Three Secrets to Achieving Your Goals and Never Quitting Again!
Albert Einstein once said, “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”The art of goal setting is one of the most important skills you can develop if you want to achieve those goals and have remarkable success. Not only does goal setting give your actions meaning and purpose, it also helps you control your actions so you can stay focused on getting better results. And by using this powerful tactic, you’ll surely enjoy the journey as much as you will the achievement.
Once you know your purpose in life and the path you should follow to fulfill your heart’s desires, you need to set goals and develop a clear vision of what you want to achieve.
The problem many people face is a lack of confidence in their goal-setting skills, usually linked to bad experiences or failures in the past. Who hasn’t had the experience of setting a goal and then failing to achieve it? Or setting a goal, starting the work toward reaching that goal, and then abandoning the work in mid-stream? Perhaps we lose our motivation and quit after a few days or a couple of weeks, or we get to that last mile, see that final huge challenge at the end of the road, and just throw up our hands and run the other way.
Unfortunately, it is just at that moment—the moment when everything seems hopeless and failure looms in the distance—that we need to focus on our desires and the goals we set and forge ahead! As Thomas Edison once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
To set your goals and make sure you see them through, you need to follow some vital guidelines:
1. Tie your goals to your major purpose in life.
If you want to find the motivation that will keep you going until the end, you must tie your goals to your major purpose in life. Doing so will fuel your heart’s desire, drive you forward, give your actions meaning, and keep you focused on the reason you’re pursuing that goal in the first place. Spontaneous goals that lack a strong desire and purpose will lose their momentum in the blink of an eye.
Consider this bit of wisdom from Earl Nightingale: “The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.”
You must set goals that excite you and even scare you a little. You must have a rock-solid reason for wanting to achieve that goal in the first place. If your desire doesn’t burn within you, if your desire is not stronger than your fears, then you’ll lose your focus and your fuel midway.
You need goals that keep you awake at night and immerse you in an ocean of pleasurable emotions. You need goals that stretch your capabilities and challenge you to become a stronger and more valuable person than you could ever have imagined. As Jim Rohn says, “The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get.”
2. Learn the art of goal setting and writing.
Did you know that there’s a secret magic to writing your goals down on paper? It’s true! People who write their goals on paper tend to achieve them more than those who just keep their goals in their heads. The simple, kinesthetic act of writing your goals down creates a kind of subconscious commitment to achieving them—there they are, in black and white! They exist!—and puts them at the center of your attention. And when you see and read those goals daily, you start to attract more opportunities and forces that will help you achieve them. Remember, goals that are not written down are just wishes—and keeping them in your head is the best way to quit or forget about them.
When you write your goals, you must write them in a way that propels you to act, a way that draws a picture in your mind and stimulates your enthusiasm and passion. They must be clear and vivid.
You might have heard of the goal-setting formula called SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely), which is a great formula to follow. But I know of yet another powerful strategy that can give you confidence and determine the quality of your goal setting.
When you sit down to write out your goals, imagine that you’re writing them for someone else. Put yourself in the position of being that other person’s mentor—you’re the expert on goal setting who’s there to make sure this person stays on track and achieves those goals. This person is depending on you to show him the way, so be sure to include as much detail as possible. That way, when he achieves a goal, you’ll both know it and be able to measure his progress.
Let’s look at an example. Suppose you want to lose weight. Start by putting yourself outside the process—you’re writing this goal for someone else (let’s call him Frank). Now, it’s not enough to write down “Lose weight” and expect Frank to achieve that goal. It doesn’t make any sense! He’ll never know if or when he’s been successful and you’ll never know if or when he reaches the goal. What if Frank shows up at your door five years later and says he lost one kilogram by standing on his head? Perhaps you’d be angry and think he’s making fun of you—but he’ll simply say that you never told him what the deadline was or how many kilos he was supposed to lose or how he should go about it. If you’re writing these goals for someone else—if you’re the expert—you need to be specific about the goals and the necessary steps to achieve them. So instead of “Lose weight,” you could tell Frank to “Lose five kilograms in three weeks by exercising for one hour every day.” By writing it down—and by putting yourself outside the process as the “expert”—you’ve given yourself a focused, achievable, and measurable goal.
3. Discover Khufu’s secret and the psychology of achievement
Get ready to understand what the journey looks like, so that you never quit again!
Entering the Great Pyramid of Khufu—the most magnificent and only remaining monument of the seven wonders of the world—was a strange and wonderful experience, and one of the major transformational points in my life.
The journey inside the pyramid is divided into three parts. Come along with me…
First I go through a very narrow passageway that angles up between huge stone blocks. The ceiling is very close to the floor, so I have to stoop over with my chest almost touching my knees. Tourists must move in a long line because the passageway is only wide enough for one person. The place is permeated by an ancient smell of mystery and magic. It’s dark and cramped and hot; we’re all sweating, slightly frightened, and hardly breathing. How come it’s so hot in here? It’s very cold outside—one of those freezing, windy winter days. I can almost feel the weight of these six million tons of stone.
I keep going. And then the ceiling opens up and I see another passageway that angles upwards; nothing appears on the horizon. But this passage is easier and much wider; I can climb through with my back straight.
My heart is still pounding. Then, after this long journey upwards, I find myself in front of a huge wall—and nothing else! I’m so disappointed! Where is the chamber of the king?
Just when I think the whole journey was pointless, I see a man’s head poke out from a small hole at the bottom of that huge wall. Then the entire man comes crawling out of that hole!
And I crawl into the hole—fantastic!
Of the forty or fifty people who started the journey with me, only five or six continue through the hole. It seems endless, but I am determined to go all the way!
I start crawling and crawling, and finally I reach the chamber of King Khufu. It’s an immense room with polished granite walls, high up and in the exact center of the pyramid. In the center of the room stands an empty granite box without a lid. It is supposed to be Khufu’s tomb.
I stayed there for a while to absorb the spirit and meaning of the place. I felt as if the Pharaohs were pouring their wisdom into my soul. And that was the first trigger point to writing my first book The Pharaohs’ Code.
That was an amazing journey—and when I reflected on it later, I discovered an amazing secret to goal achievement. The stages and psychology of the journey toward the chamber of King Khufu is quite similar to the three stages we pass through in our journey to achieve a goal.
At the beginning, you’re enthusiastic about the goal and ready to march toward it with high energy. But then you realize it requires hard work, so you make an enormous effort to get the ball rolling and initiate the momentum. Many people can’t afford to spend all that energy at the beginning, so they quit early. What happened to them? They weren’t motivated by a clear purpose and desire .
But you were, so you move on to the next stage. As you increase your momentum, the journey becomes easier. You take a long shot and feel that you’re getting closer. You gain more experience and confidence as you move through the process.
Then suddenly, when you’re so close to your goal you can touch it, you come face to face with a final challenge—and you’ll either meet with success or failure. This is an important challenge, like the final exam that determines your desire, commitment, and persistence. It’s the challenge that confirms whether you’re really purposeful and qualified to achieve your goal. Some people might see that challenge as an insurmountable wall; they can’t see a way out, so they simply quit and accept the failure.
But not you. You see that little hole in the bottom of the wall, and you poke your head through it. You move on to the third and final stage—success!
And that’s what it’s all about. I admit that when I got to that huge wall in the pyramid, I was very disappointed. And after expending so much energy to climb up there only to discover they’d have to crawl some more, many people just couldn’t bear to continue what seemed like an endless journey, and they fell by the wayside. These are the same feelings we have the moment we decide to quit.
If only they’d poked their heads through that hole like I did! What wonders they would have seen!
Let me repeat Thomas Edison’s brilliant words: “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
The way the pharaohs built the journey inside the pyramid is truly incredible, as if they understood the psychology of achievement. And they left a secret message for all of us: to achieve a worthy goal, you must go the extra mile. And when you get to the hardest stage, the point that seems insurmountable, you must believe that you’re very close.
The secret to achieving your goals is to simply never quit—especially when you’ve reached the last mile. Put that hesitation, disappointment, and loss of hope aside and give it one more shot. You’ll be surprised how close you are to your big dream.
The next time you’re ready to set new goals, make sure you tie them to your purpose so you’ll have the motivation you need to achieve them. Then write them down clearly as if you were writing them for someone else. And finally, understand that starting is the hardest part and that it will just get easier—until it gets harder, that is. Just remember that the final test you’ll face is only there to qualify you for your worthy goal. Never quit, give it your final shot, and pass that test.
Albert Einstein once said, “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” Now you know the rules and the art of achieving your goals. Go and play better than anyone else. And make your dreams come true.
“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” — Michelangelo.
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© Copyright 2009 - Mohamed Tohami
Mohamed Tohami is the author of "The Pharaohs' Code: Creating a Joyful Life and a Lasting Legacy". He helps corporate professionals, who are dissatisfied at work and uncertain about their future, transform their lives from making a living to making a difference. For more information please visit: www.Tohami.com












