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If you had attended any Motivational or Goal Setting seminar, you would find that one particular philosophy is commonly preached. That is to put yourself on the line! This means making a public commitment that you are going to achieve the goal. For example, if you want to write a book, you will publish brochures detailing the launch date of you book. This kind of motivation is known as “Putting Yourself On the Line!”

2 years ago, I put myself on the line. And i thought by doing that i will succeed. I took a scholarship with a MNC for my university studies and in exchange i had to work for the company for 4 years. Just as i started work, i set myself a goal to make $1M by the age of 30. 10 months onwards, I decided that staying with the company will not enable me to achieve my goal, as the demands of a scholar left me with hardly enough time to sleep, much left any time to achieve my goal. I then took the less traveled road of breaking my bond.I borrowed $70k from my future parents-in-law and my girlfriend’s sister. Sad to say my own family was not able to afford it. I wrote an IOU to them, and promised to pay them back within 4 years.

I had thought with “Putting myself on the line” kind of motivation, i will achieve my goals! I set the goal when i was 25 years old, now i am 27 years, two years on, and sadly i am nowhere near…

I realized why i failed to achieve my goals, and i want to share my experience here. The following 5 step process is what i learned from the most successful people

Before i continue, Lets go through a few terms here.

Definition

Submodalities - simplified definition refers to the visual, auditory, kinesthetic codes you give to the images in your mind.

Associated - means you are physically in the movie, playing the character, and feeling every emotion and actions.

Dis-associated - means you are looking at yourself in the movie, seeing yourself doing the actions and feeling the emotions. The intensity is much reduced as compared to an associated state

To achieve your goals, it takes more than just putting yourself on the line. AssociationIf you do not fully associate yourself with your goals, you will lose your motivation. Full associations mean, you see yourself achieving your goal in your mind, and the picture or movie that you are playing inside your head is bright, colourful, large, near to you, and fast moving, and most importantly, you are fully associated! You want to achieve your goals because you want to experience the same kind of emotions that you see yourself experiencing when you reach your goals! This kind of feeling is the passion that drives people to wake up early and sleep late at night, and even thinking about ways to achieve your goals in your dreams!

5 Steps to Achieve Any Goals

1) Define your goals - > make it specific and measureable and set a dateline. For example, it is not sufficient to say you want to make $, you have to state how much exactly you want to make, and in what dollars, and when you want to make it.

2) Power of Why -> Having a strong “why” will lead to the necessary “how”. Think deeply about it why do you want to achieve your goals? Is it for your family, so that you can give them a better standard of living? Or is it because deep inside you are underachieving, you know you are worth much more than what you are earning now.

3) Create the Environment - > It been said that your income will mirror the average of the 5 closest person you hang on with most often. We are social animals. We need to mix with people, and very often, through socialization, our expectations began to mirror that of others. Isn’t is true that we all want to achieve high goals, but we are also willing to settle for less? The reason is because we have a minimum income that we are comfortable with. If you do not believe, do a calculation and find if your income is roughly the same as the average income of the 5 closest persons to you. Be truthful.

This means that if you want to raise your income, you will have to raise your threshold! If you want to achieve your goal, go find the people who are making the level of $ you desire, and make friends with them. The end result is that we want to raise the threshold you are comfortable with to the level which is your goal.

4) Put yourself on the line! - This is where this powerful step comes in. Making a public commitment, together with the steps listed here, will definitely drive you! Think of it as the turbo boost when driving a Subaru WRX or Mitsubishi Evo.

5) Daily Visualization - Nothing empowers a parent more than the mere thought of his/her child suffering. Visualization is the final crucial step. When you visualize, you have to be fully associated, meaning you are the lead character in the movie, you are standing the way you want to stand and feeling the same as when you achieved the goal! Its not just thinking about your goal. That would be more of dis-association. Dis-associated goals do not motivate you. Think about the times when you were procrastinating about certain thing, were the images in your brain dull, soft and slow, and perhaps in black and white?

For me, Step 5 is the most important step. I still remember a few years back when i achieve the goals i set for myself when i was in my sports team. That was the time when i eat, sleep, drink and breathe about the playing the way i wanted to play each and every day. I see it in my mind, before i do it, and i keep thinking about it every day. And true enough i progress rapidly over the months and reach my goal of playing exactly the way i wanted to.

There you have it. Hope this will help you to achieve the goals you set for yourself.