Goal Setting - Interview with Dr. Tony Alessandra on How to Achieve Goals

Dr. Tony Alessandra has a street-wise, college-smart perspective on business, having been raised in the housing projects of NYC to eventually realizing success as a graduate professor of marketing, entrepreneur, business author, and hall-of-fame keynote speaker. He is a prolific author and thought leader. Visit him at www.alessandra.com

Josh Hinds: What is goal setting and why is it important?

Dr. Tony Alessandra: Striving for and attaining goals makes for a meaningful life. Without goals, we are susceptible to feeling emotionally, socially, spiritually, physically, and professionally unbalanced. Goal-setting creates drive and positively affects your personality and character.

Josh Hinds: What is the best advice you could give to someone on setting goals and achieving them?

Dr. Tony Alessandra: Write It Down – Seeing Is Believing - Turn a nebulous thought into a bona fide goal by writing the goal on paper. Written goals are more official and strengthen our commitment. The visual reminder continually reconfirms their importance.

Push Beyond Comfort - A goal must be a challenge and motivate you to work harder. Set your goals beyond your reach so that you'll stretch beyond your comfort zone. The more you stretch, the more limber your goal achieving abilities will become.

Be Precise - Be specific with goals to avoid the lack of commitment that comes from being vague. Rather than having a broad goal of losing weight, be more specific: "I will increase my cardiovascular workouts by 10 to 15 percent.” This statement defines the increase that you are striving for as well as the range of the desired increase. In addition, it is a flexible goal, which tend to be more realistic.

Josh Hinds: Do you have any specific techniques of systems people could put into place that would help them achieve the goals they set?

Dr. Tony Alessandra: Define your goal. Your first task is to determine whether your goal meets all the requirements of the rules listed above. If it does, then write it as clearly as possible at the top of the worksheet.

Examine obstacles that stand in your way. This is a time to guard against negative assumptions and other self-defeating thoughts. Remember the definition of realistic. An obstacle blocks you only if you let it. You should also write down your innovative ways of overcoming obstacles.

W.I.I.F.M.—What's in it for me? Why do you want to achieve the goal? What kind of payoff is motivating you?

Plan your action. You need to carefully list the steps you will take which will bring you closer to your goal. The smaller the increments the easier they will be to accomplish. There is a German proverb that says, " He who begins too much accomplishes little." As the American Dental Association is fond of saying, "Don't bite off more than you can chew."

Project a target date for your goal. State your deadline range, such as, "between March 15 and April 1st." Think carefully about the amount of time you need. Too little time will increase the pressure and frustrate you. Too much time may reduce your drive.

Know how you'll measure your success. Goals should be described in terms of the final outcome of an activity rather than as the activity. This is part of being specific. Instead of saying "I will be running more in four to six months," you could say "I'll be running three miles instead of two miles in four to six months." How will you measure this? Probably by having one-third more blisters on your feet.

Josh Hinds: Dr. Alessandra, thank you for taking the time to share your ideas on goal-setting. Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers along these same lines that would helpful?

Dr. Tony Alessandra: The dividends reaped by investing in yourself through effective goal setting are substantial. When you clarify your values and set goals in all the major areas of your life--mental, physical, family, social, spiritual, professional, and financial-- the right roads appear in front of you like mirages in the desert, yet they are real. Choices become infinitely easier to make because you are aiming at something specific, and you’ve taken a giant step toward hitting your goals...with amazing accuracy.

- I hope you found the ideas above helpful. What were some key takeaways you got from the ideas Dr. Alessandra shared? How will you go about putting them into action in your own life?

Yours in goal-setting success, Josh Hinds

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*brought to you by GoalsSuccess.com

Five Ways to Keep People Focused on Their Goals By Kevin Eikenberry

Goals, whether formally stated or not, are critical to all organizational success. We (hopefully) all have over-arching organizational goals; but on a more practical and immediately applicable level, we have project goals, productivity goals, quality goals, developmental goals, and the list could go on.

Setting effective goals is the focus of countless resources (drop by your favorite bookstore, run a search on Amazon.com, look on your personal bookshelf if you're unsure about that).

One way to improve your leadership skills will be to improve your ability to help team members set effective goals. And if your team doesn't have goals established right now... setting effective, meaningful goals needs to be your first task. Then, you need to help keep your team focused on those goals once they exist.

Here are five practical tips for keeping people focused on their goals:

* Remove distractions. People are busy (like you haven't noticed). They have lots to do and many things on their mind. The first, and perhaps obvious thing, you can do as a leader is remove distractions.

How? You do that by continuing to communicate about, ask about, talk about and align your communication with their goals. It is easier to stay focused when there are fewer competing messages. As a leader you can focus on your communication and conversation as one important way to reduce distractions.

* Review regularly. How often do you review your goals? How often do you encourage others to review theirs? Unless your answer is daily, you have room for improvement here! As a leader you can do any number of things to review regularly. You can review goals with your team as a part of regular meetings.

You can place key goals in emails. You can ask people to provide updates on their goals, and more. Think about your specific situation and you will come up with a variety of ways to make reviewing possible (and not monotonous). The real challenge, then, is to actually do it!

* Support through action. It is hard to maintain focus on a goal if you don't see how the goal can actually be achieved or how you`ll find time to actually work on it. You can help people focus on their goals by providing tangible support to them - including time, space and resources.

Help people carve out time from the schedule to work on their goals. Find people, information or tools that might help them achieve their goals more rapidly. These tangible actions will help people focus on and achieve their goals.

* See the success. People lose focus when they don't feel like they can make it and when they lose sight of the goal. This step goes far beyond reminding people of the goal - rather, it`s about helping your team visualize the goal in real and vivid ways.

It is also about helping them see themselves on the path to success. Help them do more than remember, help them actually see the success in their mind`s eye. When they have that picture, it will be much easier to maintain focus.

* Show your belief. If you really believe in someone`s ability to reach his or her goal and demonstrate your belief - it will be much easier for them to focus. Given that, here are three important questions about belief: Do you really believe in that person's ability to succeed? If not, why not? And if so, are you showing through your words (and actions, see above) that you do?

Making sure that people know you care and believe in them will help them remove large subconscious barriers to their focus and achievement. (And if you don`t believe in them, there are bigger questions to be asked, but that`s for another article!)

As a leader you (hopefully) want people to reach their goals. And in order for any of us to reach goals, we must be able to maintain our focus on those goals. You do have the ability to help people find and maintain that focus!
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Kevin Eikenberry is a leadership expert and the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company that helps Clients reach their potential through a variety of training, consulting and speaking services.

-what are some of the ways you go about encouraging and helping others to achieve their goals?

*brought to you by GoalsSuccess.com

Goal Setting Tips - Interview with Jim Donovan on Achieving Goals

Jim Donovan is a bestselling author, and motivational speaker who has touched the lives of thousands of people who want a better life, and a life and business coach. You can visit him at www.JimDonovan.com.

Josh Hinds: What is goal setting & why is it important?

Jim Donovan: Goal setting is crucial. If you don't take the time to decide what you want in your life, you're leaving it up to chance. And you probably won't like the result.

Josh Hinds: What is the best advice you could give to someone on setting goals and achieving them?

Jim Donovan: Stretch yourself. Small goals are fine but I believe you need some outrageous goals to get your juices going. It takes the same effort to dream big as it does to dream small so why not go for it? Big dreams and goals are easier to get excited about and easier to find people who want to play with you. No one wants to be part of a small dream. Why bother?

Josh Hinds: When it comes to goal setting -- what's the best way to find balance between pushing & pacing oneself?

Jim Donovan: I think the key is what is believable to you. Not necessarily what's "realistic." You have to believe your goal is, at least, possible. Also it's important to allow enough time for it to materialize. A goal of going from broke to a million in 3 months may be a bit out of reach but doing it in a year or two is more apt to occur.

Josh Hinds: Is there anything else you would like to share related to goals & goal-setting that might be helpful?

Jim Donovan: Make sure you're going for goals that are yours, not something you think you "should" want or something someone else wants you to go for. You're going to pay a price in time and effort and, since time is all you have, use it wisely. Make sure your goals are worthy of your life energy.

I hope you enjoyed the above interview. Feel free to use the comments to share your thoughts on it.

Yours in goal-setting success, Josh Hinds

PS. I'm available for keynotes, presentations, and personal development trainings. For details visit JoshHinds.com for speaker information.

*brought to you by GoalsSuccess.com

10 Reasons Why Resolutions Fail By Nancy Brook

If you haven’t had success with New Year’s goal setting in the past, you’re not alone. Surveys show an eight percent success rate for those making resolutions.

Nearly half of the people have given up on resolutions by the end of January. It seems that people want to make changes, but the changes just don’t stick.

Below are the top ten reasons that people fail when making resolutions.

1. Selecting goals out of obligation not inspiration. Have you ever chosen a goal because your boss, your spouse, or your friend thinks you should. Forget it! Unless you are inspired to make a change, you’re not going to invest in “should” goals. Instead, find something that inspires you.

2. Limiting thinking to life change versus life creation. We’ve already talked about being inspired by your goal. This doesn’t happen when you just focus on changing what you’re doing wrong. Most everyone knows that they should get out of debt, stop smoking and get off the couch.

The reason people don’t achieve these changes is that they are focusing on the negative. Focus on the life you desire to create versus the negative habit you want to stomp out. For example, instead of setting a goal of getting out of debt, decide to create a net worth of $100,000, $1 million or $5 million.

3. Not shifting the mindset to embrace the change. I believe the number one predictor of success is that your mindset matches the life you desire to create. The mindset that created obesity needs to shift before you can become the person of a healthy weight. Change doesn’t happen on the outside without a change on the inside. Techniques such as visualization and affirmations can help you make the shift.

4. Failure to write goals down. If you keep your goals in your head, they are fantasies that you might or might not do someday. Thoughts turned into words become deeds.

5. Not creating a specific plan. Writing down a goal isn’t enough. A plan of action will help you keep on track. What will you do when? How will you measure progress? What do you need to learn to be successful?

6. Letting ordinary life monopolize your time. It can be easy to let the activities of daily life interfere with your goals. For example, if your goal is becoming physically fit, you may all of a sudden think that you need to abandon your exercise time and instead use the time for shopping or housecleaning. Don’t let the practical excuses interfere with your goal work.

7. Trying to make a change without any support. You need people in your life who can help you achieve your goal. Remember, you don’t need to figure it out on your own. Find someone who can show you the way and also provide support as you make the shift.

8. Letting the doubts drown out the inspiration. It’s going to happen. You will have that negative voice that crops up once in a while asking you such questions as: Why you are wasting your time? Who do you think you are? Why do you want to make this change anyway? You need to be prepared for these negative thoughts by having some responses to answer the doubts.

9. Spending time with people who support your old ways. Birds of a feather DO flock together. At some level, you associate with the people you do because they support your act. When you decide to set new goals for yourself, the people closest to you may feel threatened and try to discourage your change. Try to limit your time with the naysayers when you first start making your shift.

10. Not celebrating success along the way. Congratulate yourself for your small achievements. You are making changes that will culminate into a different way of being.
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Nancy Brook is an award-winning speaker, author and goal-setting junky. She is launching her first book, “Cycling, Wine and Men: A Midlife Tour de France.” Find out more about Nancy at www.NancyBrook.com.

-What are your thoughts on the above article? Would you like to share any helpful ideas for achieving goals?

Sponsor: WHAT IF YOU HAD THE SAME MINUTE-BY-MINUTE THOUGHTS AS THE SUPER SUCCESSFUL? Mike Brescia has developed the ultimate mental conditioning programs that can help anyone wipe out intense fears and enjoy huge successes in all areas of life. Learn more about these powerful programs here.

*brought to you by GoalsSuccess.com