Creating Your Own Destiny

If you don't know where you are going, you won't know how to get there. How can you get a sense of purpose or meaning in life unless you have dreams or visions of what you want to achieve? goals are dreams with deadlines, which propel you on your journey of self-discovery and self-achievement.

goal setting is the most important tool you have or can develop. Having a focus in life, a destiny, is the one quality that is consistently found in people who are high achievers. Yet through the years, in study after study, it is found that only 4 percent of the population ever set goals by writing them down. What is even more astonishing is that the 4 percent of people who write their goals down achieve them almost 100 percent of the time. If goals setting is so powerful, and successful, then why do so few people actively engage in creating their own destiny?

In my years of studying goal setting and successful people I have found there are two main reasons why most people don't set goals: The first reason is that most people are not clear about their priorities or what they want most out of life. So, they engage in what is called wishful thinking about having certain things in their life. And second, most people have never been taught any techniques or steps for setting and achieving goals. Nor have they been taught the importance of establishing goals.

Most people deceive themselves when it comes to setting goals. They will say things like, "Of course I have goals. But I keep them in my head. I believe in using the fewest motions possible to get things done."

Those people don't have goals. They have wishes, desires, hopes, and dreams. Dreams come to all of us as we go about our daily life. Wishes dart in and out of our daily consciousness. We think of new interests we'd like to pursue, changes we'd like to make, and great things we'd like to achieve someday. We're pretty sure we have the ability, and we fully intend to do all those things sometime in the future.

The ludicrous nature of that proposition becomes apparent the more fully it is played out. Unless those vague intentions are translated into specific goals, they will drift into that never-never land called "Might Have Been," and they will take your life with them.

The majority of people mistake wishful thinking or daydreaming for creating a focus or goal in their life. To be sure that you understand the differences between these two states of mind, select a goal you're currently working on, and then daydream or fantasize about it. Embellish your daydream with hoping and wishing thoughts that everything will turn out the way you hope it will. Then, take the same goal, feel and taste the intensity of your desire for achieving it, almost as if the passion and excitement of anticipation were making every cell in your body tingle. Run a mental movie of your goal having been achieved, creating a state of expectation., in that you have absolutely no doubt that you will achieve it. Act as if you have already achieved your goal, and the feelings of excitement and joy that accompany its attainment. Now, take a few minutes and go back and forth between those two states of mind.

The first time you practice this exercise you'll see quite a difference. There is something very magical, almost mystical, about