your dream into reality. It is big and audacious because you currently only earn $20,000 a year, so you will be doubling your income.

But then you formulate your PowerGoal™ to be that you want to receive a promotion at work. Is it possible and legal? Certainly, it is. Can you make it happen and do you have control over it happening? No, you don’t.

You can certainly work harder. You can go above and beyond your current role and job description to show your worth to your employer. You can even apply for the promotion. But you do not have control over that final decision of whether you get the promotion or not. Your boss might have something against you and not want to give you your promotion. Your company might not need someone in that higher position. Your company might be battling financially, and they might even decide to retrench some people or shut down completely.

You have no control over any of those things.

So how would you set your PowerGoal™ to achieve your intent?

Well, if you are currently earning $20,000 a year, you could say that you want to earn a salary of $40,000 or more a year. Immediately it opens up possibilities. Instead of only focusing on getting an increase at your current company, you can now also apply for jobs at other companies.

You can do research to see which skills you need to learn to qualify for such jobs. You can start applying for jobs weekly and even daily. You do not have control over who decides to employ you, but you can take responsibility for the outcome by identifying jobs with skills shortages, learning those skills, and keeping on applying until you get one. You have more control over the outcome.

But there is a way to have even more control over the outcome. What if you phrased it as “earn $40,000 or more a year.” It opens even more possibilities. For example, you can start your own business on the side. If you have your own business, you get to decide which products to sell in what way how often and to whom. You have much more control than as an employee. Sure, there is a whole lot more to learn, and you might have to overcome some limiting beliefs that you have about business too. But the reason almost all of the richest people in the world have their own businesses and why they are not employees is because you have control over the outcome.

If you are the person in our example and you can build a business on the side that produces a profit of $20,000, you would reach your goal. It also means that you can quit your job and start focusing only on your business. It means that you can build up that business and other businesses as far as you want to take them.

I do not say that you have to start a business. However, when I realized how important control is in setting and achieving my goals and making my dreams a reality, starting my own business was a no-brainer. That is why I encourage all my students, as I do you, to reconsider your limiting beliefs about business and to see it for the powerful tool that it is to realize your life of freedom. It is not the only tool, but it is an important one.

The most important thing is always to remember how important control is in whichever PowerGoal™ you decide to set.

Timeframe.

The last thing you need to include in your PowerGoal™ to make your progress measurable is a timeframe. And let me be clear, I say timeframe because I do not only mean a deadline.

Yes, a deadline is important. There must be a cut-off point. I like to be very specific about my cut-off point. I always use a date instead of just “this year”. It is easy to let “this year” slip into the next “this year”. Set yourself a date. Many people choose the end of the year, or 31 December of that year, as their deadline. But you can also use another significant date. I often use my birthday, for example.

But be careful to fixate on your deadline. Like with your target, you want to leave the possibility open that you can achieve your results quicker than possible. I like to use the word “before” to phrase my goals. For example, I said I want to achieve my PowerGoal™ for the Russia expedition before 15 April 2020. Why would I want to achieve it by then if I can do it earlier? Which I did. By 15 January 2020, I had already passed $70,000.

Here is another example from my life. In 1994, I was part of the court of the table in the financial industry. Court of the Table (COT) means that I was in the top 1% of the world in that industry.

In January of that year, I sat down and set a PowerGoal™ to be at the top of the Table (TOT) for that year. The Top of the Table means that you

are in the top 1% of the top 1% in that industry in the world. You qualify for that accolade starting from 1 January up to 31 December of a specific year.

I had no idea how I was going to achieve it. It would have required me to stretch and grow and transform.

In the last week of January, just a few weeks after setting my PowerGoal™, I had a breakthrough. I suddenly realized a whole new way in which I could deliver my services. Everything changed, and by the end of the first week of February, on that Friday, I achieved this goal. I was part of the top 1% of the top 1% in the world in my industry.

I teach my students the Wealth Creators Strategy™, which of course is not only about money but about all the areas of life. The Wealth Creators Strategy™ is the intelligent use of limited resources to go from where you are to where you want to be in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of risk.

So set a deadline but open up the possibility to achieve it in a much shorter time. Why wait a year if the universe opens up and gives it to you in two weeks?

A last note about the timeframe of your PowerGoal™: do not make it too long. I generally recommend 3-5 years for your main, overarching PowerGoal™, the thing that will substantially bring your dream into reality. However, there will be many contributing goals that contribute to and build up to that main PowerGoal™.

If you are starting, work with shorter amounts of time. A year is often long enough to stretch you but short enough to stay in focus if you are beginning.

If you are starting, also do not make the timeframe too short. Most people won’t be able to transform within a week or a month, or even three months. It is possible, and I am at the moment experimenting with techniques to shorten the timeframes of my PowerGoals™. But, remember, I have been doing it for many years.

As I always tell my students: it is your game that you are playing. You get to make the rules. So make the rules in such a way that it is fun and challenging, but also that you can win.

What it is not.

By now, it is clear that a PowerGoal™ is not just another version of your new year’s resolutions. Sure, many of your new year’s resolutions might have the seeds of PowerGoals™ in them. But you will need to tap into the dream that lies underneath that resolution to turn it into a PowerGoal™.

The statistics for new year’s resolutions are dismal. As many as 77% of people give up on their resolutions by the first week. One study found that the second Friday of January is when most people decide to give up – or it just fizzles out.

Only between 4% and 8% of people felt that they achieved their resolutions. You don’t want such a small chance of success. The alternative to new year’s resolutions is the SMART goal – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. While PowerGoals™ seems to have many things in common with SMART goals, they are not nearly the same.

When people try to set specific and timely goals, they tend to limit themselves. They don’t set goals that open up the possibility in their minds that they can achieve more and in a shorter time than that goal.

And when they set achievable and realistic goals, they generally set easy goals, goals which any person would be able to achieve and which all people, especially the experts, believe is possible. But if you only set goals that are easily possible, you will never realize your dream. You won’t push yourself to grow and transform. You won’t be inspired and motivated and captivated by your goal.

The most crucial distinction between a SMART goal and a PowerGoal™ is just that – that a SMART goal does not tap into your dreams. It is very easy to set many goals which are good goals. They are nice and acceptable and the right thing to do. But they are not aligned with the dream deep inside of you, the dream that is dying a little bit more every day, the dream that so desperately wants to be brought to life by you.

It is because of this reason that many people set their SMART goals, but they fizzle out.

There is one last thing that is not needed for a PowerGoal™. It is very important that you take notice of it when you set your PowerGoal™ because it is something that holds many people back from achieving really powerful results.

Let me share this very important secret with you: you do not need to know how you are going to achieve your goal when you set it.

This point feels very counterintuitive to many people, but I believe it is only because we have been conditioned to always focus on how. For example, most business schools will teach you that you need to formulate your business model and your business strategy – in other words, how your business will work – in detail before you start.

But in life, I have learned that 99% of the time, that way does not work. You start a business, and as you grow it step by step, you experiment and test to come up with your business model and your strategy. Your model and your strategy can even change with time.

Think of the weight loss example again: you want to weigh 87kg or less before a certain date. When you set the goal, you might have the idea that you will exercise and eat healthier, but I will show you why it is not essential to know those things.

When you set the goal, the exercises that you know might be weightlifting and healthy eating to you might be eating six small meals a day. So, you start doing it. But it is not giving you results.

Because most people do not set a goal without a strategy, a how, if their strategy does not work, they give up on their goal. (The same with business, by the way.) But if you only set the goal, you can change your strategy until it gives you the results you want.

In our weight loss example, it will be much better if you experiment with different strategies. Sure, start with weightlifting and six small meals. But measure to see if it is giving you results. In the end, you might find that walking 10,000 steps a day and doing intermittent fasting gives you the results you are after.

So do not get too hung up about the how when you set your goal. You will get to it, as I explain in a later chapter, but you do not need to know how you will achieve your goal when you set it.

If you know for a fact exactly how you will achieve your goal, it is probably because you have done it before, perhaps more than once. That means that the difficulty level is not a 10/10, which means that it is not a PowerGoal™.

Workbook 3.4. Where do you fall on the spectrum of control?

Both extremes will keep you from the life of your dreams. Do the exercise in the workbook and read the extra material to find out how to avoid both.

A PowerGoal™ is so powerful because its desirability and difficulty are both 10/10. You do not need to know how you will achieve it when you set it. The PowerGoal™ will direct you and attract that outcome to you. A PowerGoal™ moves you to transform to become the person who can make the dream behind it a reality.

In Section 2, we will get to how you achieve your PowerGoal™.

See you in the next reading then.

For more information on the WCU Powergoal method;