By: Shantanu Das Sharma, Sr. Associate Editor, ICN Group
Quick recap of what we have covered in Part 37
Why You Must Start Setting Goals, Right Now!
What Prevents Most People from Designing their Life?
1) Limiting Beliefs
2) They Don’t Know What They Want
3) Fear of Failure
4) Addiction to the Soft Life
5) Setting Goals Don’t Work
Coming Back Even Stronger… After Major Blows
KOLKATA: In fact, setbacks sometimes come as big plunges. I have noticed so many times that people are only rewarded with their dreams after they have gone through one of these huge plunges. If you study the life stories of Sylvester Stallone, Richard Branson, Soichiro Honda and Donald Trump, the pinnacle of their success came only after (and sometimes as a result of) some huge setbacks.
There are always going to be times in our lives when we seem to be put to the ultimate test. These are times when life seems really unfair. We put in all the work, only to see everything flop. We earn everything only to lose everything. Some people allow these experiences to destroy their dreams forever. People who make their achievements a living example are those who allow disasters to make them stronger and propel them even faster to their goals. In an earlier article in this series, we saw how Donald Trump went through a near brush with bankruptcy, but regained his focus to make over $3 billion in the following three years. Well, Soichiro Honda had his entire factory bombed twice during World War II, then flattened by an earthquake after rebuilding it for the second time. After weathering these two blows, the Honda Corporation was paralyzed by a fuel shortage in post-war Japan. Despite all these ‘unfair’ blows that life gave Honda, he managed to build the Honda Corporation into one of the major transportation companies in the world today.
Out of the Ashes of Two ‘Bad’ Experiences…I Built a New Business
I can say that I have had similar experiences in the pursuit of my own goals. It was only after I went through two major setbacks, my breakup with my last employer in India, , and the collapse of an IT Software company I had a major share in that I sat down to re-focus and set new goals. Out of the ashes of those two experiences, I started a new entry in the field I know best; gained a new employment abroad and has emerged wiser, more resilient and more confident. And my reward? I had a brilliant career over a decade abroad before I came back to India to begin my own venture in NLP Lifestyle Coaching Business and am now seeing my business skyrocket to a new peak! I believe that failures and setbacks are there to teach us certain lessons. Important lessons that, unless we learn, we will never get to the next level necessary for us to reach our dreams. I also believe that life throws failures at us to test our level of commitment.
If we are truly committed, we will be rewarded with our dreams coming true. Many people fail this test of commitment, and that is why they never get what they dream of.
Three Major Keys to Powerful Goals
So, are you ready to sit down and start designing the kind of life you want? Before we get started, there are three major keys that every one of your goals must have. They must be 1)Specific and Measurable, 2)Passionate and Exciting and 3)Stretch Goals.
1) Be Specific and Measurable
The more specific you are, the more focused your mind and efforts will be. Specific and measurable outcomes will lead to effective strategies and actions. If you want your health to improve, you must set specific and measurable targets such as ‘how much weight do I want to lose?’ ‘What pulse rate do I want to achieve’ ‘What is my targeted body-fat ratio?’ ‘How many hours must I spend in the gym each week?’ ‘How many calories will I allow myself to take in a day?’ ‘How many miles should I run or how many laps must I swim at each session and how many times a week?’
Under personal development goals, you may want to set goals such as ‘What new languages do I want to learn? And to what standard?’ ‘How many books do I want to read each month, and in what areas?’ You must also be specific about the time frame you are giving to each goal and list a specific date of accomplishment.
2) Passionate and Exciting
Have you ever been so passionate and excited about doing or achieving something that it kept you awake all night? That kept you thinking about it every waking moment? Something that you just couldn’t wait for it to happen? Maybe it was your first trip to an exciting new destination. Or it was participating in an important tournament, meeting that special person or it was planning your 21st, 30th, 40th birthday celebration. When we are so passionate about achieving something important to us, it gives us a level of energy and focus that cannot be matched. It is this level of passion and excitement that we must have for our goal(s), if we ever want to achieve it! When people ask me, ‘Where do you get the energy and discipline to keep writing, developing workshops and coaching modalities and training with new participants?’, I reply by saying that it is because I get so passionate and excited about my goals, they charge me up continuously. I sleep, breathe and dream my goals every single day until they are achieved! Then I set a new one, at a higher level! When people seem to lack discipline or will power, it is not that they are lazy, it is just that their goals are not exciting enough for them. They are not passionate about what they want to achieve!
This second key of goal setting is one of the most important. We must only set goals that we are passionate about and which give us a high level of excitement. If your goals don’t fire you up inside, they are not exciting goals! And therefore, not effective in getting you to take action. People who achieve their goals, despite all the odds and setbacks, got there because of one single reason, Passion. They did it because they loved to do it. Tiger Woods loves to play golf, Donald Trump loves the art of the deal, Steven Spielberg loves to make larger-than-life movies and Bill Gates loves technology and the idea of shaping the world. Even if they had all the money in the world (which they do), they would still be as obsessed with their goals.
So, you must set goals that you are passionate about. How? Simply ask yourself this question, ‘Even if I had Rs.100 Lacs, what would I still want to do and accomplish? What would I be willing to do for free if I had all the money in the world?’ The other point is to make sure that the goals you set are aligned with your life’s values. Remember that we are always driven by emotions and not logic. When our goals are truly aligned with what is important to us, we will automatically have the drive and discipline that follows. Take for example John (Baskin) Robbins. This heir to the Baskin Robbins ice-cream empire turned away from his billion dollar inheritance to lead an almost monastic life with his family and followed his heart-dream of rebuilding the Planet through his revolutionary books (Diet for a New America) and his soft speeches urging his readers and audience to help create a better and kinder world where “May all be fed, May all be healed, May all be loved.”
So, whatever your dreams, whatever your passion, make them BIG and when we get to the ‘Create Your Destiny Exercise’ in a short while, write down what you are truly passionate about and what comes from your heart rather than just from your mind.
3) Stretch Goals for Quantum Results
I believe that the most powerful goals you can set are stretch goals. This was a key ingredient that allowed me to achieve so much within such a short period of time. Most people I know tend to subscribe to setting for themselves merely incremental goals. Incremental goals are goals that are slightly higher than what you are currently achieving. For example, if you were making Rs.20,000 a month in income, an incremental goal would be Rs.25,000.
A stretch goal, on the other hand, is when you set for yourself an outcome that is way beyond your current level of ability and skill. If you were making Rs.20,000 a month, an example of a stretch goal would be one aiming for Rs.200,000 a month. So why should you set for yourself stretch goals?
Stretch Goals Excite You & Put Fire In Your Belly
There are two main reasons why stretch goals are extremely powerful. First, setting stretch goals are a lot more exciting than setting puny, incremental goals. Remember, if a goal is not exciting, you will never have the emotional drive to go for it. The thought of achieving something so much bigger than what you have will rouse your imagination and boost your energy level.
Stretch goals are goals that seem almost impossible at the time you set them, but the possibility of achieving them will create a sense of excitement and drive. It is this excitement and passion that all of us need to drive us constantly to take action! Remember, the main reason most people do not take action and go for their goals is because it does not excite them. They see it more as a chore than an adventure! If you were making Rs.20,000 a month now, would the thought of earning Rs.25,000 get you jumping out of bed? Of course not. On the other hand, the thought of believing and committing to earning Rs.200,000 will certainly drive you to take a lot more action!
It is imperative that you truly believe it is possible (remember when we said that beliefs determine everything?). When I was at the bottom of my MBA class, I set for myself crazy goals like topping the batch and qualifying for the number one IT Distribution Co in the World. The thought of possibly doing that gave me a level of excitement and energy nothing else could match! Similarly, when I set the goal of becoming an amazon #1 bestselling author writing a non-fiction, the excitement kept me awake every night working and doing whatever it took to make it a reality.
Stretch Goals Result in Stretch Strategies
Stretch goals are extremely powerful as they literally stretch your abilities and skills way beyond your current level. They force you to think out of the box and to develop ground breaking, revolutionary strategies. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Imagine if there was a high jumper who had to get over a high jump bar, how high would he decide to set the bar? Well, if he were into setting incremental goals, he would set the bar slightly higher than what he cleared the last time. If he cleared the bar at 5 feet the last time, he would set an incremental goal of 5.5 feet. With enough training and effort, he would eventually be able to clear the new height by jumping high enough. Well, what would happen if he set a stretch goal instead? Suppose, he set himself a goal to clear the bar at 50 feet? Would he be able to achieve it? Most people would say ‘No way!’ ‘That’s crazy!’ ‘Impossible.’ They are right. There is no way he will be able to do it…if he keeps to his current way of thinking and strategy. But did I say that he had to jump over the bar from the ground? No! Jumping is just an assumption that we all make, since it is what he has always been doing.
What if he could use any strategy known to man to get across the bar? Would it then be possible? Of course! If you start thinking out of a box, you could come up with a million ideas – like using a trampoline, pole vault, a helicopter, a rope, a ladder, be a human cannonball or even shorten the legs of the pole! You see, as long as we keep setting targets that are incremental, we will always have the tendency of doing what we are used to do. We will always keep to the same paradigm of jumping from the ground. We will just keep working harder and harder doing the same thing over and over again. However, the moment we set a stretch goal, our brain knows immediately that it is impossible to reach the goal, if we keep to that same paradigm. It then forces us to think out of the box and come up with revolutionary ideas to achieve that goal! As a result, we tap so much more of our own potential.
Setting Crazy Stretch Goals… Will Get You Exceptional Results
Setting crazy stretch goals has been one of the main reasons why I have been able to achieve so much more than my peers. If I had thought incrementally like everyone else, what goals would I have set? I would have been ‘realistic’ and planned to graduate at 25, get my first job, make Rs.50,000 a month at best and take 5- 10 years to gain enough experience and money to start my own business at 55. By the time I am in a position to make Rs.1.5 Lac per month, I would be 55 years old. And, hopefully, if I worked and saved hard enough, I could retire by age 60. If I had set such incremental goals, I would have taken the conventional path, doing what everyone else does, except probably work a lot harder. (Nothing wrong taking the conventional route as long as you are content with your incremental raises and small achievements.) Because I set a stretch goal of making over Rs.5 Lac at the second year of my own business, it forced me to do things other people would never think of doing. It forced me to think out of the box.
It made me create stretch ideas and strategies such as leaving my job at Singapore and starting a life coaching business in India while still learning tricks of the trade, investing heavily in my own training, marketing and personal development courses and books, cramming to finish a three tired NLP course in less than one and a half years, writing my first book and taking one on one NLP Lifestyle coaching; all this while I was still learning NLP full time. Then, while I succeeded in these ventures, I was receiving conventional business offers like starting franchisee setups for Thomas Cook Travel Co etc etc. I turned them all down. Everyone thought that I was a dreamer making a stupid mistake in doing my own thing, but I knew that if I took the conventional route of ‘jumping’, I would never be able to achieve exceptional results!
The Bank that Used Stretch Thinking to Break Through Restrictions
Now, let me give you an example of how stretch thinking enabled a foreign bank in Singapore to expand, despite regulations that could have limited their operations. This is how it happened. Because of strict regulations imposed on foreign financial institutions in the past, foreign banks like Citibank were only allowed to have three branches in the country, as compared to the hundreds of branches that local banks were allowed to have. If Citibank wanted to be ‘realistic’ and think incrementally because of these restrictions, it would simply have done what every other foreign bank did. Instead, they set stretch targets of becoming a major player in the consumer credit market as well as having a significant market share in the high-end retail bank market. Citibank did this because they knew that with their restricted number of branches, it would be extremely inconvenient for people to bank with them. If they followed conventional ways of doing business, their market share would shrink.
This stretch target forced them to think out of the box and pose themselves this question.‘Who says people have to come to the bank to do banking?’ When they challenged this paradigm about banking, they gave birth to the idea of ‘phone banking’. It was an overnight success. Many people chose to make all their major banking transactions from their home. Sure enough, all the other banks followed this revolutionary idea. However, a major hassle was the inconvenience of having to go down to the bank to deposit cheques. While most other banks required the customer to do this, Citibank again changed the rules by offering its customers the simple option of putting their cheques into a self addressed envelope and dropping it into any post box. The cheque would be automatically banked in. They literally converted every post box in Singapore into a Citibank branch! As a result, Citibank continues to be one of the market leaders in the banking industry. This shows that when you set stretch targets, it will lead you to stretch strategies and quantum results.
I facilitate Thought Leaders, Change Makers; Professionals & Business Owners translate NLP concepts into actions to achieve and elicit personal excellence. I conduct NLP Lifestyle Coaching Certification programs for individuals, corporate and celebrity clients. In the next article, you will learn about Why You Must Start Setting Goals. And after that you will come to know in subsequent articles, how you can utilize concepts of NLP+ in all walks of your life to replicate the success blueprint of a winner mindset to win through life. So, stay tuned every Monday & Saturday and fasten your seat belt to ‘Enhance Your Lifestyle With NLP+’)
Shantanu Das Sharma, Creator of the concept NLP Lifestyle Coaching with NLP+ and Founder of Neuromind Leadership Academy is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author, NLP+ Lifestyle Master Trainer & Coach, First Certified Social Panorama Consultant in Eastern India directly trained under Dr. Lucas Derks, Clean Language Facilitator & Strategic Interventionist. To explore about NLP+ Lifestyle Coaching you may visit http://shantanudassharma.com/nlp-lifestyle-coaching/
