People have been saying for years that writing down a goal is one of the best ways to ensure success in attaining it. However, as with so many success systems, it sounds so simple that people don’t really believe that it works.
Well, it DOES work, and by understanding the process, you will gain confidence in this simple, yet very effective method of attaining your goals.
There are 3 ways that writing down a goal will help you to accomplish it, and the beauty of this system is that you benefit from all 3 of these each and every time that you write it down. By making a daily practice of writing down a goal, you will automatically get 3 benefits from one simple effort.
Conscious Statement
Whenever we first decide that we want to accomplish something, we tend to be very excited about it, and very motivated to do “whatever it takes” to get the job done. However, over the course of time, we tend to lose that enthusiasm because we are not frequently reminded of whatever it is that we wanted to accomplish.
By making the daily effort to write down our dreams and desires, we remind our conscious selves of the commitment that we made. By writing down a goal every single day, it becomes quite impossible for us to lose sight of it.
Rather than allowing our hectic lives to get in the way of our success, the constant written reminder of what we want causes us to create our daily lives around the attainment of those desires.
Subconscious Programming
Even more powerful than the conscious reminder about what we want, writing down a goal very effectively programs our subconscious mind to work “behind the scenes” on the attainment of our desires.
The subconscious mind has constant access to all knowledge, memories, and experience, and it is able to manipulate that information in such a way that – quite frankly – our conscious minds could never even hope to compete with. Our subconscious minds control 90%-95% of our lives, so programming that massive super-computer is a guaranteed method of getting what we want out of life.
I recently started writing down my primary goal at the top of a piece of paper that holds my to-do list each day. In less than 5 days I had no less than half a dozen really good ideas about how to attain that goal.
Here is the kicker, though: Each idea came to me completely out of the blue while I was doing something totally unrelated to what I want to accomplish. My subconscious was simply chewing on my written down desires each day and sending me inspiration as new ideas or methods were discovered.
It doesn’t get any easier than standing around doing nothing while your subconscious does all of the heavy lifting!
External Factors
How many people in your life know what your goals are? One, maybe two people? Not even that many?
The simple truth of the matter is that people often have trouble defining exactly what it is that they want, and even fewer actually share their deepest desires with others.
How are other people supposed to help you if they don’t even know what it is that you want?
At home, are your goals written down in the kitchen, the bathroom, or other public areas? Even if your kids and your spouse consider you a certifiable lunatic for thinking that you can write a novel about The 50 Best Ways to Eat Peanut Butter and Crackers, is that goal so much in their face that they might possibly tell others about it?
- Your child may go to school with another child whose parent is a publisher of weird and unusual books.
- Your spouse might work with someone that is married to a caterer who is looking to start joint ventures with people who have unique ideas for food preparation.
- Your visiting neighbor might have experience with the cheapest and fastest ways to self-publish a book, or they may have connections in the publishing industry.
At work, is your goal of someday owning the company written down in plain view where all of your co-workers, managers, and customers can see it?
- Negative, energy-sapping co-workers tend to stay away from driven, goal-oriented people.
- Managers tend to give opportunities to people with a demonstrated and obvious drive to succeed.
- Customers tend to trust businesses whose employees openly see long-term success with the company that they work for.
In each of these examples, not only do you benefit from your own efforts, but you can potentially benefit from the knowledge, experience, or connections of people who know what you are trying to accomplish. Let other people do some of the work for you!
The bottom line is that writing down a goal is the simplest and most effective method that you will ever find to accomplish or attain anything that you desire in life.
It’s simple, it’s fast, and it’s free. Why wouldn’t you do that??
