Hang out there and feel free leave your thoughts and suggestions. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!

Post Your Goals Online and Achieve Them!

I’ve been tweeting, digging, facebooking, stumbling, linkedining (the last one sounded weird) for a while now. And I thought, “why not hack into the ever popular social media concept and come up with a new way of setting goals?” So I’ve designed a way for you to post your goals online, with a photo. Let me explain.

There are some web applications out there that allow you to post your goals online and help you keep track of it through their own system. Some might think that it’s useful. However, did they ever become famous from helping people achieve their goals? Hardly.

The best way to set your goal is to write them down on a paper and stick it on a place that’s visible to you whenever you get down to work. But, in order to increase your chances of actually achieving your goal, you need to make it accountable. What do I mean by that? You have to let other people know your goal and keep you accountable for it. Otherwise, you’d definitely goof around because no one’s keeping tabs on you. I know I would.

Once you know that someone is looking at your goals, you’d feel uncomfortable NOT to take do anything for your goals. And so, I designed this simple system for you to post a picture of your written goals on a piece of paper (stick-it notes, notepad, tissue paper, etc). Once you send the picture to me through email, I’ll review it and post it on this page. It’s that simple.

You can even ask your friends and family to visit the blog and post their goals too, and keep each other on track. I’m open to any suggestions or ideas as to how to make the system better.

Optional

The next few things are optional, you can choose to state your name, whether you want your email to be visible to others, and whether you want a monthly reminder to gauge your progress (no spam and strictly once a month, promise!).

Remember it’s all optional, so you could just submit the photo anonymously and I’ll post it here on my blog without disclosing anything to anyone. I’m calling for this movement of change to help you set your goals and actually achieve them.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to use the comment section below or reach me through the form on the contact page. Okay, we’re not perfect, it’s not like you’d achieve your goals 100% of the time if you write them down, we’re not saints. But if you don’t, the chances are very slim.

Would you take the chance? Now, post your goals and stop talking about going to gym as your New Year’s Resolution! (which will usually last a month, good business for the gyms though!)

To post your goals, send me your picture through email at goals@thinkbigthinkmoney.com. Meanwhile, check out other people’s goals below!

GOALS ONLINE

So, here’s the first goal (mine!):

Ken, author of “Think Big Think Money”

I got this goal from Simona Gašperšič from Slovenia in Europe! It’s in Slovenian language so I used Google to translate it to English. Just in case you don’t know, click on this Slovenia’s map. It’s in between Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia. Interesting, good luck Simona!

UPDATE: I’ve moved the “Post Your Goals” page to the new “Goal Setting” parent category as I think it fits better here. I still have a little over a month to achieve my goals of 10,000 visitors posting. But at least I’ve achieved my minimum goal of 1 person, and honestly I haven’t been pushing this as far as I should. I’d like to focus on creating good content instead of running new projects, which are exciting but time-consuming. And in case you wonder what “minimum” goal is, read the MTO goal setting method here.

Also, if you’ve noticed, I’ve failed to achieve my goal by 9,999 people. But at least it got one person to post his goal online.

Lesson learned: Never start a project if you are not going to follow up. It just defeats the purpose. In fact, I have not been promoting “Post Your Goals Online” at all. It will stay at the backburner for now.

Post Your Goals Online and Achieve Them!

I’ve been tweeting, digging, facebooking, stumbling, linkedining (the last one sounded weird) for a while now. And I thought, “why not hack into the ever popular social media concept and come up with a new way of setting goals?” So I’ve designed a way for you to post your goals online, with a photo. Let me explain. There are some web applications out there that allow you to post your goals online and help you keep track of it through their own system. Some might think that it’s useful. However, did they ever become famous from helping people achieve their goals? Hardly.

The best way to set your goal is to write them down on a paper and stick it on a place that’s visible to you whenever you get down to work. But, in order to increase your chances of actually achieving your goal, you need to make it accountable. What do I mean by that? You have to let other people know your goal and keep you accountable for it. Otherwise, you’d definitely goof around because no one’s keeping tabs on you. I know I would. And so, I designed this simple system for you to post a picture of your written goals on a piece of paper (stick-it notes, notepad, tissue paper, etc). Once you send the picture to me, I’ll review it and post it on the “Post My Goals!” page. It’s that simple. You can even ask your friends and family to visit the blog and post their goals too, and keep each other on track. I’m open to any suggestions or ideas as to how to make the system better.

To post your goals, send me your picture through email at goals@thinkbigthinkmoney.com. Meanwhile, check out other people’s goals at “Post My Goals!”!

How Written Goals Will Help You Beat 97% of the Population.

In 1953, a survey was handed out to the graduating seniors at Yale University to assess how many of them have predetermined goals in their life committed to paper. The results showed that only 3% of them actually have their objectives laid out black and white. 20 years later, another survey was done to the same group of people, and the 3% who committed their goals to paper had accomplished much more than the other 97% who had not written it down.

You can probably guess that, the 3% people most likely also earned more money than the other 97% people. This goes consistent with what Bob Proctor always said, “1% of the population earns 97% of the money out there!” There are definitely reasons why the 97% people did not set those goals on a piece of paper, even though it’s obvious to you and me that they’re crucial for goal-setting. Based on Zig Ziglar’s motivational podcast, I came up with the following reasons:

1) 97% of the Americans have never been sold to the idea of committing goals to paper, even though they’ve been told by some other people. This is exactly what I’m trying to do here, to sell you the idea that you need to write your goals on a piece of paper: either on stick-it notes, or color papers, or notepads, or your hands! In order to make a change, you need to realize the need for a change, and a push during the change.

2) Somebody has to show them that they can set those goals, which is really simple, and I’ve prepared a FREE goal-setting template for you, all you have to do is to sign up for the email newsletter on the right sidebar. It’s a combination of a few success and goal-setting lessons that would guarantee your reaching the goals, provided you’re willing to take the action.

3) Fear of being wronged. Zig said, “If you say you gonna do something, and then you don’t do it, you will feel that you’ve been wronged at the top of your voice.” How true, and even if you don’t share it with anybody, as long as you’ve written them down, it means you’ve committed to the goal. And if you don’t reach the goal, you’d feel like you’ve failed. To me, I’d probably justify to myself that I didn’t really want to reach those goals anyway, they aren’t that important. After all, I’m not gonna admit that I’ve failed! Have you ever done the same thing?

4) They don’t think they deserve to live the life they’ve always wanted. They don’t think they deserve a great family relationship, a prosperous lifestyle, a healthy body, a happy life. But, you need to think BIG! And it’s what this blog is all about. I love the quote by Zig Ziglar,

“You can get what you want in life, if you would just help enough other people get what they want.”

So, do you think you deserve to have all the things you want the most in life? If you’re willing to be proactive and take action, you do.

5) They stopped learning, stopped growing, stopped achieving. Most people think that they’re done with education after college, be it bachelor, master, or PhD. But seriously, education is about life-long learning. The college education is crucial for the foundation, but what you do after that will determine whether you’ll be successful or not. Once you stop learning, you will no longer feel the need to change, to reach a goal, to find your dream. Again, if you don’t realize the need for a change, you wouldn’t even have a goal, not to mention writing it down on a paper. A question to ask yourself:

How can you reach a goal, which you do not have?

Do you have messes in your life? That desk you’ve been trying to clean up, the closet full of clothes you don’t want, the to-do lists you’ve kept adding but not ticking off!

If you’re one of those people that have messes all over the place, be it your house or your workplace or even your mind, you should keep reading.

Everyone mess makes you feel small, demeans you. When your stuffs are going all over the house, office (or your body!), don’t you think it’s time to spruce up and make yourself feel good? It’s the least you could do for yourself. After all, you’ve been spending all your time and energy at work, why not give some to yourself? Start appreciating yourself!

In addition, you feel uncomfortable if everywhere you go is messy. Don’t you feel bad when your laundry is scattered all over the house? Don’t you resent yourself when you’ve been procrastinating on getting the messes cleaned up? You’ll feel much, much better about yourself, and will have more energy to focus on the things that are important to achieving your goals.

Okay, so you’ve decided to stop putting up with something mediocre? Let’s see what you can do:

First step is to come up with a complete list of the “get-rid-of-mess” goals you want to achieve. It could be just a simple list with all the messes you want to tackle today. It’s important to focus on things that you could start doing right away, otherwise you’d most likely procrastinate again!

Next, attack the easiest one that you’re confident you can sweep off right now. Don’t go for the tough one because you’ll most likely get defeated in the first try and stop trying. For instance, don’t go around cleaning the entire house – kitchen, bathroom, desk, bedroom, closet etc, when you can just easily clean up only your kitchen today! Combine this along with the MTO goal-setting method and it should not be such a daunting task after all. Now that I’ve written about this, I think it’s time to clean up my rather messy desk! Do let me know how it goes through email/facebook/twitter!

The idea of cleaning up your messes come from Raymond Aaron’s Blog and his book, “Double Your Income Doing What You Love”.

(Photo: General Wesc)

I’ve recently learned a new goal setting method from Raymond Aaron, a renowned business and life coach in America. This method and all his other concepts and ideas greatly resonate with me and made me buy his book almost instantaneously! It’s called “Double Your Income Doing What You Love”.

So, what’s the method? It’s the MTO method!

M: Minimum

T: Target

O: Outrageous

Raymond explains that when you set your goals, you should break them down into 3 levels, namely M, T, and O. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you want to work out 3 times a week, for the rest of your life, beginning from this week. Your minimum goal should be set to 1 session per week, target should naturally be 3 times / week, and finally outrageous goal would be something like 5 sessions a week (or every day if you’re really ambitious!).

The idea here is that as much as most people strive to hit their target consistently, they might falter once and miss their goal. They might feel defeated and guilty because of that, and give up entirely. But once you apply the MTO method, even if you don’t hit the target, you would feel good because you’ve at least hit the minimum goal (it’s so easy!). And if you manage to hit the target consistently, you might decide to try and strike your outrageous goal once. It’d be an awesome experience.

Check out Raymond’s videos on MTO method by going here.

(Photo: wili_hybrid)

I’ve been listening to Bob Proctor’s recordings and watching his “six minutes to success” videos for a while now. There’s this section that particularly strikes me: 3 questions you should ask yourself today.

The story goes like this: There’s a woman whose husband died very suddenly and left her an engineering company. It did about $10 million dollars a year. She never went to the office even though she’d show up during social functions. Everybody thought she’d sell the company since she wasn’t involved in the business operations at all. Surprisingly, she went in and called the heads of all departments. She asked them 3 questions:

1) What are you doing?

2) What works?

3) What doesn’t?

Then, she gave them permission to stop doing what doesn’t work and put the time and effort into what works. The company eventually turned into a $25-million-dollar company.  And that’s all she did, she’d ask them the 3 questions. Obviously, she doesn’t know the answers herself! But the 3 questions worked like a charm.

So, if you want to reach the top, stop wasting time on things that don’t work and put your time and energy into things that do work! Ask yourself these questions:

1) What am I doing?

2) What works?

3) What doesn’t?

Post your answers in the comments if you want to share them with other people!

(Picture by Eleaf from Flickr, Thanks!)

You’ve got a big goal and it seems to take forever to achieve? Work towards it for 30 days and call it quits. Just that. It’s that simple. This is a concept developed by Steve Pavlina (read his post on this).

Really, I’m serious. It doesn’t even have to be a 30-day trial. It could be a 21-day trial or 14-day trial (7-day trial seems too short to me). It’s all in the mind. Say, in order to keep going in the long run, you might need to be working out 3 times a week for a few weeks to break the old lazy habit. However, you’d think in your mind that it will be a long and painful process because it will be permanent for the rest of your life (hopefully), and therefore stop working out after a couple of times. This trial concept serves to give you the freedom to revert back to your old habits after the trial period, without guilt. According to Steve Pavlina, you could extend your trial period to 60 or 90 days once you hit the 30-day threshold. This is exactly what I was saying about setting small milestones in reaching your long-term goals.

As for myself, I will start my 30-day trial on working out 3 times/week, beginning from next week after I move into my new apartment. I’m very confident that this exercise regime will work and I will finally enjoy a healthy lifestyle. Some might think that it’s a laborious chore, and that it’s a sacrifice in your life (Some would ask: why not just enjoy the days of not exercising?). However, as Zig Ziglar said, you don’t pay the price of good health. Rather, you enjoy the price of good health, and you pay the price of poor health.

So what are you waiting for? Stop procrastinating and start your 30-day personal development trial today!

(Picture by urban_data from Flickr, Thanks!)

The road to success is like climbing a long escalator. In NYC subway station, if you want to go up faster, you stay on the left side because the line moves along quickly. If you’re sleepy in the morning and don’t feel like moving your leg muscles at all, stay on the right. I always go up on the left, because I can’t stay still without holding onto the handrail, which is disgustingly dirty (same goes to the handrail in the train!). Anyway, have you ever felt like you were going to fall down if you just stay still on a really long escalator? I don’t know about you, but I do. I feel like it’s just like our life. If you don’t climb up and keep moving, you’ll be shaken and might eventually fall down. Conclusion: you’re in the comfort zone. However, if you decide to go forward, you’ll move ahead of the pack so much quicker and also skip the headache of falling. And even if you do fall, you’d still be better off than if you had not climbed up at all.

So, life’s nothing but an escalator ride. If you don’t move faster than the crowd, you will not stand out from the crowd. If you don’t stretch yourself more than most people do, you will not get the rewards you’ve wanted to get. It’s interesting how we sometimes yearn for something fabulous, yet we do not take any actions to procure it. We know we will get it if we work harder than we do right now, but we give ourselves many excuses not to do it: one of them being too busy (read my post on this).

If you seriously want to succeed, you have to break the old habits that stand in the way between success and yourself. Walk 25% faster than you currently do and you’ll be ahead of the pack. Read 25% more than you currently do and you’ll learn much more than the rest in say 1 year. And no, it doesn’t have to be something as daunting as starting a business even if that’s one of your goals. You don’t want to give yourself too much pressure in the beginning, or you’d most likely give up very soon. You should just start altering your daily routines so that your motions will be in sync with your thinking. After all, actions speak louder than words. There’s no use to learn and talk about a great philosophy if you don’t act on it. Set smaller milestones so that you know you’re progressing, not just blindly charging forward without a direction. Keep hitting the small milestones and you will be on your way to the growth you’ve always dreamed of.

And now, think about a funeral that you attended (it doesn’t have to be depressing). Think about the people who stood to speak at the funeral of their friend. Then, everyone huddled around the tombstone of the dead. What do you see on the tombstone? The Dash (mp3 by Delatorro McNeal, a poem written by Linda Ellis). The dash between the birth date and the very last day of the person’s life. The beginning and the end were very important, but what was even more important was what happened between them. After all, what really matters is how you lived and loved and treated everyone around you while you were still alive. Be a little more tolerant and try to understand the way other people feel. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes and you might have a totally opposite (and often empathetic) perception about the person’s views. Begin to love those people in your lives like you’ve never loved before because you never know if you will still have the chance to do so 10 years later, 1 year later, next week, or tomorrow. Life changes too rapidly for anyone to predict. Finally, there’s a question for you from the poem: when your eulogy is being read, with your life’s actions to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your dash?

Think about it for the next 5 minutes. After that, gather all the energy you have in your life to work towards making the dash that you want and don’t let a single drop of energy follow you after the end of your journey. Remember these: think bigger than you are, start smaller than your goal, grow faster than the rest, and die emptier than a banker’s heart!

(Picture by David A. Villa from Flickr, Thanks!)