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How to Make Life Work For You Dreams and Goals"Dreams" and "Goals" have a subtle shade of meaning. "Dreams" are those great, wonderful things in life you want to have and do. "Goals" are your determined destiny to have and do them.
You must have Dreams. When we are children, we dream about being a cowboy, a nurse, an astronaut, Superman, Wonder Woman, or anything at all. When we get older, in our teen years, we may dream about have the man or woman of our dreams, our house, the horses, the pools, the money, the success, the cars, countless wonderful things. When we get married and settled in life, we dream about such things as, Can I keep my job, Can I pay the bills, Will I ever be debt-free? Do you see the subtle change that has taken place? Right now you need to identify your dreams in life. What do you really want? In wild fantasies, what would you like to have accomplished before you die. Don't let the thought, "But I could never do that," creep in. Just dream. What would you like? What do you want to do? If you could have or do anything, what would it be? Would you want to be debt-free, never to be in debt again? Own your dream house? Have a permanent income over $200,000 per year? Attend Oktober Fest in Munich? See Ayers Rock in Australia? Develop a permanent meaningful relationship with a wonderful spouse? Care for your parents from now on? Send your children to the college of your choice? What exactly do you want in life? You have no hope of getting what you want if you don't identify what it is you want. Identify it. Write it down. You Must Set Goals In 1953 Yale University started a multi-year study on the effects of goal setting. It first taught its students how to set goals. Then it surveyed them, to learn who had set their goals and who had actually written them down. Eighty-seven percent of the students had done nothing. Ten percent had firmly fixed their goals in their minds. Only three percent actually followed through, designed their goals in life and wrote them down. Twenty-five years later, in 1978, Yale University followed up on those students. They found that those ten percent who firmly fixed their goals in their minds had done more than the combined eighty-five percent who did not. Then, to the amazement of everyone, the three percent of those students who had actually written down their goals had accomplished more in their lives than the combined eighty-seven percent who did not. This lesson is clear. You must have goals in life. You must define what it is in life you want to accomplish, and you must write it down. Zig Ziggler is fond of telling this story involving Howard Hill, the world famous archer. Howard Hill was the world's greatest archer in the early twentieth century. He was the only man who killed a bull elephant with a bow and arrow. He could hit the bull's eye on a target every time. He could split the arrow he had previously shot. There was no archer greater than Howard Hill. "However," Zig would say, "in one day I could have you shooting arrows better than Howard Hill. All I would have to do is blindfold Howard Hill, spin him around 30 times and aim him in the wrong direction." "But Zig!" you would say, "NOBODY can hit a target he can't see." "EXACTLY!" he replies, "And you cannot hit a target you don't have." You cannot get what you want in life unless you actually identify what it is you want, and write it down. Like what? What if you don't really know what your great mission in life is? What should you do then? This principle of identifying and writing down what you want does not imply one great goal in life. You should use this practice on everything. You should develop the habit of writing down your dreams and goals. Here are some things that a person might write down.
Next you should combine those items that include other items. For example, "Buy a car that runs" could be included in "Buy a second car." Then you should eliminate contradictory items. "Visit Egypt next year" and "Pay off all my bills within two years" could be contradictory. I'm not saying you will positively get everything you want and write down. I am saying you probably will not get it if you don't write it down. You cannot go anywhere if you don't take a first step in that direction. The first Great Step of getting what you want is to identify your dreams and write them down. Define Your Dreams - Carefully and Exactly. Don't say you want a raise in pay if you don't even want to have a job. Don't say you want money if what you really want is to send your children to college. When you go to a hardware store to buy a drill bit, you don't buy it because you want a drill bit. You don't want a drill bit. You want a hole. You buy the drill bit because you want a hole. Be specific in what you really want. When you define your dream, don't define it as that thing which is designed to give you the dream. For example, suppose you want to earn a million dollars per year, and the only way you can think to do that is to become a medical doctor. So you list as your dream, your goal in life, is to become a medical doctor. That's wrong. List what you want, not what you think you must do in order to get it. There is a dream, what you want, and there is a vehicle, designed to give you what you want. Don't confuse the two. If you want a million dollar income per year, then state that. But if you want to be a medical doctor for the love of being a doctor, for the good you can do, then state that. But don't confuse the vehicle with the destination.
Go now to Decisions.
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