And make sure, because that's what you have control over.

You don't have control over the result.

You have control of the action to give you the result.

I

have been involved in setting goals for 50 years.

So I've learned a few things about goals.

So make sure you grab some notes on this one.

I'd like you to write this down first. Whenever you're setting goals,

you want to start with what you know and let what you know grow.

I want that to sink in. Start with what you know,

something you're certain about,

something that you know that your life is demonstrating you're committed to.

Anytime you set a goal that you're not really committed to,

you train yourself not to do what you say, to not walk your talk,

and you limp your life.

You want to start with those that you know, that you know, that you know,

that you're certain, that you're committed to.

So you'll incrementally build momentum in the achievement of.

Don't waste your time on things that aren't really priority.

Don't waste your time on whims and fantasies that aren't real.

It's wiser to have fewer goals and not be goal overrun,

than it is to have fill up a bunch of goals that aren't meaningful.

So make sure that it's really, really, really priority to you.

Every talk I do I mention values,

and every human being has a set of priorities that they live their life by.

And whatever's highest on that priority list,

whatever's highest on the value list,

whatever's most really important to an individual, they'll tend to do.

They'll spontaneously be inspired to act on them and achieve them.

You want to make sure your goals, your attentions, things you want to learn,

and intentions, things you want to achieve,

are aligned with what you value most. That's where you're most disciplined,

reliable and focused.

That's where you have stamina and perseverance and

achieving it. Anything that's lower on your values, you'll procrastinate,

hesitate and frustrate. You won't get around to doing it.

So every time you set a goal that's lower on your values,

you train yourself not to do what you say,

which self depreciates your belief in yourself.

But the second you set goals that are really,

really clear and certain that are really important to you,

it makes a difference. When I was 17 years old,

which is 50 years ago cause I'm 68 next month,

I knew that I wanted to travel the world. I wrote that down.

I wanted to travel around the world.

I wanted to step foot on all the countries around the world.

I knew that I wanted to overcome my learning challenges.

I knew that was meaningful to me, and I wrote that down.

I knew I wanted to be a teacher because that was to me somebody that was

relatively intelligent. And I wrote down what I knew.

And you want to write something down that your life really shows demonstration

that you're really committed to and it's really meaningful to you.

If it doesn't really bring a tear of inspiration even thinking about it,

it's probably not really the highest value.

And I then asked myself,

what are the actions that I can do to make that happen?

If I did these actions, I would be one step closer tomorrow than I was today.

So when you write out goals,

don't just write down vague generalities and kind of a result and outcome.

Write down specific action steps that you have control over in your life.

Please make note of this, you only have control over perception,

decisions and actions. So if you say, I want to have a million dollars,

that's not an action. That's not really a goal.

It sort of is in the background,

but it's not going to get you that as easily as if you say,

I'm going to sell this product, it is going to sell for this amount.

I'm going to sell X number of them with a profit margin of this amount,

with a cost of business this amount, with a net profit of this amount,

and I'm going to save this amount after taxes,

and I'm going to accumulate that over time.

And you have a very specific strategy of how you're going to get what your goal

is and you end up with this achievement.

I didn't become very fortunate financially by just holding a vision

out there of what it was only.

I also got into actions and targeted those actions that were

congruent with that outcome. And that I have control over.

I don't have control over that big picture. I have

The actions that lead to those outcomes. So when you're setting a goal,

only start with something you're certain about,

something you know your life is committed to.

Don't waste your time on wishy-washy fantasies.

Don't set up one-sided fantasies of positive without negative,

and happy without sad, and kind without cruel,

and one-sided lives when that's not going to happen.

When you're supported or challenged, you're nice and mean, that's life.

You want to embrace both sides of your life. Set real objectives.

An objective is balanced. It's not polarized to a fantasy side.

If I said I'm always going to be positive,

I'm never going to have a negative thought. It's not achievable.

If I said I'm always going to be kind and never be cruel, it's not achievable.

It's a delusion that people have within themselves. But if they say,

regardless of whether I am positive or negative or sometimes nicer than and

meaner,

I know that both of them are feedback mechanisms towards my authentic self,

that's achievable. So set up something that is achievable,

that is believable, that has a strategy,

that is congruent with what you value most, that is balanced,

that you incrementally can take action steps and write down the action steps

that increase the probably of doing it. If I wanted to master my mind,

I would do the Demartini Method, my method that I teach around the world,

because it guarantees a result of that outcome by doing the action steps

that are involved in the method.

And it's guaranteed to transform misperceptions that create an emotional

reaction into something objective that is achievable. So

identify what it is that you know, that you know,

that you know with certainty that you really truly want to fulfill.

Break it down into the action steps that you have control over,

ones you have control over, not ones that somebody else has control over,

but something you have control over.

And break them down and make sure that there's strategically sound in actually

giving a result.

And make sure that you don't put incongruent contradictory objectives

together. In the 1980s,

I was doing a lot of consulting with doctors and going to different

various offices around all over America and different parts of the world

actually. And I was amazed at some doctors would say,

I would like to have a million dollar practice or a $2 million practice,

and I want to work four days a week. I want to be able to golf two days a week.

I want to spend so many hours with my family, I want to do this and that.

And I added them up. And one,

the hours required to do that were more than hours in a week,

and a month. So there was a contradiction in time.

Then they were charging X for each of the office visits,

and the number of offices visits times X didn't lead to this outcome.

So they either had to increase the number of office visits, the patient volume,

the number of new patients, the dollar per visit.

They had to do things to make it all work.

So we would go and adjust the goals to make sure that those were sound,

congruent, non contradictory objectives or the brain just deletes them.

Brain says, can't do, and you end up setting self defeat on your life.

And once we did that,

and then we got down to the action steps that would lead to that outcome and

incrementally built them, their achievement levels in these doctors were,

were massively different and they weren't even realizing that they had

contradictions.

So if you say you want to do this and it goes against what you say you want to

do over here in another area of your life and there's not enough hours to go and

do that,

then you either have to delegate things and let other people do things for you,

which is perfectly fine.

It allows you to go and live in the highest priority fashion. That's smart.

But at the same time,

you want to make sure that it's congruent and not contradictory.

So start with what you know, let what you know grow, have it broken it down,

break it down into various action steps you have control over.

So you know that if I do this action step on that time at that date with that

frequency, I will get that result.

Make sure you're honest with what it will get you there.

Don't set up a whim and fantasy that's not going to get you a result.

And take the time to metric your goals.

Look at where you are along the week. What did you accomplish?

Is what you've set realistic?

If you say you want to do X number of calls and you're doing one third of the

number of calls and you're not getting around to doing that,

then you're going to ask, is it really something valuable to you?

Is it really priority to you? Do I need to delegate part to get this goal?

Do I need to link those actions that it takes to get the goal higher up on my

value list?

Do I want to delegate that again or do I want to calm it down?

Or do I want to give myself an incentive to get these things moving?

But once the action steps are congruent with the goal,

you're now on track with it and you want a metric it,

you want to see where are you at the week, in two weeks, and three weeks,

and five weeks and keep an eye on it.

I set out many years ago to write a bunch of books.

In the process of writing all my books,

I set a goal that I wanted to do a certain number of books.

Along the way every time I write a book,

I put it on the thing and I tick it off.

I also had a goal to be able to have my books somehow in different languages.

So I did what I could with the action steps to get them in languages.

I've been blessed to have them now in 40 languages because of that.

I also wanted to do something that made a contribution in the world that would

allow me to be mentioned in books.

So that way I knew I was making some sort of difference. I can measure it.

I learned that from Isaac Iesemhof. And so I kept records and I keep literally,

every time I find a book that references the work I'm doing,

I have it and I keep it there. I keep metrics on it. I'm a metric guy.

Because that means I'm accountable to the goal that I'm setting.

If you're not really willing to metric your goal,

you're not really committed to the goal.

Are you really looking at it and asking yourself,

what is it I would absolutely love to do? How do I get handsomely paid to do it?

Might as well get paid to do what you do so your vocation and vacation is the

same. Ask,

what are the highest priority action steps that if I do these action steps,

it will lead me to that result? And make sure,

because that's what you have control over.

You don't have control over the result,

you have control of the actions that give you the result.

And then what are the obstacles might I run into? And how do I solve in advance?

What are the things you might run into? How do you mitigate those?

That's foreplanning in the foresight in the forebrain.

And you're thinking of what obstacles might run into.

So you're not sitting broadsided by things that you could have anticipated but

you didn't.

So you want to think those out and think of what are the obstacles that you

might run into. And when I was writing, I said, Well,

I may get so busy doing other things, how will I get that done?

Well then I will record my presentations and transcribe it. Save me time.

I will find somebody that will help me in editing to get first drafts together.

I started to think of what would I do in case that was happening in order to get

the books out. And the books came out because of it.

And I found that if I do that exercise and identify clearly what I want to do

and break it down, make sure it's not incongruent,

make sure it's not contradictory,

make sure I've got mitigate the risk by thinking in advance of the obstacles.

I break it down into the action step,

prioritize those action steps on a daily basis. I get the goal.

Now I'm not negating the idea and people were saying usually, you know, well,

I just visualize this outcome.

I've had many goals in my life that I've had envisioned in my mind that have

come up in my life and shown up. I'm not negating that. But,

when I look back honestly at what was going on,

that vision wasn't randomly, mysteriously, miraculously,

mystically brought into my life.

It's also a result of the action steps that I happened to be doing.

And to the degree that it was congruent with what I was doing,

I was leading to the probability of that outcome.

I was on a TV show in South Africa quite a number of years ago when the Secret

came out and I'm not going to give names,

but somebody from the Secret happened to be down there and they were

interviewing that individual and myself. And the interviewer said,

Now do you believe he just visualize a goal and that's it,

it poofs into reality? And the guy said, Yes.

And then they turned to me and said, Do you, is that how it works for you?

I says, No, I go and work my butt off and I,

and I have strategies and I follow the strategies and I found that that's way

more productive. And the lady in the the show said, Well, that's what I do.

I can't imagine just visualizing, hoping it's going to come. And I said, Well,

I don't either, but he may have more power on visualization than I do. I may,

I like to take actions.

I like to know that I have governance over my own behavior and that I can

actually go and achieve those actions by taking command of my actions.

I'm a firm believer if you do that, you're going to get somewhere. Now,

every time you set a goal that is achieved,

you tend to give yourself permission to set a greater goal, a bigger, greater,

more space and time horizon, broader goal.

And I can do things now much faster than I did at the beginning

because I've learned to do it and I've got momentum building with it.

But you automatically tend to expand as you go.

And as you consistently go farther and farther into the expansion of achievement

you tend to set bigger and bigger goals. And that's normal.

And eventually the goals lead you to your purpose in life.

All goals keep growing from the most concrete to the abstract,

from the simplest to the more complex, and from something that's local,

to something that's maybe global.

And it's natural to keep expanding those horizons you might say.

And in the process of doing it eventually gets to a point where they're

unachievable's.

There are things you will work on and leave a mark in the world beyond your

life. You know,

I have a goal to be able to contribute to enough people's lives where the work

that I'm doing goes beyond my life.

To have enough books out there and videos out there and writings out there that

goes beyond my life.

So then there's no end to the number of people I might be able to reach by doing

that. So the goal can keep going even though I'm a finite,

limited time and my existence on earth.

So you can set goals that get bigger. I always say they start out mortal,

they end up immortal. They start out as, you know, challenges,

and then they eventually become overcome,

and then eventually you achieve and then you end up achieve more achievables and

then towards ever greater achievables, until eventually the unachievables,

things that go beyond your life.

So give yourself permission to keep expanding your goals

know and monitor and metric the achievements.

And I do it in all seven areas of life.

I wrote down all in all seven areas of my life I wanted to achieve.

I wanted to create original ideas that served human beings on the planet.

I wrote that down literally at 18, 19 years old,

20 years old I was already working on goals and laying them out.

I probably had the most collective goals,

the largest collection of goals you've probably seen.

And I wrote out what I wanted to do and I said, Okay,

I want to create original ideas that served human beings across the planet.

And I've done that. I've been working on that.

I also wanted to create a global business.

We have students in every country around the world.

But I put down the action steps. I thought of if I go out and do radio,

if I do television, I do newspapers, I do magazines, I write articles,

I write books, I do live presentations,

I do now podcasts and webinars and movies.

All the things that increase the probability of outreach across the world,

and translate into different languages and get books translated into different

languages. Anything I could do to get those things moving,

I wrote it all out and I worked on those step by step to achieve that.

It wasn't just some miracle. Miracles are basically a byproduct,

at least that's the label somebody else puts on something you've done and worked

hard on. And by the way, don't ever say, Oh, that person's gifted.

People come up to me all the time. Well, you're gifted. I said, Oh really?

<Laugh>, I was dyslexic. Couldn't read till I was 18.

Didn't know how to write and properly spell. I don't call that gifted.

I call that work <laugh>. So don't, don't say somebody gifted,

it may be an insult to them.

Wiser to say they've obviously put some time and effort into polishing and

mastering their skills of what they're doing that looks easy today,

but is probably because they've worked at it over many, many thousands of hours.

You know, I've been teaching the Breakthrough Experience,

which is one of my signature program where I teach people how to set goals and

how to achieve things and how to to be congruent and how to not contradict and

how to have less distractions and more focus and more presence.

I've been teaching that program 1,159 times.

For 34 years. So I've done nearly 60,000,

no, probably 29,000. I'm thinking of something else.

About 29,000 hours put into that program. So, you know,

I get pretty good at it if you keep practicing 29,000 hours at something.

And so if you really, really want to goal and it's really meaningful to you,

then you'll put in the hours that it takes to go and master it.

I don't think that somebody that's a great sports person or a great musician or

a great master artist or something is going to do it overnight.

They're going to do it, you know, by putting the hours in. So if you really,

really want to clarify the goal, start with what you know.

And sit down and polish it, review it.

I will sometimes spend two hours on just one paragraph of how I want a goal.

Very concise, narrow it down.

I've been teaching a program called Master Planning for Life for many years now

to try to teach people how to set proper goals,

how to set goals that are congruent, how to set non contradictory objectives,

how to make sure that they're, they're aligned with what you value most.

How to make sure that they're not whims and fantasies and distractions which

distract you from your presence and your focus.

And I've been doing that and I've seen thousands of people go through that and

transform the trajectory and build momentum with goals,

I can't believe it's already happening. I said,

Well that's because you've finally set a goal that was actually congruent,

that's strategic and tactical and you made it happen.

You don't go to Mars with whims and fantasies and just, I hold a vision,

I'm going to go to Mars.

You go out there and spend billions of dollars and practice and fall and get

back up again. And by the way,

you're going to have times when you're going to feel like you're on track and

times when you're going to feel like a failure along there.

But both them are feedbacks.

I always say the second you think you're successful, you're de-purposing,

the second you think you're a failure, you're repurposing.

They're just homeostatic feedback mechanism to keep you on track,

to make sure you set real goals in real times and real strategies.

Because if you're puffed up and proud and cocky,

you'll tend to set too big a goals in too short a time frame to humble you.

And if you're down, you'll set too small a goals in too long a time to lift you.

Those are just mechanisms to get you to set real goals in real times and real

strategies that really mean something to you,

that you'll metric and you'll not give up on,

and you'll persevere and you'll make it happen.

And even if those things are bucket list, things that you ask yourself,

if I was to die in the next year what would I want to get done?

That's a great question. If you're, if you're feeling you're having mortality,

you start to think what's really priority in my life? I know I've,

I've I still got a few years left of my life I'm sure,

I've got goals that'll keep me busy for at least to a hundred.

But in the process of doing that, if I asked myself,

if I only had 24 hours to live, what would be priority? If I had a year to live,

what would be priority? And get your bucket list in order.

Get what's really priority. Make sure you're not just wasting time on things.

You know, I tell people in the speed reading courses that I've taught to ask,

you know, what exactly is it you read in a year how many books you read?

And they say, Oh, I read once a month or something. And I go, Well,

that's 12 a year. How many years you got left in your life? Oh, 40. Okay,

that's 12 times 40. It's about 500, 480 books. That means,

have you prioritized your books?

Have you really prioritized your objective there? Prioritize your goals,

your time is going to go by quicker than you think. Prioritize the goals.

Make sure you're getting to the ones that are most meaningful, most fulfilling,

most inspiring, most important, the one that makes the biggest difference.

And put those on your bucket list.

That's why I teach people master planning to help them get through that and not

set distractions and fantasies and unrealistic expectations and

then beat themselves up and wonder why they're not confident.

When I found out that people who set goals, who achieve,

the reason they do is they set real goals.

And some people that don't want to set goals are used to setting fantasies that

don't come true and then they beat themselves up and they go, Why set a goal,

you want to make God laugh?

That's because they're setting fantasies and things that aren't congruent with

who they are and contradictions and the things I mentioned.

Set real goals in real time frames with real metrics that are

truly meaningful to you, that are really prioritized.

Break it down into the action steps and build momentum incrementally.

Little by little step. Piggy banks become biggy banks.

Little actions make big dreams, stay focused on it. If you're not,

if you're being distracted by something else, it's not important.

Something that's truly important you don't get distracted from. Don't

go after something that's not something you're certain it's committed.

Clarify it, be certain about it, set goals.

And join me at Master Planning. If you want to master the goal setting game,

three solid days I'm going to show you how to do that.

And if you want to get past your emotions and all the problems and challenges

you face in your life and you want to get clear about setting congruent goals,

come to the Breakthrough Experience.

Both of these programs are designed to help people achieve way more in their

life, have more fulfillment in life,

more meaning in life to help them empower themselves intellectually and empower

themselves in business.

Empower themselves so they can have financial independence,

empower their relationships so they're not sitting there spending all their time

in distraction and frustration. Empower themselves socially,

there's no reason why you can't make a difference and leave a mark in the world

and hang out with amazing people and do amazing things. And have vitality.

You're going to have more vitality if you set congruent goals than if you set

whims and fantasies and beat yourself up,

you're going to end up having a break on instead of a gas pedal.

And why not be inspired?

Only write down what brings tears of inspiration to your life.

Tears of inspiration and gratitude are guides to authenticity. And you know,

I've mentioned that in many of my talks. So you want to set goals that way.

That's why I want you to come and join me at the Master Planning program and the

Breakthrough Experience. Both of those, both of those,

can make a difference to help you achieve more. And at the end of your life,

you don't want to have what Bronnie Ware's says, the five major regrets.

She's a lovely lady that wrote a fantastic book on the most common regrets that

people have in their life. And in the process of doing that,

you want to be able to not have a regret in your life.

You want to be able to say thank you. I wouldn't change a thing.

I've had a magnificent life. I'm grateful for my life.

Anything you're not grateful for is baggage.

Anything you are grateful for is fuel. You want a fueled life,

prioritize your life.

Set real goals in real time and let's get on with setting the goals that are

real. And if you say, Well, I don't set goals, I'm not into that,

I just let it go with a flow and everything else, well,

you're passing up one of the greatest opportunities you have that make you

different from the animals.

The thing that gives you something that's meaning clarity of intention,

having strategies, this is something that make you different.

If you're not taking, you know, taking actions towards objectives,

then you're doing it by default.

And I assure you that people get up in the morning and they dedicate their life

to fulfilling their values, not yours.

They're projecting their values on you and it's easy to get distracted by other

things on the outset if you don't fill your day with things that are meaningful

on the inside.

So come to the Master Planning program and let me show you how to make sure that

you build momentum in your goal setting and do something extraordinary with your

life and come to the Breakthrough Experience,

to breakthrough everything that you think is in the way so you can see that it

on the way so you can live a congruent, very inspired, leadership filled,