One reason you may not achieve your goals is that they really are not your goals. How can that be, you might ask? It’s because we have so many ideas and beliefs embedded in us from birth (or before) on that until we look at what we say and think in depth we just parrot what’s been buried deep inside of us.

When you write your list of goals, you first should just write in a free flow manner – just write what comes out. I recommend you have a separate notebook or journal where you have your goals. You can use tabs or labels or post-its (R) so you can easily refer to the different sections. Make pages of lists if the thoughts keep coming out. You want to reach down and find out what it is you want (or at this point at least what you think you want). Once you have them all listed, take these pages and go over them slowly. You can do this in one of two ways and it’s just a matter of which order you want to use.

You can go over the list and start putting down all the specifics for each goal. I’ve talked about the reason for that in other articles but essentially you have to be specific in what you want in order for the Universe to deliver what you really want. It will bring what you ask for so if you don’t have all the fine points figured out, you will get what the Universe brings you which may not be what you want. Let’s say you ask for a new car and don’t take the time to determine all the elements. You’re liable to get a car that’s a lemon or perhaps one that has horrible gas mileage or is uncomfortable etc. Most people then would be upset and angry with the Universe and even say that the Law of Attraction doesn’t work. But, it did work, you simply did not tell it what you really wanted. Would you just order “a shirt” from a mail order catalog? No, of course not. You’d order a blue, long sleeve, lightweight material, size 36 and you’d most likely have a picture in the catalog and you’d say “yes, that’s the one I want!”. You have to do the same with your goals. Think of the Universe as a very big catalog from which you are placing your orders.

When you are listing the minute details of each item you listed, you’ll find that some come easily and others you have to struggle with. This could be a hint that the ones you are having more difficulty with are either not your own goals or they aren’t things you really feel strongly about or you’d be able to describe it quickly and with happy emotions. So pay attention to how easily you can do this step and how you feel about each one on your paper. Record those that don’t come easily on a separate sheet.

The other way you can work with your master list is to go through it once you’ve finished the first draft. At that point you cross off the items that just don’t click with you. These are the ones that don’t elicit a strong emotion from you. Once you’ve crossed these off, then you start to work with the ones that are remaining. At this point you begin to specify the detailed elements of each goal. You can first ask yourself if this is really your goal? Do you believe you can have this? Do you think you should ask for this? Is this really yours or did your parents or teachers or clergy or even your friends tell you this was your goal? This is an important step. When I was a small child I told people I was going to be a doctor – not that I wanted to be a doctor. I made that bold statement every time anyone asked. At that time, the response was always “you mean you want to be a nurse”. To which I would reply “no, a doctor”. You see, I knew what I was going to be and no one was able to move me from that goal. That’s the point where I want you to be.

If you can list everything there is about a goal, then it most likely is yours. If you feel emotion and joy when you’re doing this, it’s yours. If either of these are lacking, question this goal and put it on another sheet of paper and start writing about where that might have come from. Had I let others influence me when I was a child, I might have become a nurse but I would not have been able to detail the specifics or feel emotion about it because it was not my goal.

These are just a few pointers about making sure you ask the Universe for what you really want. To find out more about goal setting and achievement, check out Goal Setting For You.

So things seem to be going well now that you’ve got your goals listed and all the details specified. Are you home free? Does this mean that you will automatically achieve your goals? The short answer is no. There are several other steps (actions) you have to take to ensure that the Universe will bring you your goal. Action is always key in accomplishing anything. What is it, though, that will derail you the fastest? It’s not the Universe. It’s everyday things that you can counter – if you’re aware of them. There’s people, the media and of course, yourself. We’ve already talked about yourself but I’ll go over that briefly again today before I tell you about the other factors that most commonly will try to derail you.

You have to commit to achieving your goals. That is one of the main reasons you have to spend sufficient time making sure that these really are your own goals and not those of others in your life (past or present) followed by specifying each goal down to the tiniest detail. Expending the energy and thought required to do that will help you embrace those goals that really are yours. Then you have to “own” your goal and you do that through various methods previously discussed in other articles. Basically the easiest way to own your goal is to create your own movie with you receiving this goal. Then you play the movie over and over, modifying it where and when necessary.

So how can you derail yourself? If you don’t hold fast and focus on your goal (and your movie) and realize that the Universe will bring you what you think about the most, you are liable to send mixed messages to the Universe and you won’t receive results because you have been waffling back and forth between this and that. If you allow yourself to question whether you’re really going to get what you want, that sends negative vibrations to the Universe and if you fluctuate or question your goal or if it’s going to work, then you send out negative energy and the Universe might actually bring what it is you are focusing on – the negative. That is why we recommend you keep busy journaling and discovering so much about yourself especially during the first month. Always remember that that Universe brings you what you think about the most – what you focus on the most. So, don’t derail yourself.

Another very common way you get derailed is through other people. Other people are necessities in life but they may also be your nemesis during your primary “seeding” process (the first 33 days of this process). One of the reasons they are so dangerous is that their effect may be subtle. You’ve been around these folks almost all your life in the case of family and friends and for a long time, perhaps, in the case of work colleagues. As with anything else that you’ve been subjected to for a long time, you don’t even realize what’s happening. Their negative effects bombard you every single day in so many ways. You have to pay attention to what is being said around you and then you have to put up a shield to keep the negative words from impacting your subconscious. You have to say “that is not my truth” over and over again. People are negative or say things that are “phrases” that are used over and over and people don’t even realize their meaning. Do you say “I’m sick and tired of my commute”? or “I’m sick and tired of xxxx” – what you are telling your subconscious is that you’re sick and your tired so your subconscious brings you what you’ve asked for. The action required to prevent this is constant attention and awareness and then use of “that is not my truth” so that you deny this and tell your subconscious not to accept it.

The media, which is all around us, can derail you if you’re not aware. Pay attention to the TV or radio news as well as the printed media so you can see there is rarely any good news reported. It’s all about this conflict, war, fight, murder, robbery, crime, etc. If you’ve been paying attention to what I’ve talked about with negative thoughts, you’ll see how that will adversely influence your subconscious mind. I rarely watch the news. People around me will tell me if there’s something major I need to know about – believe me they talk about these things all day long with their various opinions. You especially don’t want to watch the late night news just before you go to bed. That fills your subconscious with the negative thoughts and feelings all throughout the night – one of the prime times your subconscious can go to work for you – one reason we have you play your video at night. It would be better if you spent the time you would normally be watching the news writing in your journal, chronically what you learned about yourself that day and expressing gratitude for every wonderful thing that happened in your life.

There’s a lot to absorb here but it’s all fundamental in keeping you on the right track toward achieving your goal and keeping you on the path to success. If you want more guidelines and in depth material for changing your life in a wonderfully positive way, check out The Art of Making Things Happen

What is it that derails us from achieving our goals? Once taught, most people can get to the point of being very specific in defining their goals. This is the first important step. After that you have to “own” your goal. I’ve talked about that in another article but will mention it here again. Once you’ve defined the goal and have “owned” it, you have to hold on to it no matter what. There are many quotes in literature that talk about how people quit something just before success is on their doorstep. That happens with your goals too. Let’s talk about this.

So you’ve created your list of goals and gone through them and defined each of them in great detail (very great detail). You’ve reviewed this list against your master list of quality categories. Make a master list for each type of goal. The goal types could be: automobile, job, house, clothing, appearance, vacation, time, money (break that down into income and outgo or expense), relationships (intimate, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, etc), health, etc. Then list subcategories such as beauty/looks, safety, health, happiness, peace of mind, work, job (this is different from work), location, cost, etc. Make sure that you have that master list of categories and subcategories at hand when you get ready to define your goals. Take your time with this task. It’s so important that you actually know what you want. Mark Twain said that he could show anyone how to achieve what they wanted but he couldn’t find anyone who actually knew what they wanted in life. Be amongst the few and actually figure out what you want.

As far as “owning” your goal goes, you’ve taken a very big step by actually taking the time to define your goals. But it doesn’t stop there. I don’t want you to just make this extensive and detailed list and put it on a shelf somewhere. People do recommend doing that, saying that your subconscious has absorbed what you want and will produce it. Although I agree that your subconscious has had your goal embedded, you have to continue to take action. In this case, the action is to create a movie of your life with you achieving your goal. You hear about this with athletes, movie stars or singers who say when they win an award that they have dreamed of that since they were a little kid. I believe every one of them. That’s what I want you to do. Create this movie showing you in your new life. If your goal is a different job, envision yourself getting up in the morning (or the night if you want to work at night), visualize your commute (you should have specified the distance when you were making your goal list), see what it’s like when you go into work and all throughout the day. This movie should be just as detailed as your goal list. Sometimes multiple goals can be combined into one movie, sometimes they can’t. For instance, if your goals include a loving spouse, a new car, a shorter commute, and a new job, you can put them all together in one video. Once you’ve created the video you must play it two or more times a day (when you wake up and when you go to sleep are minimum requirements). Make modifications as you go along and find things you didn’t detail sufficiently or that should be changed.

Once you’ve specified your goals and then begun to own them in your own movie, you must continue to hold on to the belief that it will come to you. Do not give up and do not outline or put time limits on the achievement of the goals. This is a common and dangerous mistake. There are other steps you have to take to make sure you are able to receive but that is not the topic of this article. Outlining is when you tell the Universe how to bring your goal to you. For instance, you say that you want to have $20,000 to buy a new car. This will take longer than just telling the Universe you want the car. That phrasing allows the Universe to use its multiple resources to bring you the car rather than trying to find a way to bring the money which may be more complicated depending on your belief systems. Do not put a time limit on the Universe. This causes you to be watching the clock, so to speak, all the time. When you are watching the clock and calendar, then you are diverting your energy and more importantly you are essentially questioning the Universe (and your belief that you can achieve this goal). Just accept that you will receive the goal. Do not give up and do not question. If you have done your job by detailing the goal, creating your movie and then working on clearing your limiting beliefs, you will be successful.

If you want to find out more about how your belief systems have brought you where you are today and how you can change those beliefs so that you can receive what you want, check out The Art of Making Things Happen. This course will also help you with your goals and teach you affirmations and denials to help you create a better life.

Terrie

Every year most of us make “resolutions” at New Years. It’s also possible that you get the urge at other times during the year to make new goals. Listing goals is only one small part of the process of attaining them. You have to be specific about each and every goal. You have to be careful not to “outline” and you have to own that goal. We’ll talk more about these segments here today.

Most people fail at sticking toward attaining their goals because they don’t really define what the goal is and then they lose hold of the dream because it’s not really a dream yet – it’s just a word or a group of words. You have to be very specific in defining your goal. After you take some time doing a free flow list of things you’d like, then pick out the ones you really want to work on. Have a separate page (or even two) for each item. Then take time – it may even be days – to list the specifics about this item. You cannot be too detailed. In fact you must go into great detail so that the Universe will bring you what you really want, not something that may or may not resemble it. To use a worse case example – if your goal is to ‘lose weight’, you may do that by contracting a bad disease or perhaps having financial problems so that you begin to starve. You actually want to lose the weight (or take the weight off if you don’t like the word ‘lose’) in a healthy manner. See what a difference that extra set of words made? If you say you want a new car, you have to specify the kind, color, type, interior features, exterior features, safety rating, gas mileage, new or used, etc. If you don’t go into all the details you may end up with a real clunker just because you said you wanted a new car. Remember that ‘new’ could simply mean new to you, not new as in not previously owned. Making this detailed list will help you pay attention to your words and what they mean which is vital to your every word and thought.

Once you’ve detailed what it is you want and you really have a goal, you’re much more likely to “own” it. You’ve spent time listing your desires and refining them and now it’s time to visualize it and make a movie with you in it. If it’s that you want another job with more pay, make a movie of your life with this new amount of pay and what you’re going to do with it. I love to watch myself surprising the people at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital with a gigantic check and dedicating a wing to my favorite person. Of course, in my movie there are more specifics than I listed here but they are my private details. But this movie is something that I play over and over and it has become a part of me. Make your movie a part of you – own it today as they say. It’s not good enough or powerful enough to just write it down and expect it to happen. Having this movie inside of you makes it your own and reminds you that you have an investment in that goal.

Most importantly you must not outline. So, what is outlining? It’s telling the Universe how to make your goal happen. For example, there was a woman who kept saying she needed $10,000 to have an operation to fix a medical issue. What she really needed was health, not money. Once she stopped telling the Universe she needed the money, guess what? A new doctor came to town and treated her with a medicine that hadn’t been tried before and she no longer needed the operation. If you say you want a new car, say that. Don’t say that you want $15,000 to buy a new car. Why? Because there are other ways you could receive a car. It could be a gift, you could win the lottery, you could receive it as a work bonus, a friend could ask you to ‘car sick’ for a year or more, you could receive a car in an inheritance, etc. See, the ways that this car could come to you are numerous. Spend your time telling the Universe what you want, NOT how to bring it to you.

These concepts about goal setting and achieving are a major step to changing your life. If you want to find out more about what practical techniques there are to help you alter the path of your life, you might consider checking out The Art of Making Things Happen.

Terrie