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Six Requirements For Fun & Effective Goal Setting

There is an old expression: If you don't have a goal, you're bound to reach it!

Goals, as you know, are crucial factors in helping us to achieve success.

Specifically, our goals need to be these six things to be effective:

(1) They need to be simple. For instance, your primary goal could be making money. That's simple, isn't it? Or, you may want to learn self-defense.

(2) It should be specific. "I want to earn a half million dollars this year," or "I want to earn a black belt in karate" are specific enough.

(3) Your goal should be important to you. To be energizing, you have to own the goal and not have it be something a parent or friend thrust on you.

(4) It should be accomplished by an established date. Taking the examples above, "I want to earn a half million dollars this year" is a good goal, where "I want a black belt in karate" misses the mark, because it isn't connected to a completion date.

(5) Goals should be measurable. You can track your income, day-to-day, week-to week, and month to month; and you can chart your martial arts progress through the belt ranking system, so these goals are measurable.

(6) Goals should be challenging, but achievable. This is tricky. You want them to make you stretch; otherwise why have them? Still, they need to be within your power to accomplish. Becoming a black belt may be within your power, but becoming a professional ballplayer, may not be. The former might require good coordination and hard work, where the latter might require athletic genes, which you just can't go out and develop on your own.

Goal setting can be really exciting because it is a way of focusing on your deepest and most cherished hopes for the future. Instead of being dry exercises, they should be exciting adventures.

So, remember to have fun!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone®, You Can Sell Anything By Telephone! and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, "The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable," published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

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