To reach your goals, you must write down precisely what you want.
A lot of people only have vague ideas about what they really want. They desire more money, a better job, someone to love and build your future with or the chance to travel somewhere exotic.
You may have similar desires of your own. But if you want to make them a reality, you need to be precise.
So rather than saying “I want money,” say, “I want exactly enough money to open a restaurant.” And when it comes to love, figure out exactly what you’re looking for. (don’t make the list too implicated though) Maybe it’s someone who is funny, kind and doesn’t mind that you don’t want to have kids or what’s so over.
Being so specific might sound extreme, but if you want to reach your goals and not veer off course, you need to know exactly what it is you want.
Once you’re clear on your goals, write them down on paper.
Breakdown
There are a number of success stories that show the power of writing down our dreams.
Jim Carrey has a famous story of writing himself a check for $10 million, when he was just an aspiring actor. Sure enough, years later, he was earning $10 million per film!
Then there’s the football player Lou Holtz, who had not one but 107 different goals for his life – and he wrote down each and every one of them. He did this in 1966, when he was unemployed and just 28 years old. Among his goals were to meet the president of the United States, coach a football team and hit a hole-in-one golf shot. Amazingly, now 50 years later, Holtz has fulfilled nearly every goal. On his website, you can see photographs of him shaking hands with both the president and the pope; as the coach of the University of Notre Dame football team, he won the 1988 national championship; and as for his luck at golf, he’s managed to hit not one, but two hole-in-one shots – so far.
When you set concrete goals for yourself, there is no limit to what you can accomplish. But you may harbor some doubts, so let’s take a closer look at the power of pen and paper.
You can prime your brain to recognize opportunities that will help you reach your goals.
See if this sounds familiar: your mother calls to say she’s bought a new car – let’s say it’s a silver Toyota Yaris – which surprises you since you’ve never heard of this car before.
The next day, however, you start to see this car everywhere you go, and many of them are silver, too! How is this possible?
This is the magic of your brain’s filtering system, known as the Reticular Activating System, or RAS.
The RAS is what allows us to sharpen our attention, and it can be primed to notice, or not notice, certain things.
Parents of newborns are familiar with the RAS, as it is what allows them to sleep through just about anything, like traffic noise or a blaring television, yet wake up at the slightest peep from their baby. This is due to their RAS being biologically primed to hear when a child is in need.
This is the same mechanism that will allow you to hear when your name is mentioned across the room at a loud party. Despite the music and dozens of simultaneous conversations, when this happens your ears will perk up and you’ll find yourself suddenly being able to overhear a conversation that was mere background noise just seconds earlier.
What’s more, the RAS can also help you achieve your goals. When you write those clearly defined goals on paper, you’ll prime your brain to begin its unconscious work on the project.
After you write down your goals, your RAS filter will constantly be on the lookout for messages or information that will help your quest. So, after writing down that you want enough money to open a restaurant, you’ll be primed to overhear someone at a party who says they have a history of investing in restaurants. Otherwise you never would have noticed.
Writing down your fears is a way of acknowledging them and breaking the spell they have over you.
The RAS is a great example of how unconscious activities in our brain help us realize our dreams.
But we all also have unconscious fears, which are often tied to our goals, like big obstacles. However, by doing the same thing and writing these fears down on paper, you can help yourself recognize and conquer what stands in your way.
For aspiring writers, the biggest obstacle is often the fear of being rejected by a publisher. Because of this fear, many writers will send their work to a small number of publishers and give up hope when those two or three rejection letters come back. Immediately, they start to believe they aren’t good enough and should let go of their dream of being a writer.
This wouldn’t happen if they had acknowledged their fear of rejection ahead of time by writing it down. If they had, they’d know that a few letters would only be a temporary setback. They would also remember that countless brilliant and best-selling authors, like Frederick Forsythe and J.K. Rowling, received dozens of rejection letters before becoming wildly successful.
Of course, the fear of rejection and criticism isn’t isolated to writers. Many of us share those fears, and they’re a primary reason we end up pushing our dreams aside. When fear goes unacknowledged, it sits in the gut, where it festers and acts like a spell that keeps you from being creative or having confidence in your power to follow through with your ideas.
Writing down your fears can break this spell, but again, you have to be as precise as possible so that you become conscious of these fears and they gradually lose their power over you. Once you do this, you’ll see how well you’ll be able to recognize a fear for what it is and begin to unlock your true potential.
So let’s start all writing our goals, wishes and also our fears… Good start for 2018:)
Love, Marietta
