Specificity Is the Key by Denis Waitley
This is the season for goal-setting. It's the time to start with a clean slate and fill your slate for the New Year with tangible, incremental, stair-steps to your ultimate dreams.

One of the major reasons so few people reach their goals is that most people don't set specific goals and the mind just dismisses them as irrelevant. Most people want financial security, but have never considered how much money it will take. The mind cannot begin to formulate the strategies and actions required without specific information. Your mind will simply not respond to a request to get rich, have more, do better or make money. You must act like a bank loan officer with your goals.

The reason loan officers want to see a detailed business plan is that they know the entrepreneurs who are precise and specific are the ones who will succeed and pay off their loans.

If you ever begin to feel that you are losing your drive, if you feel like your energy level is down, your frustration level is up and you just can't seem to muster the enthusiasm to face a challenge, check the pulling power of your goals. You may have outgrown your current targets and lifestyle. It may be time for motivation by elevation. Raise your sights and challenge yourself with some goals that are farther out toward the horizon.

This may require more knowledge, new skills, a new lifestyle. If so, that's great! Many people resist goal-setting because they assume it leads to a formula-driven, uncreative life. Actually, the exact opposite can be true. People who passively assume that everything will somehow work out in the end can hardly be termed creative. They're not creating their lives; they're just hoping against hope that something good will happen to them.

Setting worthwhile goals is a much more imaginative approach. It's fashioning and molding the life of your choice. It's approaching your life the way an artist might stand before a new canvas, on which a beautiful painting can be crafted. There are other useful metaphors for creativity in goal-setting. The rudder of a plane, for example, is small and rigid, like a short-term goal you might accomplish in just one day. But the rudder can turn the plane in any direction the pilot chooses. In that, there's a great deal of freedom and flexibility.

Once you set a goal, you can adjust and fine-tune it any way you wish. That's creativity. And persistence is what allows you to keep progressing toward the goal no matter how many adjustments are required, and no matter how long it takes to accomplish.

The mind is the most magnificent bio-computer ever created. But remember, like a computer, it only responds to specific instructions, not to vague ideas. So come alive in the New Year! Get laser-focused on goals that are just out of reach, but not out of sight.

Get specific and achieve great things in 2011!