The Powerful Secrets of Behaviourial Goals

Goals!

Most of us have them in some form, but do we really know how to use them to tap their true power? Let’s see. I’d like to start this module with a few questions for you to consider.
First, do you have goals? The odds are high that you answered “yes.” In all of the seminar and coaching I’ve done through the years, about 90 percent of my students answer “yes” to this question.
Second, if you answered “yes” to the first question, are your goals clearly defined and written down? This is where some people begin to fall short. They have goals generalized in their head but not clearly defined and committed to paper. Without the commitment, they’re little more than a want or desire, easily positioned for future excuses. If you did answer “yes” to this question, you fit in with about 60 percent of my students.
Now’s when we really separate the pack. If you have goals and you have them clearly defined and written down, do you review them at least 5 days a week? This small behavioral change, going from reviewing once a quarter or once a month or once a week to reviewing at least 5 days a week, drops the percentage of people saying “yes” to this question to a mere 5 percent of my students! Almost everyone who does answer “yes” is invariably on track to meet most if not all of their written goals!
The difference that 5 applied minutes a day makes to your success is simply incredible – the power of Bit by Bit.
And now for the last question: If you have goals and you have them clearly defined and written down and you review them at least 5 days a week, do you review at least your top short-term goals with the costs in your life if they don’t come true and the rewards in your life when they do? If this sounds a little like an application of the Push-Pull Principle, you’re right on the money. If you answered “yes”, you fit into a mere 0.5 percent, that’s right half of a percent or 1 out of every 200 people of those I’ve inquired these questions to over the last 17 years!
In my vast experiences, every single one of the people who managed to answer “yes” to all of these questions are very successful in their chosen fields of work and in their personal lives. Why? Each purposely or accidentally has tapped into the simple, unique power of behavioral-based goal setting!
What about you?
In this month’s module, my goal is simply to help you harness the incredible power of behavioral-based goals into your life. The techniques I’ll teach you are the fusion of the most effective and simple-to-use elements of over 20 different goal setting methods I’ve encountered in my 17 years of personal study and testing.
I’ll start by showing you the power and purpose of goals, teach you the secrets and techniques of behavioral-based goals, and then walk you through a proven goal-setting workshop!

The Awesome Power of Goals

I’ll start with this premise:
Setting goals works!

Using the simple methods and techniques I’ll soon share with you, I’ve attained EVERY one of my goals. I’m I special? Absolutely, not! It’s my application of these behavioral tools that gets ALL of the credit for my success.
Over the last month alone, behavioral-goals helped me reach a personal 10-year goal 9 years early! I wanted to give back to my alma mater, the United States Naval Academy, by donating $1,000,000 by the end of 2007 toward a Time Control program to help future midshipmen gain the advantages I had at college. I not only met the goal early but also shattered the gift I was able to give. The very tools you’ll soon use more than helped me donate last month a $1,200,000 a year Time Control program to Annapolis!
In business, I’ve had similar exponential success. Last year I created a corporate goal to donate a million dollars to my favorite causes by the end of 2017. I met that goal yesterday, 19 years ahead of schedule, when I donated to a Houston business organization that helped me get my company off the ground a $24,000,000 Time Control program. This donation program is designed to give over a million hours a day back to the Houston business community! I am now stretching my goals to expand this donation program throughout the Houston community and later to other cities as my company continues to grow in its success.
Behavioral-based goals have helped me grow and enrich the most important relationships in my life as well. I use these goals to create a daily growing and passionate relationship with my wife Vicki and 5 and 3-year old little boys, Tony and Nicky. I recently celebrated 9 incredible years of marriage to Vicki, and I don’t have a doubt in my mind that my short, daily behavioral goal ritual keeps me from taking the most important things in my life for granted!
I’ve not only used behavioral-based goals in my family relationships, business and community service, but I’ve also successfully applied them to my health, my personal financial growth, my spiritual growth, and material things I’ve wanted for myself and for others.
These tools have also helped thousands of my students reach unbelievable new heights in their lives and in their control of time!
A few quick examples include:
• A 40-person sales team in the highly competitive cellular phone industry in Houston increased their sales productivity by 50 percent in just a few months!
• A businesswoman successfully expanded her company from Texas to 2 more states in 3 months and increased her sleep by over an hour and a half a day!
• A sales woman in the travel industry shattered her aggressive annual sales goals in just 3 months - 9 months early!
• A new sales woman’s first day on the job for the Southwest’s largest modeling agency was on the day I began a monthly coaching campaign with the company. Her aggressive behavioral-based goals allowed her to become the top sales producer within just two months!
• And a Houston small business owner doubled his monthly revenues, reduced his time at work by over 4 hours a day, increased his sleep by over 2 hours a night, and vastly improved his relationships with his wife and teenage daughter.
One of the best historical studies I’ve found on goals is a ringing testimony to their amazing power! In 1953 Yale University conducted a survey on the graduating class. They discovered that only 3 percent of the graduates had clear, written goals as they entered the world beyond college.
Twenty years later the class of 1953 was surveyed again to see the impact goals had over time. Many areas of life were covered in the survey, and on average the 3 percent who originally had clearly defined, written goals were happier, healthier and had stronger relationships than their counterparts. Many of these survey areas were somewhat subjective in nature, but one area of the survey was absolutely, statistically convincing. Over the 20 years the original 3 percent with goals amassed a combined net worth greater than the remaining 97 percent combined!
I absolutely believe the power created by setting positive goals and purposely trying to achieve them creates a force that is impossible to stop! The key words to keep in mind here are “positive” and “purposely.” As long as you create clear goals that are aligned with your value system and take consistent steps no matter how small toward their achievement, you will gain success in time through goals. This force will move you in all the directions you wish to go in life even if you do not fully achieve every goal you set.
If goals are so easy and bring such consistent success to those who wield them in their lives, why don’t more people use them? The answer is simple – human behavior.
Most of us are afraid to set goals. We’re so afraid that if we clearly define what we truly want out of life and then commit to making it come true then we might fail. Failure. Pain. For most of us failure is one of the most painful things in life we can possibly face. Most of us are behaviorally conditioned from childhood to avoid risks that might be painful. Unfortunately most of our possible goals are seen as these risks, and we avoid pursuing them to avoid possible pain. To escape failure.
As we discussed last month in the Push-Pull Principle, the avoidance of pain is one of the greatest motivators in our lives. Although we may not be satisfied with our lives, many of us are comfortable. Too comfortable. Too comfortable to face perceived risks and go after our goals. Too comfortable to face failure.
I want you to think about something, though. What is the worst thing that can happen to you if you define your goals and commit to achieving them? You don’t quite achieve them as you’d hoped? Would you agree with me that at worst case you approach your goals and more than likely reach just slightly under them?
How close do you come to your dreams and possible goals if you stay afraid of risks and never define and pursue them? I guarantee you failure if you never try! If you stay too comfortable, you have no one to blame for your lack of success in any area of your life you want to improve upon but yourself! Your relationships, your finances, your health, your time – it’s all up to you.
To me the only true failure in life is not to give it direction and purpose. To not set your sights on things that are important to you and pursue them through goals. In my eyes you only fail if you don’t try!
Behavioral-based goals will help point and keep you on track toward a chosen direction in your life – a chosen destiny. No matter how simple or how grand. That is the true power of goals. The power to massively leverage your time!

The Purpose of Goals

Goals are extremely powerful tools and will bring you success if you understand their true purpose in life. When wielded unwisely, however, goals do have the capacity to cause harm and actually steal time in our lives. I want to now show you the simple purpose of goals and how to harness their power in a balanced way to ensure your success in life.
The force created from setting positive goals and committing to their achievement is very real and not some weird “magic”. It’s simply the result of a powerful behavioral principle called focus. The basic purpose of goals is to create the blueprints of the direction or destiny you want your life to follow. Behavioral goals then go further to build the blinders necessary to greatly reduce the daily distractions that will try to detour you from your chosen path.
The more often you review your clearly defined goals, creating focus, and the more passionate you are in going after your goals, creating motivation and purpose, the stronger your blinders will be. This will allow fewer distractions to hinder your progress and greatly increase your chances of achieving your goals successfully.
Where you must be careful, though, is in balancing your goals. Understand that goals are more about the process of growing in life and less about the end result of achievement. True success comes from growing stronger as a human being not in the accumulation of milestone achievements.
I’m sure you’ve heard others described as being “goal-oriented”. This can be dangerous. I’ve seen people wield the power of goals to create great achievements but at a great expense to themselves and others. Because they weren’t balanced in their goals, some have created so-called success in careers or business at the expense of their families or their health. In the end, with the accumulation of money and power in one hand, some have lost what was most important to them – unrecoverable time with those they loved most.
Don’t be deterred by this! Having balanced goals that allow you to succeed in your career or business, in your relationships, in your health, and anything else that is important to you in time is simple and easy – as long as you apply it.
The answer is your Clarity!
By using your Clarity to create a balanced set of behavioral-based goals, you’ll ensure that your blinders keep you focused on all of the important things in your life. You’ll be able to quickly tell if one area is dominating another important area and make adjustments as needed to keep your balance.
In this way I continually grow and succeed in my business, my passionate family relationships, my financial security, my health, my service, and my happiness. The ultimate in time control! I want you to enjoy similar success.

The Secrets of Behavioral-Based Goals

Goals are wonderful time accelerators and will work, but only if you use them. Only if you review them frequently and commit to their achievement! Focus and purpose.
Just having goals in your head or going through extensive goal-setting workshops only to let your written goals collect dust from limited to non review will bring you limited results at best. Having clear, detailed, written goals that you review only once a week may move you forward in your chosen directions, but how much more fulfilled and successful could you be if you spent just another 20 minutes throughout the week building strong blinders to the distractions you’ll face on the 6 other days you don’t review? Even if you consider yourself successful in your goals, a very short, simple behavioral change could leapfrog your expectations.
A great example of this was an attorney I met who was strongly into self-improvement techniques and total quality. One of his top goals was to make $15,000 a day from his practice and financial investments. Lofty goals, but he was determined. He worked hard through the goal-oriented material he had studied in the past and created a binder with hundreds of detailed goal worksheets, mission statements and guiding principles.
This guy had clearly defined, written goals! Too much so, as a matter of fact. He had spent so much time creating in great detail the goals he wanted that he made them too complex to easily review. It was no wonder that he was frustrated in not moving significantly forward toward his goals’ completion. When I asked him to simply tell me his mission statement, he couldn’t even paraphrase it. He had to look in up in the middle of his vast goal binder!
The problem was that this attorney only reviewed his goals once a month because of their complexity. Distractions then dominated his daily routine the remaining 30 days out of each month!
The solution to his distress was behaviorally very easy. By simplifying his goals and reviewing them daily, in other words at least 5 days each week, he completely supercharged his success! One small change – one large result!
So the first secret of behavioral-based goals is the power of frequent review, the power of creating focus. To truly reinforce the blinders to the barrage of daily distractions you face, review your goals, at least your short-term goals, at least 5 days a week. Sounds like Bit by Bit could really help in this area.
Test drive Module “Bit by Bit” absolutely free at www.timecontrol.cc.
Remember, all you need to do is improve your goal accomplishment by half of a percent a day for 5 days each week and you’ll exponentially grow your success by hundreds to thousands of percent!
Focus. The simplicity and power of this technique is almost scary!
The second secret of behavioral-based goals is the motivation and action-building technique of creating purpose.
Purpose. Goals are about action, moving forward in a chosen direction in your life. Never forget that purpose is stronger than outcome in promoting this action. Why you are pursuing a goal determines everything about how successful you’ll be in achieving that goal!
If I were to ask you if you wanted a million dollars, how would you answer? Most of us would say, “sure!” To determine if this were a true goal for you or just a want or desire, I would then ask you to tell me why you wanted that much money. I would ask for your purpose. How you answered that question would tell me a lot about how close you could come in attaining that money into your life.
If you couldn’t answer the question in detail and with passion, in other words the best answers you could come up with are things like “it would be cool to have that money,” “I could quit my job,” or “life would be more fun,” I would say the odds are against you in ever having that kind of money in your life. However, the opposite is true as well. If you could have detailed and passionate reasons why you wanted that money, your purpose could be easily strong enough to open your eyes to opportunities and move you to action in creating that wealth.
What kind of reasons? Detailed and passionate reasons such as all of the emotional, financial, physical, social and spiritual costs in your life if you don’t build a million-dollar wealth. Detailed and passionate reasons such as all of the emotional, financial, physical, social and spiritual rewards in your life that a million dollars will help bring you. Is this starting to sound familiar?
There is absolutely nothing we cannot achieve if we have strong enough purpose! Purpose creates the motivation for action. Action leads to the accomplishment of our goals!
When we are passionate, motivated and purposeful, our behaviors can often create miracles. Without a strong enough purpose, how could we have sent men to walk on the moon? Without a strong enough purpose, how could we recently have sent a remote control vehicle to land safely on Mars and then transmit pictures back to Earth? And in one of the most amazing testimonies to purpose and love, without a strong enough purpose how could a deaf and mute couple stay happily married for 20 years, living independently from their handicaps?
Focus and purpose - the secrets of behavioral-based goals. Never forget!

A Driving Purpose to Your Goals

So what’s the best way to create strong enough purpose to fulfill your goals? Easy! Through the simple power of the Push-Pull Principle!
As a quick review to last month’s module, the Push-Pull Principle is a simple behavioral-tool designed to generate the powerful purpose and incredible motivation necessary to create a positive behavior in your life. The positive behavior we want to create in this case is action toward your chosen goals.
Working through the Push-Pull Principle will help you generate the costs in your life, or the “push” away from an undesired outcome, on an emotional, financial, physical, social and spiritual level if you don’t reach your goal. Likewise, the tool will then help you generate all of the rewards in your life, or the “pull” toward a desired outcome, on the same emotional, financial, physical, social and spiritual levels when you fulfill your goal.
Applying the Push-Pull Principle toward your important short-term goals will help you create the purpose necessary for motivated action. If you have difficulties coming up with the Push or Pull for a particular goal, then the goal may be more of a “want” and not something you are ready or willing to commit to its fulfillment.
Once you create the Push and Pull for a particular goal, the true power of having “purpose” comes in your review of the cost and rewards for that goal on a frequent basis. Remember, our behaviors are fueled by our emotions. The more passionate and emotional you are in reviewing your Push – Pull’s cost and rewards, the more you’ll be driven to motivated action. Don’t be logical, be emotional in the purpose for your goals and you’ll generate unbelievable drive toward their fulfillment!

Guidelines to Your Goals

You now understand the simple secrets of behavioral-based goals – focus and purpose. As we approach the goal setting workshop at the end of this module, I want to give you some guidelines in how to effectively define the goals you’re choosing to pursue.
I’ve been alluding throughout this module to the importance of having clearly defined and written goals. I’ll explain the easy one first – written goals. The importance of having your goals written down is based in commitment. When you write down your goals, you’re taking the first step toward their fulfillment. Easy enough. Take a pen or pencil or use your computer to get your goals down on paper or to your computer monitor for easy review.
Getting your goals clearly defined is only slightly harder than writing them down. Your Clarity is a great help in this. When you’re brainstorming your goals in the upcoming goal setting workshop, just make sure they have the following elements:
• Specific
• Measurable
• Realistic but not limiting
• Time-specific
Specific and measurable simply mean you want to know your progress towards a goal and be able to tell when you reach it. The more concrete and specific your goals, the better your chances of finding opportunities and taking action to make them come true.
A great example of this is having a goal to be rich. How clear is this goal? Do you think it’s specific and measurable enough? What exactly is “rich” to you? Is it all about money or does it include health, love, peace, and happiness? If money is a part of it, exactly how much would you need to be “rich”. Be specific in how it pertains to your life and situation! The same goes for being healthier, happier, or more successful in your career or business ventures. The more specific your goal and the easier you make it to measure its progress, the better.
Another element to make sure you include in your goal definition is making it realistic but not limiting. By “realistic” I mean certain things in life require a certain amount of time to accomplish. Not factoring this timeline into your goal could lead to frustration and possible abandonment of that goal. Becoming a doctor, a pilot, a gourmet cook, an engineer, a successful business owner, or any of hundreds of other professions takes a certain amount of time to learn and grow experience. Be tenacious in your focus and purpose but have patience in your progress!
Being realistic is an important element to your goals but being “not limiting” is even more important. If you use your Clarity to create your goals then you shouldn’t have much of a problem here. Since your Clarity is based on what you “want” for your future, limitations are severely reduced.
Don’t limit yourself to what you can accomplish! You can practically be or do anything you want if you have a strong enough focus and purpose. Countless testimonies exist as to what the human spirit can create! Relationship success, financial and business success, overcoming hardships and health challenges, physical breakthroughs – we all know of others who inspire us through their goal accomplishments. Know that the biggest obstacle standing before you and the fulfillment of your goals and dreams is yourself - your own self-imposed limitations. Don’t be afraid, and don’t limit what you want!
The last element to make sure you have in creating a clearly defined goal is a deadline – being time-specific. The workshop, which I am just about ready to teach you, will automatically help you establish deadlines for your goals. Why are deadlines important? Deadlines help tell you how much energy to put toward action in your goals and when. Having a time commitment to a goal creates the positive pressure necessary to further help push you into action in the direction of your goals, your chosen destiny.
Let’s say your goal is to run a marathon. If you don’t give yourself a date to be ready, how do you know how to best create and pace your training? If you choose a specific race to enter in the future, though, it will be much easier to prepare and build your progress.
My pastor is an incredible example of this. He had never run more than a mile at time in his life through his mid-thirties. One day he decided to try running and practically died running a mile and a half through his neighborhood. He was attracted to running, nonetheless, and soon made a goal to run a local Houston marathon. By giving himself a realistic deadline for his running ability, he not only easily completed the marathon but also enjoyed the entire process. Last year, only a few years after almost collapsing in that first run in his neighborhood, he competed in an international “Iron Man” competition. With no breaks over a continuous fourteen-hour period, he swam 3 miles, biked 120 miles, then ran 26 miles. The power of deadlines – the power of goals!
Keep in mind that deadlines are simply guidelines to action and should not create negative pressure. I told you at the beginning of this module that I’ve fulfilled every one of my goals using my behavioral-based philosophy. I have not always met my deadlines, however. When I past deadlines for some of my goals, I simply re-evaluated my purpose and tested different approaches to meet my goals as quickly as possible. I didn’t beat myself up or consider myself a failure for going past a deadline. I got excited and I got motivated!
Some of my biggest accomplishments came when I past a deadline for a goal. Several years ago in business when I didn’t meet a deadline I had set for monthly revenues for my fledgling company, I simply looked for a different approach to marketing. That’s when I sought Jay Abraham’s strategies, combined them with my Success-Centered Time Management tools, quintupled my business over the next 2 months, and began to enjoy a 25 percent a month growth rate! I have since created Time Control’s Power Marketing Principles and have helped hundreds of other small businesses and sales forces. Not bad for missing a deadline – I wouldn’t call that failure!

The Workshop!

Time to teach you my behavior-based goal setting workshop!
The process is easy and will probably take you about 3 total hours to complete the first time you walk through it. If you prefer you can even break up this time into different segments rather than working through all at once. If you moaned when I mentioned 3 hours, I ask you how long it typically takes you to go to a movie? Around 3 hours at least when you consider travel time. If we’re talking about seeing “Titanic”, even longer! All I’m asking, all you’re asking of yourself, is the time you spend going to one movie. If it’s too much than you aren’t really ready to pursue your dreams and goals – it’s ALL up to you!
I’ve created 12 worksheets that walk you through the workshop and help you define your goals and create your purpose for your top short-term goals. I strongly suggest you print them out and use them to follow along this workshop explanation. I’ve also created a special “Goal Workshop” Slide Show to walk you through the workshop step-by-step when you’re ready to begin and when you update your goals on a quarterly basis.
This workshop focuses on 3 main categories of goal setting: Personal Goals, Financial Goals, and Material Goals. You can change the categories as you see fit, but I’ve found that these 3 areas cover every goal in life and business that I’ve ever pursued. Place your goals in the category where YOU best think they fit. There is no right or wrong category to place one of your goals.
The Personal Goals category is a great place to put your self development and relationship goals. Improving your relationships with those you love, improving your business relationships, improving your health, learning a new skill, gaining an education, improving parts of your business, owning a business, traveling, improving your career, growing spiritually, improving in sports, and writing a book are just a few of the almost limitless goals that would fit well in this category.
The Financial Goals category is fairly self-explanatory. Anything to do with money or finances can go here. Making a certain salary, saving for retirement, improving your financial education, eliminating credit debt, saving for college, saving for a down payment to a home, obtaining revenue and profit levels for a business, reaching certain sales levels, and making donations to church or charities all fit nicely into this area of the workshop.
The final category I’ve created for this workshop, Material Goals, is great for all of the toys, amenities and physical items you would like have in your or others’ lives. Improvements to your home or business, owning a particular home, living in a certain part of the country or world, clothes, electronic entertainment or business equipment, having someone cut your lawn, having someone clean your house, collectibles, and vehicles are just a few goals you could place into this category.

Now the steps.

1) Relax.

The first thing you want to do is create a relaxing and creative atmosphere for your goal setting session. Having the phone ring often or being interrupted by others in your home or office every few minutes will stifle your ability to list your goals and generate their purpose effectively.
Set a “do not disturb” time aside and if possible put on music that inspires you. Use the “Goal Workshop” Slide Show to provide step-by-step guidance and give you ideas.
I recognize that it may be difficult to find 3 undisturbed, continuous hours to put toward this workshop at first. Don’t sweat it! Break up the workshop into 1-hour or 30-minute sections until you finish. Be consistent, though, and refuse to start something you won’t finish in a week or so.
Make sure you are ready to be creative and have fun in this process! If you see this workshop as work and not as the incredible experience it should be then you’ll more than likely see pursuing your dreams and desires as a chore. Goals seen as work rarely come true!
Please put a high value on this workshop experience! Valuing the importance of this workshop and treating it accordingly will pay off huge future dividends. Again, it’s up to you. It’s your life and your future. You’ll definitely reap what you sow in this workshop.

2) Brainstorm your Personal Goals.

Using the Personal Goals worksheet with the subtitle “Brainstorm / Deadlines”, brainstorm all of the personal goals you would like to fulfill for about 5 or so minutes. Be creative! This is your canvas to create the future YOU desire!
Don’t worry about deadlines at this point, just get down on paper your dreams and desires. Just write down enough for each goal so that you know what it is, then move on. You can always go back later and fill in more detail.
Don’t worry about how you’ll accomplish a goal, just worry about if you want it. If you want it bad enough and later create a strong purpose for its fulfillment, you can have any goal you desire!
Do not, do not, do not let self-imposed limitations come into play while brainstorming! The worst that will happen is that you won’t quite fulfill any brainstormed goal if you write it down and go for it. If you restrict yourself from writing down a goal you want but are afraid to go after, the best that will happen is you will fail.
Keep in mind that you are not carving your goals in stone. As your life changes and your desires change, you’ll be able to adjust your goals as necessary. Goals are a fluid process, always based on who you are and the dreams you desire today. So don’t be afraid to stretch, thinking you’ll never be able to change your goals in the future.
Have a blast in this process, becoming the Michelangelo of your own destiny!

3) Choose deadlines for your Personal Goals.

On the same “Brainstorm / Deadlines” worksheet, place a number by each of your goals representing within how many years (or months) you would like to fulfill that goal. Place a "1" for within 1 year, a "5" for within 5 years, a "10" for within 10 years, etc.. If you’re not real sure what to put down, estimate based on what you know today. You can always adjust later as you’re pursuing your goal.
You may have listed some goals that will never truly have an end or deadline. I call these continual improvement goals. These are goals such as having an ever-improving relationship with your family or Creator and learning more and more about an area of interest. Your focus is to keep improving and growing with these goals and never take these areas of your life for granted. Great! I have several of these, and list all of them with a 1-year deadline.
Remember, the purpose of deadlines are to tell you how much energy to put towards your goals and when. No negative pressure, just the positive pressure to create the actions you desire.

4) Choose top 3 short-term Personal Goals.

You are now going to choose the 3 top short-term Personal Goals that you will soon apply the Push-Pull Principle to create the all-important purpose we discussed earlier. Look at your deadlines and circle, check or highlight the 3 goals you would like to fulfill first. If you didn’t list at least 3 Personal Goals, don’t worry. Just use what you did list.
These 3 goals are going to be the ones that require the most energy for action the soonest. If you have 3 1-year goals and all of the rest are later, highlight your 3 1-year goals. If you have more than 3 1-year goals, choose which 3 are the most important to you to accomplish over the next year. If you have a 1-year goal, several 3-year goals and the rest are later, highlight the 1-year goal and choose the 2 most important 3-year goals. I think you get the picture. Remember, this is a tool to help you. When in doubt as to what the do, make up your own rules. You’re the ultimate boss.
Why choose only 3 goals and not more? In behavioral-based goals, focus is just as important as purpose, and focus comes from reviewing your goals at least 5 days each week. If you applied the Push-Pull Principle to all of your goals, your goals would be cumbersome and take a long time to review. This would easily lead to excuses not to review your goals as frequently and would cause you to scan your Push-Pull for each goal rather than “feel” the costs and the rewards.
I want you to work off of the KISS Principle, Keeping It Short and Simple. With 3 Push-Pulls for each goal category, you’ll still have 9 to review almost daily. This will take you about 5 to 10 minutes each time – easily manageable through Bit by Bit.
In time as you get used to reviewing your goals, you can add an extra Push-Pull here or there as long as you review with good frequency and with proper emotion in your costs and rewards for each. As of today, I personally have 4 Push-Pulls for my Personal Goals and 3 each for my Financial and Material Goals. Keep it simple! Simplicity will be a key to your success.
Don’t worry about your longer-term goals not having a Push-Pull. You’ll be creating Push-Pull’s for them in time as you fulfill your shorter-term goals. Be patient and trust the process.

5) Apply Push-Pull Principle to 3 chosen Personal Goals.

Using the 3 Personal Goals worksheets with the subtitle “Purpose is power!” list each of your 3 chosen short-term goals on a separate worksheet. Write each goal into the blank, “I am totally committed to…” This commitment to paper is the beginning of your journey to your chosen goals’ fulfillment.
Now complete the Push and Pull for your chosen short-term Personal Goals on your 3 worksheets. For the Push, list all of the applicable emotional, financial, physical, social, and spiritual costs if you do not achieve your goal. Do the same for the Pull, except now you’re focusing on the rewards for the same 5 areas when you do achieve your goal.
Be emotional. The more personally painful you list your costs and the more personally enjoyable you list your rewards, the stronger this tool will be and the greater your chances of fulfilling your goal.

6) Clean up your listed Personal Goals.

Now simply go back to the Personal Goals you’ve brainstormed and rewrite them in a neat, chronological order. This is where I list the specific year by which I want to accomplish each goal. You can use the worksheet you brainstormed on or write on a clean one. Organize this so it suits your tastes. Again, your rules.
The rest of the workshop follows the exact same routine, except now you’re focusing on your Financial and Material Goals.

7) Brainstorm your Financial Goals.
8) Choose deadlines for your Financial Goals.
9) Choose top 3 short-term Financial Goals.
10) Apply Push-Pull Principle to 3 chosen Financial Goals.
11) Clean up your listed Financial Goals.
12) Brainstorm your Material Goals.
13) Choose deadlines for your Material Goals.
14) Choose top 3 short-term Material Goals.
15) Apply Push-Pull Principle to 3 chosen Material Goals.
16) Clean up your listed Material Goals.
Your behavioral-based goal setting workshop is now complete. Congratulations! Take a bow; you deserve it. You are in a very small percentage of people who are committing to taking charge of their destiny and creating the future they desire.
So now what?

Using Your Workshop Results

Let’s put everything you learned and created all together now.
Review your Personal, Financial, and Material Goals Push-Pull worksheets daily, meaning at least 5 days every week. This creates the focus to build the necessary blinders to your daily distractions. Take your time and review your costs and rewards with emotion to generate the purpose you require for action. The all-important focus and purpose for success!
Review the chronological listing of all of your short and long-term goals at least once a week. This allows you to be on a frequent and consistent lookout for opportunities for action to fulfill longer-range goals. This is how I fulfilled my 10-year goal 9 years early and my 20-year goal 19 years early. Simple awareness for opportunities.
Every 3 months or so, re-evaluate all of your goals. This allows you to create new Push-Pulls to replace goals you may have accomplished over the last few months. It also allows you to change, eliminate, or add new goals based on your current situation and desires. This may only require minor peeking and tweaking or may call for you to go through an entire new workshop, using your old goal set as a guide. Situations change, our lives change, our tastes change, so make sure you keep your goals up to date. A quarterly review should be sufficient.
Commit to taking some form of action on your goals every day if possible. You don’t have to act on every goal daily, but you want to move forward on your goal set as a whole based on your chosen deadlines. Your action can be substantial or very minor. Just putting good thought into your goals is extremely beneficial. This mentality and commitment puts the power of continual success to work for your success. Just improving by half a percent a day 5 days a week can make your goals come true much quicker than you think! Remember the power of the Continual Success Improvement Formula combined with Bit by Bit. Use these tremendously powerful tools to help you with your goals.

The Power of “Top of the Mind” Visual Review

A great tool you can add to your goal arsenal if you choose is the power of “top of the mind” visual review. For the goals you have where you can cut out pictures of or obtain artifacts that remind you of them, create a goal collage or scrapbook or prominently display the artifacts as a visual reminder of your desires. Material Goals work great here, but Personal and Financial Goals can fit, too.
A Material Goal example is a Bose Wave Radio brochure I displayed in my office when I first started my company. I wanted the radio as part of my seminar multimedia, and through daily visualizing of the pictures in that brochure I fulfilled my goal within a few months.
Personal Goal examples are the Ensign shoulder boards I kept at the top of my headboard at the Naval Academy to inspire me to become a Naval Officer and the Navy “Wings of Gold” I coveted that I displayed at my desk as I was going through flight school. Both helped me see the future I so desired and helped lead me to action.
Keep this tool readily available for you to look at and visualize through each day. Be creative and make this powerful tool fun!
How does this tool work? Like a lightning rod for your purpose, color images of or artifacts that remind you of a particular goal concentrate the costs and rewards for that goal into one area. Every time you see the tool, you subconsciously review your purpose for that goal’s fulfillment. This generates incredible subconscious blinders to the distractions of the day. The more frequently you view your tool, the stronger your blinders become.

Concluding with Your Assignment

You should have a good idea as to what the assignment is this month. Go through the goal setting workshop and begin building the habit of reviewing and acting on your desired goals.
I hope I have fulfilled my goal in this module to teach you the amazing power and purpose of behavioral-based goals and inspire you to complete the goal setting workshop. I know from personal experience and from those I’ve had the honor of coaching that goals are one of the very best tools to massively leverage your time. I want so much for you to reap the same rewards! What better way to add more control to your time than to help you create the very future you desire?
Until next month –
Good luck and God bless!

Vince Panella, Author, ex Professor,Teacher,Aviator,Business Coach and graduate with distinction form the United States Naval Academy
www.timecontrol.cc

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