Book Goals! by Brian Tracy

Happiness Requires Goals

Earl Nightingale once wrote: Happiness is the progressive

realization of a worthy ideal, or goal.

You only feel truly happy when you are making progress, stepby-

step, toward something that is important to you. Victor Frankl,

the founder of Logotherapy, wrote that the greatest need of the human

being is for a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

Goals give you a sense of meaning and purpose. Goals give you

a sense of direction. As you move toward your goals you feel happier

and stronger. You feel more energized and effective. You feel more

confident and competent in yourself and your abilities. Every step

you take toward your goals increases your belief that you can set and

achieve even bigger goals in the future.

More people today fear change, and worry about the future,

than at any other time in our history. One of the great benefits of goal

setting is that goals enable you to control the direction of change in your

life. Goals enable you to assure that the changes in your life are

largely self-determined and self-directed. Goals enable you to instill

meaning and purpose into everything you do.

One of the most important teachings of Aristotle, the Greek

philosopher, was that man is a teleological organism. The word

“teleos” in Greek means goals. What Aristotle concluded was that all

human action is purposeful in some way. You are only happy when

you are doing something that is moving you toward something that

you want. The great questions then become: What are your goals?

What purposes are you aiming at? Where do you want to end up at

the end of the day?

Clarity Is Everything

Your inborn potential is extraordinary. You have within you,

right now, the ability to achieve almost any goal that you can set for

yourself. Your greatest responsibility to yourself is to invest the

whatever time is required to become absolutely clear about exactly

what it is you want, and how you can best achieve it. The greater

clarity you have regarding your true goals, the more of your potential

you will unleash for good in your life.

You have probably heard it said that the average person uses

only 10% of his or her potential. The sad fact is that, according to

Stanford University, the average person functions with only about

2% of his or her mental potential. The remainder just sits there in

reserve, being saved up for some later time. This would be exactly as

if your parents had left you a trust fund with $100,000 in it, but all

you ever took out to spend was $2,000. The other $98,000 dollars

simply sat in the account unused throughout your life.Develop A Burning Desire

The starting point of all goal attainment is desire. You must

develop an intense, burning desire for your goals if you really want

to achieve them. It is only when your desire becomes intense enough

that you will have the energy and the internal drive to overcome all

the obstacles that will arise in your path.

The good news is that almost anything that you want long

enough and hard enough, you can ultimately achieve.

The great oil billionaire, H. L. Hunt, was once asked the “secret

of success.” He replied that success required two things, and two

things only. First, he said, you must know exactly what it is you want.

Most people never make this decision. Second, he said, you must

determine the price that you will have to pay to achieve it, and then

get busy paying that price.

The Cafeteria Model of Success

Life is more like a buffet or cafeteria than it is a restaurant. In a

restaurant, you eat the complete dinner and then you pay the bill. But

in a buffet or cafeteria, you have to serve yourself, and pay in full

before you enjoy the meal. Many people make the mistake of

thinking that they will pay the price after they have experienced the

success. They sit in front of the stove of life and say, “First give me

some heat, and then I’ll put in some wood.”

As motivational speaker Zig Ziglar once said, “The elevator to

success is out of service. But the stairs are always open.”

Another important observation from Aristotle was his

conclusion that the ultimate purpose of all human action is the

achievement of personal happiness. Whatever you do, he said, it is

aimed at increasing your happiness in some way. You may or may

not be successful in achieving happiness, but your happiness is

always your ultimate aim.

The Key To Happiness

Setting goals, working toward them day-by-day, and ultimately

achieving them is the key to happiness in life. Goal setting is so

powerful that the very act of thinking about your goals makes you

happy, even before you have taken the first step toward achieving

them.

To unlock and unleash your full potential, you should make a

habit of daily goal setting and achieving for the rest of your life. You

should develop a laser-like focus so that you are always thinking and

talking about the things you want rather than the things that you

don’t want. You must resolve, from this moment on, to be a goalseeking

organism, like a guided missile, or a homing pigeon, moving

unerringly toward the things that are important to you.

There is no greater guarantee of a long, happy, healthy and

prosperous life than for you to be continually working on being,

having and achieving more and more of the things you really want.

Clear goals enable you to release your full potential for personal and

professional success. Goals enable you to overcome any obstacle, and

to make your future unlimited.

Unlock Your Potential:

1. Imagine that you have the inborn ability to achieve any

goal you could ever set for yourself. What do you really

want to be, have and do?

2. What are the activities that give you your greatest sense

of meaning and purpose in life?

3. Look at your personal and work life today and identify

how your own thinking has created your world. What

should you, could you change?

4. What do you think and talk about most of the time,

what you want, or what you don’t want?

5. What is the price you will have to pay to achieve the

goals that are most important to you?

6. What one action should you take immediately as the

result of your answers to the above questions?