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