A Critical Lesson In Achieving Any Goal Every Time

By Reg Scheepers

When I was 14, my grandmother bought a program off an ‘As Seen On TV’ advert called Passion, Profit and Power. I loved it. I devoured it. I listened to it over and over.

Then when I was 17, my grandmother bought another ‘As Seen On TV’ program by Tony Robbins called Personal Power 2.

Personal Power 2 was about 20 hours worth of listening but I managed to do it in about a day an a half – and I wasn’t forcing it on myself, I just couldn’t get enough. I had such a momentum, drive and ambition to be the best me that I could be.

In both those programs and most books I’ve read and tapes I’ve listened to since, the authors make it sound as if “setting goals and writing them down” has some sort of magical power – that by doing this, the ether or mother nature or God or the universe is mobilised to give you the results you want.

I set goals and to my great surprise they never happened, not even close. I would set goals like “by March I will be earning R10 000 per month. By August I’ll be earning R15 000 per month. By December I’ll be driving a Mercedes.”

I would apply all the advice these gurus preached, including wording the goals in a positive active tense not a negative passive tense, setting a time limit for it’s achievement, being specific, and giving a reason why I wanted to achieve it.

For example, I would set a goal like, “What: I will be dating a great girl. When: By June. Why: Because I don’t want to be single anymore and it’s getting lonely. Details: She must look like X and like Y activities and have Z qualities.”

Until I made this distinction, I don’t think I had ever reached a single damn goal I’d set for myself. It was a bad thing not because I didn’t reach the goals, but because eventually I lost my momentum, drive and ambition. I kept failing and stopped setting goals. The result was a decade long setback. Quite a price to pay considering the average lifespan of a human.

The distinction in goal setting that makes all the difference…

You need to set action goals first, and then if you really want to, set results goals. Set goals for what you’re going to do every day to move your life forward. At the end of every day set goals for what you’re going to do the next day to move ahead.

My own personal formula that works like a bomb for me is this…

Take the time to quantify where you are at now.

You can’t measure your progress if you don’t know where you are at now and if you can’t measure your progress you’ll never maintain the motivation to keep on going. You have to find a way to quantify where you are at now in your social life, romantic life, financial, spiritual, mental, and every other part of your life you can think of.

Literally sit down and think of a way to quantify the seemingly unquantifiable. For example, to quantify the quality of your social life, think of how many quality friends you have? Write it down or preferably create an Excel file to record the category and the number.

Next, set ACTION goals for each area of your life.

So once you have a map of where you are at currently in the various areas of your life, you can then set action goals, which is really nothing more than scheduling. I use the Calendar section of Microsoft Outlook 2007. It works like a beauty.

I’ve created shortcuts so that I can mark my goals with red or purple. Red means I didn’t do it. Purple means I did it. So for example I’ll go into Outlook’s Calendar and create a new entry for Monday 8am – 9am: “Pull Ups and Jog”. I’ll copy and paste that entry for every week day for the rest of the year. That’s my physical action goals set.

I’ll know I’m achieving them because in my Excel file I recorded that I could only jog 100 meters without getting out of breath and I weighed 86kg. Now I can jog 200 meters before I start breathing heavier and I weigh 80kg.

Notice that I’m achieving great results without setting my results goals: “By next month I want to be able to jog 200 meters without running out of breath and weigh 80kg, because I don’t like being unfit and have a fat stomach.”

If someone calls me and schedules a meeting, I make an entry. It prevents me from forgetting and it moves me forward in my business life. Setting action goals is a process of scheduling not dreaming.

You can’t know how much money you’re going to make next year. “I want to make R100 000 more this year than I did last year” – that’s dreaming.

“Monday 10am – 11am: Strategise the best locations for opening two new branches of my business” – “Wednesday 13h00 – 15h00: Meeting with Landlord from XYZ company to discuss leasing property”, ah, now you have set two action goals that you can make happen and that will move you forward toward your result goal of making R100k more next year.

The reason action goals are so much more powerful than results goals is because you have the power to make them happen. You cannot make someone else love you, you cannot say I’m going to have a lover by next month, but you can say I’m going to smile at every person I walk past today.

Unless you’re a robber, you can’t force fifty people to give you a thousand bucks by the end of the month, but you can take an hour and strategise how you can add more value to your clients lives and charge more for that added value.

Be Consistent and have a Make-It-Happen attitude.

Having a bulldog-like Make-It-Happen mentality is far, far more important than being a results goal setter – the kind of goal setting that the self improvement folks are teaching.

Being consistent in your actions to move ahead in the major areas of your life is far more important than reaching a given goal – as long as you’re going up and moving forward. Not that setting results goals can’t be beneficial, it’s just not as important. It might provide the carrot but it won’t provide the stick.

You’ll be amazed at what you can achieve by just doing something small like working out 10 minutes every day or three times a week – being consistent is the key.

As with anything profound, when you think about it it seems obvious and basic, yet I haven’t seen this distinction discussed in any book or personal improvement program and I think it’s a terrible shame because it’s literally the difference between groping around in the dark and success in life.

So there you have it. This distinction has made a major difference in my life and I hope it makes a difference in yours.

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