HealthMoneySuccess.com » Personal Development

This Is Your Life And They Have No Rights To Tell You How To Live

Vincent — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:44:42 +0000

I don’t have a clue to what you are doing but I know you will fail.

Goal seekers are dreamers and dreams don’t come true.

Artists are starves and they are poor.

You must be very talented or a genius in order to write a book. You ain’t both so you can’t write.

You have to find a job.

Chocolates are good for your health.

Find a job, get married, settle down and wait for death.

Travelling overseas is dangerous.

You can’t do _____, because you don’t have a relevant college degree.

I’m afraid of this, and you should be afraid too.

I had failed once, let me tell you now that you are going to fail.

Are You Living Your Life Or Other People’s Life

There are tons of free advice out there and many people will try to impost their rules and limitations on you. If you are not careful, you can easily fall into their way of thinking and you will be trapped in their false rules and limitations. One key to living free in life is to make sure that you guard against these people. These are the people who will gladly offer you the shackles to trap you in their own world.

Seeking advice is good. But one must always be aware of the source of advice coming from. Just like you don’t take financial advice from a carpenter, I don’t expect you to to take advice from someone who haven’t achieve what you want to achieve.

There are tons of free advice from people who haven’t even tried what you want to do and people who had failed. If you tell them any of your endeavors that you are about to take, they will beat you down with 101 reasons why you will fail. Why would you believe them if you know they themselves haven’t even tried? Their failure also doesn’t equates to your failure.

They may mean good because they don’t want to see you fail. But their form of kindness is cruel to your dreams and goals. You only have a limited amount of time on earth and you have only one life to spare. Live your own life. Others have no rights to tell you how to live your life.

When people offer to give me free advice to destroy my dreams, I’ll say, “No thanks, I have a life to live and a dream to fulfill.”

Following Up:

How to increase the possibility of achieving your goals? Use this ultimate goal setting guide to set your goals and achieve them.

Here are 7 reasons why you should work for yourself instead of working for your boss.

Post from: Health Money Success

This Is Your Life And They Have No Rights To Tell You How To Live

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 6: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

Vincent — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:50:05 +0000

GSPET – Tracking And Review

Tracking is the only way you can know whether you are moving in the right direction
~ Vincent Tan

An airplane is off course 90% of the time but how does it get to reach its destination? By consistently tracking the direction it is flying and making the necessary changes along the way.

Tracking is important because if you do not track your progress, you will not know whether you are moving in the right direction. If you don’t want to get lost or end up somewhere that you don’t want to be, then you need to start tracking your progress now.

The more you track and review your progress, the less likely you will stray off the track. If you want to reach your goals, you better make sure that you are tracking and reviewing your progress regularly.

Tracking Your Progress With These 5 Factors In Mind

1. Track Regularly

You need to track your goals regularly and this means tracking your progress daily.

There are people who review their goals once per year. However, it is too late at that time to make any changes. You want to keep your eyes on your goal at all time. Doing your tracking regularly is going to help you to achieve that.

If your goal is important to you and you decide to make this your breakthrough year, you had better make sure that you are tracking and reviewing your progress every single day. It is much harder to get off track when you are tracking regularly.

It is like driving a car. You won’t want to get your eyes off the road because you want to stay on track and avoid getting into any accident.

2. Tools For Tracking

You can simply use a pen and paper or use Excel spreadsheet to help you track your progress. Open Office or Google Docs are good free alternatives if you do not have Microsoft Office.

Write down your goals and list down the tasks that you need to do (you should come out with your tasks in Part 2 of the series) to help you track your progress.

Simply go through them and check the tasks off whenever you completed. This helps to give you motivation, as you are able to see progress.

Lastly, remember to update your progress results in your tracking worksheet. You will be able to see whether are you getting desirable results when you are completing your tasks.

An example; if you are trying to lose weight, then your daily progress will be your weight and your tasks include daily exercises.

After 4 weeks of exercising, if you find that you are not losing any weight (through your tracking worksheet) even though you are completing your tasks, you will need to start rethinking about what are some changes that you need to make. The tracking worksheet allows you to see your progress at all times so that you will be able to make the necessary changes when needed.

3. 4 Important Things To Find Out

When you have a tracking system in place, you will be able to see what have you done and what are the results you are getting.

When reviewing your results, you will need to ask yourself these 4 questions.

1. What to do more
2. What to do less
3. What to stop doing
4. What to start doing

These are the changes that you will need to make to ensure that you reach your destination.

If you are trying to lose weight and after 3 weeks and you are still not getting any results, you should start asking yourself these 4 questions.

The answer may turn out to be…

1. What to do more – Include more interval training into your workout schedule that will promote fat loss.
2. What to do less – Less muscle isolation exercises that will not promote fat loss as much as interval training.
3. What to stop doing – Should stop eating refine carbohydrates for lunch. It is hindering your weight loss progress.
4. What to start doing – I should start to include more fruits into my diet to supplement my carbohydrate intake as I reduced my refine carbs. This is to prevent yourself from craving junk food.

There isn’t any plan or strategy that will be 100% foolproof. Hence, you will need to keep making minor adjustments or even change your strategy to ensure that you reach your goals. With these 4 questions, you will be able to keep making changes to ensure that you reach your goals.

4. Getting Your Critical Numbers

There are critical numbers that will affect the results that you get. For example, a salesperson will get more sales if he makes more cold call.

The number of cold call is his critical number. Do you expect salesperson A that makes 10 cold call per day to have better sales results than salesperson B that makes at least a 100 cold call per day?

The number works in the favor for Salesperson B.

There are critical numbers for the particular goal that you are pursuing and you need to know what they are.

Once you know your critical numbers, aim to increase the number. Simply by increasing the number will improve your results.

What are your critical numbers? Are you spending enough time on your new business? Are you spending enough time working out? Are you doing enough joint ventures that will help promote your business?

5. Final Evaluation

You have a deadline to your goal and you will make the final evaluation at this point.

There will be only 2 outcomes and it is either you had achieved your goal or you have not achieve your goal.

If you had achieved your goal, congrats! You are the master of your life and you are already making improvements to your life.

At this point, you may want to start thinking about what other goals do you want to achieve. Are there any other areas of your life you want to improve or passions that you want to start following? Keep on growing and improving!

If you have not achieved your goals, it is time to take a step back and reflect upon what went wrong.

You may want to look at whether have you follow through all your tasks.

If you had followed through all the tasks but you still did not achieve your goals, then go backand rethink about your strategy.

If you haven’t follow through on your tasks, then you might want to start spending some time on your planning stage again. It may be that you haven’t plan your time well to make sure that you get your tasks done.

Another possibility is that you are not motivated by your goal. Spend time thinking about your goal again. What is the underlying motivation behind your goal? Is this the goal that you truly want?

Your Goals And Your Journey

Regardless of whether have you achieve your goals or not, give yourself a pat on your back. You gave it a shot and this matter. In your pursuit of your goal, you end up gaining new knowledge and experience, which are beneficial.

The journey of pursuing your goals is rewarding and pleasurable. It is the journey that builds your character.

Finally yet importantly, remember that perseverance is the key to achieving your goals. Even though sometimes there may be obstacles in your journey, but the one who kept moving forward will ultimately have the pleasure of reaching the finishing line.

We have come to the end of the series. Thanks for reading until the end and I hope that The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide will benefit you greatly in your personal development journey.

Cheers
Vincent

Complete Series

Part 1 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Introduction to GSPET
Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals
Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy
Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan
Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality
Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

Post from: Health Money Success

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 6: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 5: Turning Dreams Into Reality

Vincent — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:36:36 +0000

Complete Series

Part 1 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Introduction to GSPET
Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals
Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy
Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan
Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality - You are at Part 5 of the Series
Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

Execution – GSPET

The important thing is somehow to begin.
~Henry Moore

This is part 5 of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Series.

If you have not read the earlier parts, please read them before you proceed with this article. The guide is written in a step by step format and you will benefit most by reading it in a sequential manner.

We have come to the most critical part of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Series. This is where you turn goals and dreams into reality.

Turning Your Dream Into Reality

When you set goals, it helps you to create a vision of what you want to achieve. However, it is only possible for you to turn your dream into reality if you are able to execute your strategies.

Your goals are like seeds and your execution is the sunlight, nutrients and water that the seed needs in order to grow. One cannot do without another.

What You Can Do To Start Taking Action?

You already did the part of coming out with strategies and planning. You had also allocated all your ETs into your daily schedule and all you need to do is to start taking action.

Taking action wouldn’t be easy if you are not clear on what you need to do. Clarity is the key.

You had done that in Part 3 and 4 of the series by coming out with your strategies, ETs and planning them into your daily schedule. You had already made it much easier to take action. All you need to do is just execute them.

Problems You Might Face

There might be some problems you might face and these includes procrastination and lack of motivation.

Here are some articles that you might want to read to help you.

In the last Part of the Series: Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time , I will be covering the topic Tracking. That will be the last part of the series and I hope everyone is having a great time setting their goals for the year and taking action.

Have an awesome day!

Cheers
Vincent

Complete Series

Post from: Health Money Success

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 5: Turning Dreams Into Reality

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 4: Time To Put Things Into Plan

Vincent — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:58:18 +0000

Complete Series

Part 1 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Introduction to GSPET
Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals
Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy
Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan - You are at Part 4 of the Series.
Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality
Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

Planning – GSPET

A goal without a plan is just a wish.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

After reading The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, you should have your goals and the strategies on how to achieve it. Right now, you need to start planning on how to make full use of your time and allocate your tasks into your daily schedule.

First thing first, you need to know your ETs (Essential Tasks). You already know what are your ETs when you are coming out with strategies to help your achieve your goals. These are the 80/20 tasks that will give you the most results with the least amount of effort and time.

What you need to do in the planning stage is to allocate your ETs into your daily schedule. In the planning phase, you will also commit all your tasks into your daily schedule to help you to follow through.

Don’t Start Your Day Without Going Through This

I like to work with a calendar and I recommend Google Calendar. It is free and it is what I use to help me plan my day.

I go through my Google Calendar everyday to help me know what are the things that I need to do for the day. This helps me to remind what my ETs and priorities are for the day. My ETs are scheduled into my day and I will make sure that I work on them.

Using Google Calendar, you will be able to plan in time blocks of 30 minutes. We will be using this feature to help you plan your time.

I set my Google Calendar in weekly format and I make plans with it every Sunday. What I do is that I allocate my ETs into my free time. I like to allocate my ETs in the morning and work on them as the first thing for the day. You can allocate your ETs on your free time or at time when you feel you are most productive.

Why plan and write down your tasks in Google Calendar? Writing down your ETs and allocating them a time block in your day means that you are making them priorities. When you write it down in your calendar, it also reminds yourself to be committed to your tasks.

If you start your day without any plan in place, there will be distractions and interruptions that will push you off track.

There will be scenarios like your friends may call you out for a drink or you may want to hang out with your friends after work. You will go ahead and attend these activities when you do not make plan for your ETs.

Having your ETs set in your Calendar means that you are committed to doing it. If your ETs are scheduled on the 7pm to 9pm time block on Thursday and your friends call you out for dinner that night, you must be able to say No to them because that is the time block that you set for your ETs. The only thing you are going to do in the time blocks that you had committed is you working on your ETs. That’s all.

You have to start protecting your time. When you make plans for your ETs that will bring your closer to your goals, you have to protect your valuable time that you can use to execute your tasks.

Start planning for your ETs. Allocate them the time blocks and give them the top priority over any other thing else.

Problems You Might Face

You might be working 9 to 5 and a huge chunk of your time is spent in your office. There isn’t much time for your ETs except the morning and night.

If you are pressed for time, don’t worry. There will be enough time but only if you know what are your priorities.

TV Sucks Life Out Of You

There wouldn’t be enough time if you spend your evening watching LOST and you choose to wake up late because you spend the previous night watching TV.

The average American spend around 4.5 hours watching TV. (I wonder how they get their time to watch TV?) That is about 1642.5 hours a year and that equates to 2 months in a year. Assuming you are 70 years old, which means that you are glued to the TV for around 12 years of your life. Is that how you want to spend your lifetime?

It doesn’t make sense if you are spending 2 months watching TV in a year and you say that you don’t have enough time to work on your goals.

I stopped watching TV programs with regularity when I’m 18. I thought that there are things much more interesting than watching TV programs.

I use these valuable time to:

Create HealthMoneySuccess
Build several niche sites
Workout regularly
Completed 3 marathon
Wrote my ebook Unleash Your Maximum Potential
Writing

There are so many things that you can do with your free time if you are able to get off the couch and stop watching the TV.

Not to mention that there are many negative media that will pollute your mind when you watch TV programs.

If you are watching TV and you complain about the lack of time, it is time to stop doing it and start creating magic in your life with the new found free time.

Internet: The Time Sucking Beast

The internet connects us to people and news all around the world. It is a good thing because we are able to get more information faster freely. It also helps us to stay connected to many more of our friends.

The downside to the internet is that we are so addicted to it that most of us can’t get through the day without staying disconnected.

Think Facebook, Email and Twitter. These are the common time wasters that many people indulge in.

If you are spending at least 2 hours a day on these social media sites then you shouldn’t complain there isn’t enough time for you to work on your goals.

Conclusion

You do have enough time. The thing that you need to know is your priorities. If you do not know what your priorities are, then you won’t have enough time even if there are 48 hours in a day.

Start planning now and schedule your ETs and tasks into your Calendar and plan for success.

Next, you can continue to read Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality

Following Up:

1) Do you know why sometimes failing is needed in life?

Complete Series

Part 1 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Introduction to GSPET
Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals
Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy
Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan
Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality - Click here to read Part 5 of the Series
Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

Post from: Health Money Success

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 4: Time To Put Things Into Plan

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 3: Coming Out With Your Strategy

Vincent — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:05:06 +0000

Complete Series

Part 1 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Introduction to GSPET
Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals
Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy You are at Part 3 of the series
Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan
Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality
Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

GSPET – Strategy

Strategy is a plan of action to help you achieve your goals.
Source~Wiki

A strategy can help you to plan your course of action to achieve your goals. Most likely you will experience frustration and failure if you fail to come out with strategies that can help you to achieve your goals.

Here are the 5 steps that you need to do to set up your own strategy.

Break things down
What do you need to achieve your goals?
What stops you from achieving your goals?
Identifying the 80/20
Create accountability

1. Break Things Down

Once you have your goals written on a piece of paper and it is time to break it down into smaller pieces to prevent yourself from being overwhelmed.

Breaking your goals down into smaller tasks or milestones can make it much easier to reach.

Here is an example:

If your goal is to lose 30 lbs, you may want to break it down into losing 2.5 lbs every 2 weeks.

You then follow up by breaking your goals down even further into tasks such aiming to run 3 times per week and perform resistance exercises 3 times per week.

You may also want to make some changes to your diet and you think that restricting yourself from eating refined carbohydrates is going to help you lose the weight fast. Hence, you aim to go without refined carbohydrates for 6 days per week and have one cheat meal.

You also come up with the plan of having an accountability partner who will help increase the chances that you will succeed in achieving your goals. Hence, you decided to seek out any of your friends who want to achieve similar goals.

This is what strategy is all about. You break things down into milestone and tasks so that you can execute them.

Remember to write down what you had broken down (milestones, tasks, etc).

2. What Do You Need To Achieve Your Goals

You need to start brainstorming about ideas to get to your goals. There are 3 questions that you need to ask yourself.

1) What do you already know?
2) What knowledge/skills do you need?
3) Is there anybody who does it better than you?

1. What Do You Already Know

You need to assess yourself on your skill/knowledge from a scale of 1 to 10. What is the skill/knowledge you already have on hand that can help you to achieve your goals?

If you want to lose weight, how much do you know about fitness, diet, fat burning, metabolism, lifestyle and nutrition?

There are so many things that you need to learn in order to achieve your goals.

If you want wealth, you need to study wealth. If you want success, you need to study success.
~Jim Rohn

Rate your skills/knowledge that you need in order to achieve your goals on a scale of 1 to 10.

Once you done that, you know where you stand and you will proceed to the next step to ask yourself….

2. What Knowledge/Skills Do You Need?

You want to make sure that you are on a scale of 8 to 10 on the skill/knowledge that you need to achieve your goals.

You will fail easily to achieve your goal if you do not have the skills or knowledge required.

You will fail easily to achieve your goal of having a slim/well cut body if you do not have any idea about metabolism, nutrition, exercises, interval training and healthy lifestyle.

Be a Master of the skills/knowledge that you need and you can easily achieve your goals. It is time to live first class!

If your goal is to lose weight, you need knowledge about fitness, exercises, diet etc.

Go and get at least 3 books and subscribe to at least 1 blog that cover topics on fitness and weight loss. You will start to learn and get all the skills that you need to achieve your goals.

The internet makes it possible for us to get all the information that we need. It all lies on our fingertips. If you want to learn something, there are tutorial types of videos on YouTube or there are blogs and books that cover on the topics that you are interested in.

The library is also a huge resource. It is a waste if you are not making full use of your library. It is free to borrow books in Singapore (I believe it is the same in your country too) and I make full use of it.

Go get some books now and start reading now about the skills and knowledge that you want to pick up. Remember, read at least 3 books and subscribe to 1 blog on the skills/knowledge that you want to pick up that will help you achieve your to achieve your goals much faster.

3. Who Does It Better Than You?

Life is too short for us to go through everything with trials and errors. There are people who had gone through what we went through and we are able to tap into their skill and knowledge just by simply modeling them. hence, seek out people who have done what you want to do and learn from them.

It will be good if you can get them as your mentor or if it is not possible, find out whether they have any blogs or books and start reading them. This can accelerate your growth and make you much better in a shorter amount of time.

3. What Are The Obstacles That Are Stopping You From Achieving Your Goals?

Brainstorming about possible obstacles that you might encounter is a great way to help you be mentally prepared for it. It You can also try to prevent the obstacle from appearing at the first place.

If you are trying to lose weight, there are many obstacles that can stop you from losing weight such as:

Festive seasons (Think junk food)
Your kitchen is filled with junk food
Lack of time to work out
Drinking with your friends
Your love of chocolates.

Or the obstacles may seem like this if you are trying to create your own business at home.

You like to spend time lying on bed.
Distractions from family
You spend too much time on surfing aimlessly online.
Procrastination is a huge problem.
Lack of time.

Obstacles will lie ahead of you when you try to pursue your goals and dreams. The only thing that matters is how you deal with it.

You don’t complain about how hard it is too conquer your obstacles. You focus on how to overcome them or prevent them from being obstacles in the first place.

I believe strongly in setting ourselves up for success. Willpower and discipline is limited and if you are depending on them to help power you through the obstacles in the long run, you are going to fail – miserably.

If you love to eat junk foods such as chocolates and you are trying to lose weight, you have a problem – a big one.

When your kitchen is filled with all kinds of junk foods, you are not going to be able to resist all the temptations of these lousy junk foods in the long run. You will give in to your temptations in a matter of time.

Why not set yourself up for success and get rid of all of the junk foods in your kitchen?

You won’t need any willpower or determination in this case and you are simply setting yourself up for success.

If you think you are wasting too much time surfing online and you can’t get anything done on your new online business, why not work offline or use applications to help you block off your time wasting sites? (Exp: Stay Focused for Google Chrome)

So ask yourself what are the obstacles that you think you are going to face and how you can prevent them from happening?

Not all obstacles can be prevented. If your obstacles can’t be prevented, at least you are mentally prepared to face it and make sure that you won’t give up on moving towards on your goals when your obstacles pop up.

Start brainstorming for your obstacles now and find ways to set yourself up for success.

4. 80/20 Principle – How To Get The Most Results In The Least Amount Of Time

The essential thing that you need to know about the 80/20 Principle is to get the biggest result using the least amount of effort.

You can read more about the 80/20 Principle in this article that I had wrote.

Not everything is equal. This includes your tasks. Since you have gone through the steps of breaking down your goals into tasks, you will need to make sure that you give priorities to the tasks that are essentials. I call these tasks ETs (Essential Tasks).

What are the essential tasks if you want to set up your own online business? It is to have a website, have a product and start making some sales.

The important thing is not about getting a new computer, chair, office or getting a logo designed. The only way you can have a successful online business is to have sales and in order to do that you will need to make sure that you have a product that you can sell on your website.

What if you want to lose weight? You want to burn fat away so that you can achieve a well cut body.

If you spend your whole time running, you may get results but you won’t get significant result unless you are doing interval training that will maximize fat burning in the least amount of time.

Go through your tasks and think about what tasks will give you the most results using the least amount of time and effort? Once you identified these tasks, put an asterix beside them or highlight them.

These are your ETs (Essential Tasks) and you will need to make sure that you prioritize them every single day. I will talk to you more about what to do about your ETs at the Planning Stage in GSPET.

5. Create Accountability: The Rope That Will Pull You Along

Do you work harder when your boss is around? Of course! You work harder (even just a little) especially your boss is around.

You don’t slack around when your boss is around isn’t it?

We will create the same effect over here. It is call accountability. The possibility of following through will increase drastically due to accountability.

Is it harder to work out alone or with a friend?

It is harder to work out alone because there will be bad days when you feel you are too tired, quarreled with your spouse or your dog peed on your favorite couch. When these happen, you have a good excuse to not workout for the day.

You can come out with 101 different excuses to stop yourself from taking steps to achieve your goals when you have no accountability. But if you promised your friend that you will go with him/her to the fitness class together, it is much harder for you to give yourself an excuse and skip the workout.

I still have my Mastermind Group (It is only 2 of us) and we meet weekly online or offline. We use the time to discuss what happened the previous week and what we will do for next week. We create accountability for our tasks and we make sure that we will complete it by next week. This will help to keep us on track and ensure that we are accountable for our tasks and taking action.

You can read more about how to create your own Mastermind Group here.

There are so many ways you can create accountability. You can create your own Mastermind Group, publish your goals on your blog, rope in your friend who want to achieve similar goals or even through posting on personal development forums (or any forum for your particular goal).

Right now, think about 3 ways that you can use to create accountability for your goals and write them down.

The next step of GSPET is the Planning Stage of the 5 steps process. This is when we will start allocating your ETs and start planning your day to make sure that you follow through. You can read next part of the series here: Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan

Cheers
Vincent

Following Up:

1) Find out how to unleash your maximum potential.

Complete Series

Part 1 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Introduction to GSPET
Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals
Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy
Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan - Click here to read Part 4 of the Series.
Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality
Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

Post from: Health Money Success

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 3: Coming Out With Your Strategy

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 2: Setting Your Goals

Vincent — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:38:24 +0000

Complete Series

Part 1 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Introduction to GSPET
Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals You are at Part 2 of the series
Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy
Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan
Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality
Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

GSPET – Goals

If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. ~Lawrence J. Peter

This is the second series of the Ultimate Goal Setting Guide. In this post, I will cover the first step in GSPET, which is G – Goals. In this series I will give you some criteria that your goals should have and do go through them when setting your goals. Here are the 5 factors that you should take note when setting your goals.

If you haven’t read the first part of the series, you can read it here now.

1. Must Be Something That You Truly Want

Even though you set your own goals, there are people who set goals that are not what they truly want.

Your parents, peers and society can put pressure on you. Hence, this will cause you to set goals to please them or you simply set socially acceptable goals (goals that are deem OK by the society).

You are setting yourself up for failure if you did that. If your goal is something that you do not want, you will end up failing or giving up.

Achieving your goals is not easy. It may be losing weight, becoming a raw foodist or setting up your own business, and you will end up failing if it is not something that you want to achieve in the first place.

Are you going to give 100% effort to achieve something that you don’t really want or you are not sure whether do you want it or not? You won’t give 100% of your effort and focus to do something that you don’t really want.

Read more about the power of certainty here.

2. What Is The Underlying Motivation Of Your Goals?

Do you want to become a millionaire?

I bet most of you said yes.

But the truth is you are not interested in being a millionaire. You are interested in the millions in the bank that will get you the car, the house, the party, the gadgets, the holiday trip and every other pleasurable item that you can get into your life.

If you want to lose weight, what is the underlying motivation to lose weight? Is it because you want to fight against a disease? Is it because you want to look good and feel good once again? Is it because you hate the way you look yourself in the mirror? Is it because you want to get into a bikni and be proud to show it off at the beach? Is it because you want to change your life for the last time?

What is your underlying motivation?

Think about what is the real underlying motivation in setting your goals and this reason will help spur you on at the point when you feel like giving up. It is your most powerful tool in helping your achieve your goals. Write down your underlying motivation.

3. Think Big, Think Huge

If you aim for pennies, you get pennies. If you aim for millions, you may not get millions but you definitely get more than pennies.

Thinking small will get you nowhere. If you think small, you get mediocre results. Even if you achieve it, where is the fun in achieving something that is small?

It is important to take small steps, but small steps are little steps that will move you towards your huge goals.

Thinking big helps. When you think big, your goals are huge and it is much more challenging. It will be easier to get yourself to be enthusiastic about your goals especially when it is something huge and challenging.

Will you jump out of your bed with energy thinking, “I’m going to try make pennies today!” or “I’m going to try make millions today!”?

Of course the latter.

Instead of trying just to lose 10 lbs, why not set a goal to get six pack abs? You will look much better at the beach. If you are setting income goals, instead of aiming to have an increment of a few hundreds, why not aim to double your income?

Go through your goals and think whether you are thinking big enough. If not, make some changes to your goals.

4. Be Specific, Very Specific

Ambiguous goals get you nowhere.

Which option will take a longer time to reach your destination?

A) When you have a rough idea of where you want to go

B) When you know exactly where you want to go

A is the correct answer! When you don’t have a clear goal in mind, you may end up running in circles.

When you have specific goals, you make things much easier for yourself. You have a clear idea of where you want to end up in and it is much more easier to plan for it.

Goals that are not specific include:

1. I want to be healthy.

2. I want to be rich.

What do you mean by being healthy? Does losing a pound means that you are healthier? Does eating less fast food means you are healthier? What is it that you mean that you want to be healthy?

Here are some examples of goals that are specific:

I want to lose 30 lbs (Health)
I want to undergo a raw food diet for 30 days. (Health)
I want to exercise 6 days a week. (Health)
I want to set up an online business. (Finance)
I want to have 10,000 subscribers to my blog. (Blog)

Look through your goals. Are they specific enough? If not, start making it specific.

5. Have A Deadline And How Do You Know You Accomplished Your Goals?

A goal without a deadline is a dream. A deadline helps you to create a sense of urgency and it helps you to get moving.

Having a deadline will give you the pressure to deliver and sometimes we need a little pressure to help us deliver.

You will also need to know how your goals are reached. This will not be a problem if your goals are specific.

If you aim to exercise 6 days a week, you can aim to complete a 21 days challenge. Once you completed the 21 days challenge, it means that you had completed your goal.

Income goals will be easier to know that you had accomplished it. You accomplished your goal once you hit the figure that you aim to hit. When you don’t know what is the criteria that you accomplished your goals, it is like running a marathon without a finishing line. It is demoralizing and you will end up giving up.

Create a deadline for your goals now and think about what are the exact criteria that will show that you had accomplished your goals.

6. What To Do With Your Goals?

First of all, your goals must meet all the criteria below (which are what we went through just now).

Must be something that you truly want.
You know your underlying motivation behind your goals.
You are Thinking Big.
Your goals are specific.
Your goals have deadline and you know what the accomplishment criteria are.

It is time to start making your goals come alive and be part of your everyday lifestyle!

A. First thing First, Write Them Down

I hope you had written down your goals and your underlying motivation for achieving your goals on a piece of paper.

When you write down your goals, you have your goals imprinted in your mind and you have lodged it in your long-term memory. Once you had written down your goals, you free up your mind and allow more space for your creativity to help you pursue your goals.

You also activate your subconscious mind or your Reticular Activation System. In short, you activated the power of your mind to help your search for ways to achieve your goals when you write down your goals.

Writing down your goals and your underlying motivation also means that you are serious about your goals and you have a way to keep yourself accountable and track your progress.

So if you have not written your goals and motivation down now, go write them down now.

B. Create A Vision Board

A vision board is a board where you paste pictures of the goals you want to achieve on it and you place it somewhere you can see it every day. We think more in pictures instead of words and pictures can invoke emotions.

When you have strong and positive emotions towards you see pictures of your goals, it makes it so much easier for you to achieve them.

When you have these strong and positive emotions, you don’t need to worry about motivation anymore. If you have something that you like so much, you will have very strong positive emotions toward it and doing it will not be a problem at all. I love running so much that I would wake up early just to go for a long run. However, I won’t be able to wake up much earlier for the day if I will need to go for a 9 – 5 job.

Read this article on how to create a vision board.

C. Go Through Your Goals Every Single Day

When you have written down your goals on a piece of paper or you have a vision board, place it somewhere that you can see it every day.

I have a morning routine when I will go through all of my goals and think what to do for the day to bring me closer to my goals.

This helps to remind me of what are the Essential Tasks (ETs) that I will need to prioritize over other tasks. ETs are tasks that will bring you closer to your goals and they are the 80/20 tasks that will have the highest impact. These ETs must be prioritized over other tasks.

I will cover more on this topic in Unleash Your Productivity Genius, my latest upcoming productivity ebook that aims to help people to defeat procrastination, takes massive action and achieve incredible results.

That will be all for today series. Start thinking about your goals for the year and think about whether your goals fit all the criteria stated above. Remember to write your goals down.

On part Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy, I will cover the other step of GSPET, which is the Strategy Stage. This is when we will start to break things down, look for your ETs and brainstorm for faster ways to achieve your goals.

Cheers
Vincent

Following Up:

1) If you are not in our awesome community yet, join us by clicking here.

Complete Series

Part 1 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Introduction to GSPET
Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals
Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy - Proceed to read part 3 of the series
Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan
Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality
Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

Post from: Health Money Success

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide Part 2: Setting Your Goals

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: The Last Goal Setting Guide You Ever Need Part 1

Vincent — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 07:10:24 +0000

Complete Series

Part 1 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Introduction to GSPET You are at Part 1
Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals
Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy
Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan
Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality
Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

Some of my readers requested me to write a goal setting guide. I believe goal setting is important and it does deserve to have a well detailed post. This is the most comprehensive guide that I had written about goal setting. However, the article is also too huge for me to post in a single post. After getting some feedbacks/polling from my readers on HMS Facebook Page, it is decided that I post this goal setting post in series.

I divided it into a few series and I will post it every following day. So in the meanwhile, read on, start setting goals for yourself, and be the best that you can be.

Step By Step Guide To Goal Setting

Having a goal is the core of personal development. We need a goal in everything we do. Having a goal give us something to look forward to and it helps to provide us with a direction.

Without a clear direction of where we want to go, we will stay idle and not move anywhere.

Having a goal is in our everyday life. You even have goals when you want to shop for groceries. Your goal is to go to the supermarket, shop for all the items in your shopping list, and get all your groceries home.

You also have goals when you drive. Your goal is your destination. You don’t leave it to chance and allow yourself to drive all across town and end up somewhere where you don’t want to be.

We are setting goals subconsciously in our everyday life. But right now, you will learn how to set goals consciously and how to set yourself up for success.

Benefits Of Setting Goals

There are several benefits of setting goals and they are:

Provide you with a clear outcome of what you want.
Focus – You will be focused because having a goal means that you have a target.
Accountability – With a goal, you can create accountability when others know about your goals.
Tracking – When you have a goal, it is easier to keep track of your progress in life. It helps to document all your goals down so that you can see how you have grown and progressed in life.
Be the best you can be – Setting goals means that you are serious about your personal growth and you want to be the best that you can be.

If you are convinced that you need to set goals and you want to, congrats! I will walk you through the whole process and introduce you to the framework of setting goals.

Setting Yourself Up For Success In 5 Steps – GSPET

Goals – Specific goals that you truly want
Strategy – Steps that will get you there
Planning – Allocation of time
Execution – Taking massive action
Tracking and Review – Getting feedback to help make decisions

Or in short GSPET

I will walk you through the 5 Steps of GSPET in order to ensure that you set yourself up for success in achieving your goals.

Throughout the whole framework, I will use various examples such as losing weight or earning a higher income. Nevertheless, it can be applied in all scenarios that I can think of. I’m just using a few examples to help you to understand the steps involved in setting goals.

In the next article, I will cover Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals, which is the first step of the process GSPET.

Cheers
Vincent

Following Up:

1) If you have not join our friendly and awesome community at HMS Facebook Page yet, you can proceed to join by clicking here.

2) I will go ahead and do a goal setting template in pdf format so that you can print it out and work out your goals.

Complete Series

Part 1 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Introduction to GSPET
Part 2 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Setting Your Goals - Proceed to read Part 2 by clicking here
Part 3 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Coming Out With Your Strategy
Part 4 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Time To Put Things Into Plan
Part 5 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Turning Dreams Into Reality
Part 6 Of The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: Keeping Your Eyes On Your Goal At All Time

Post from: Health Money Success

The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: The Last Goal Setting Guide You Ever Need Part 1

“Teach Me Something New” and Why This Is A Foolish Approach

Vincent — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:29:23 +0000

After spending 8 years of reading personal development books, I found out one astonishing fact.

There is nothing new.

I had read about personal success from great authors from Napolean Hill, Anthony Robbins, Stephen R. Covey, Wayne Dyer, Brian Tracy and many other awesome authors that I am unable to completely list down here.

These are excellent authors and they have great philosophy that I believe help many others to achieve success in their life.

I would say I learn a lot from their books but I found out that there isn’t anything new. Once you read enough personal development books, you will find out that there isn’t anything new and all you need is to understand the core message and get out there and apply the new knowledge that you gained.

Search For The Elixir Will Put You Through More Misery

Are you on the search for elixir?

Elixir doesn’t exist. I don’t believe there is anything like that and if you will be simply wasting your time if you are searching for something like this.

It is the same in personal development. Are you searching for the “next big thing” that will help you transform your life?

If you are, be prepared for more disappointments. Because there isn’t any next big thing that will help you turn your life around.

Should I Continue To Read Personal Development Books?

Even though the core message in every personal development books is similar, I don’t think you should stop reading them anytime soon.

The point that I am driving to is that you shouldn’t have the mindset that you are searching for “the next big thing” that will help you transform your life. All the ideas and concepts that can transform your life or make your life a better one can be found in almost every personal development books.

The key is to apply and follow through, which means take action!

Once you embrace the mindset that you do not need to search for the missing piece of jigsaw puzzle and just apply everything that you learn from the current personal development book that you are reading, you will experience almost instant results.

What Do You Plan To Do Now?

I believe you should keep reading and learning. Even though most personal development books contain the same core message, you tend to gain some new knowledge every time you read a new book.

If you read consistently, you learn better because repetition is the base of learning. We may not get the idea the first time we read a book, but getting the same message over and over again will help us understand it better and hopefully induce us to go and apply the knowledge that we picked up.

So stop searching for the elixir and start applying everything that you picked up from the current personal development book that you are reading. It is going to help you to get so much more in life.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Cheers
Vincent

Note: If you want to take action, read this article about overcoming analysis paralysis and this article on how to get things done even when you don’t feel like doing anything.

Post from: Health Money Success

“Teach Me Something New” and Why This Is A Foolish Approach

What If You Only Have 10 Years To Live? And What Would I Do

Vincent — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:04:18 +0000

Since Steve Jobs passed away, I have been thinking about how fragile is life. No one can predicts what will happen tomorrow and we have is only today.

I idolize Steve Jobs. He is a great innovator and he builds Apple Inc into one of the most influential and biggest company today.

He also made a speech at Stanford that I watched countless of times. I still go back to watch the video to remind myself about the valuable lessons that I had picked up.

He not only changed our life with iPod, iPhone, iPad and Mac, he also changed many lives of others with his teachings and this includes the students who attended or people who had watched his commencement speech at Stanford University.

Below is the wallpaper on my iPhone and it includes one of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs which is;

“Remembering that you are about to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Wonderful quote. The first time I read this quote, I felt enlightened and empowered that I believe I can squash any fear that want to stop me from progressing.

When our time on earth is limited and we only have a finite amount of time to do what we want to do, you wouldn’t want to spend time on things that don’t matter to you. You will shift your focus on doing things that matters and things that you believe in.

I decided that I would not conform to the society norms such as getting a job after I graduate from University or working hard and retire only at 65 years old. I also don’t want to think of traveling is a once a year event.

*Note: Retirement age is being pushed back and I can imagine it being pushed back more for the next decade. Do you really want to work to your 70s?

My Question To You – Your Last 10 Years

I find myself asking this question.

“What if I only have 10 years to live? What will I do to make it a much fuller and meaningful life that I will be proud to share with others?”

10 years is a pretty decent time. You will be able to achieve many things during this period and at the same time, it also isn’t too long for you to idle and settle.

Asking this question makes me feel clearer about what I truly want to do. I also know there isn’t anything to fear since I know time is limited and I have nothing to lose.

If I only have 10 years to live, I will make sure that I take massive action to help build HealthMoneySuccess into a blog with wide reach so that I am able to inspire more people to take charge of their life and live their best life.

This includes helping others to get out of thinking that they need to conform to the norms and stay stuck in doing things that they hate (think job) and also do things that they can enjoy while they can.

How about you?

What if you only have 10 years to live?

What are the things that you will stop doing?

What are the things that you will start doing?

Take your time and think about these questions. Write your answer down in your journal or create a Vision Board to paste your answer on it. This can help to serve as reminders so that you do not stray away from your True Path.

These questions can help you to get unstuck and help you to start moving and create the life that you desire. So spend some time to think about these questions. I believe you will find some interesting answers that will help you to start making significant progress in your life.

Cheers
Vincent

Post from: Health Money Success

What If You Only Have 10 Years To Live? And What Would I Do

How To Be Happy And Make Achieving Your Goals Easier

Vincent — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:46:29 +0000

Everyone has their own journey and each of us have our own set of goals. Our goals and journey may differ but everyone will definitely go through some hardship before they achieve their goals.

There will be time when life hits hard at you and reaching your goal seems so impossible. Some may find this journey too hard for them and give up trying altogether.

I don’t hate the fact that the journey to achieve our goals are filled with obstacles. In fact, I find them necessary. This doesn’t mean that I actively seek out problems to stress myself out. But whenever I face obstacles, I see them as challenges that will help me grow.

Barrier As A Filter

I don’t know how you feel towards obstacles and barriers that appear during your journey. However, I recommend that you see them as something positive instead of something that you want to avoid at all cost.

As I had already said, obstacles and barriers help us grow and become better at what we are doing.

Another thing about barriers and obstacles is it helps to filter away people who are not committed to their goals. It helps to separate the people who are not committed to achieving their goals from serious achievers who will surmount any obstacles in front of them.

I hope you are at the side where the serious achievers are instead of the light achievers. You can have many fancy goals to show off to others but it isn’t any big deal when you can’t achieve any of it.

Focus On Enjoying The Process, Not The Destination

I find that there are many life lessons that you can pick up from running. I had written article about 7 life lessons that we can pick up from running previously and you may want to read it first.

I don’t really like running at first. However, I run long distance every weekend now and it is something that I look forward to.

Sometimes people wonder how I can wake up early just to run and why I run long distance every weekend. Many people find long distance running boring. They rather spend that good 3 hours in the morning to sleep in rather then run.

Why is it that I can’t wait to wake up at 5 am to go for my run during the weekend and other people just want to continue lying on their bed?

It may be passion but I think there is a more important lesson here.

Learning to focus on the enjoyment of the process instead of focusing on the destination (outcome).

People focus on how hard and grueling the process will be to run 20 miles and this makes them give up before they even started.

I don’t focus on how hard my weekend runs will be. I will give up running anytime if I were to focus on the difficulties and the pain of running 20 miles.

When I think of running, I associate adventure and exploration to it. I find new destination to run every weekend. There will be new routes and new places that I can reach by foot. I take photos of places that I ran to and I share them on Facebook. I make the process of running fun and this allows me to enjoy running. The process of running makes me happy and this in turn makes it much easier for me to reach my destination.

Is Your Journey Fun?

Are you enjoying your journey? Are you finding it pleasurable to take action everyday to achieve your goals? If you are not happy during your journey and you find it so hard to move forward, you are self-sabotaging yourself.

If you are not happy in your journey and you are not enjoying it, ask yourself this question – are you focusing on enjoying the process or reaching the destination?

When you find your journey too hard to take and you associate so much pain to it, it is easy to give up on everything. However, making the process enjoyable will make it much easier for you to reach your destination.

So are your enjoying your journey? If not, it may be time to shift your focus on enjoyment of the process instead of thinking too much about the destination.

Post from: Health Money Success

How To Be Happy And Make Achieving Your Goals Easier

HealthMoneySuccess.com » Personal Development

This Is Your Life And They Have No Rights To Tell You How To Live

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