Why don't we approach every day of our life with the same enthusiasm and spirit of adventure we devote to planning vacations?

Just as you would never leave for your vacation destination without a map, it makes sense to learn how to plan for your lifetime destination where you focus on your goals and don't just drift through life, feeling empty, depressed or frustrated.

Goals are essential to our existence. People without goals will waste away. It has been reported that average life expectancy after retirement is 18 months, regardless of age. Why?

One theory suggests that in the absence of goals, people perish. Individuals who set goals for themselves for after the day they retire (in addition to financial preparedness goals) thrive and frequently join the growing demographic of Centurians (individuals who get to celebrate their 100th birthday). Those who only set a goal to retire and fail to set goals beyond retirement day or those who set vague goals (I'm going to sleep in and play golf) are at great risk. Yes, goals are important.

The world is full of people who are very quick to dream and very slow to act. Often it's because they have failed to take the steps necessary to achieve their goals.

Recent research in the field of psychoneuroimmunology (the study of the interactions between the brain, mind, body, immune and social systems) clearly shows that those people who live a balanced life also live a longer, happier life.

If you think about it, you have been setting goals all of your life, unconsciously. The way you have done it is not how you may be taught to do it in ordinary goal setting classes. When you become conscious of what you already know, you will realize you know a lot about your own personal achievement and successes.

At Tero we have the privilege of helping people build skills through discovering the wisdom and knowledge that is already conveniently located inside of them. The steps to goal setting are one such example.

An interesting research study was carried out at Harvard University in the 1950s with respect to goal setting. One year, researchers studied the graduating seniors at Harvard to see how many of them had taken all the steps necessary to set and achieve goals. Here's what they discovered.

A mere 3% of the graduating seniors had taken all the steps necessary to set and achieve goals.

10% had taken some of the steps.

The remaining 87% of the graduating seniors had taken very few, if any of the steps to set and achieve goals.

The thing most interesting about the study is that 20 years later the researchers revisited the subjects of the study. Their findings?

The 3% of the graduating seniors who had taken all the steps necessary for setting and achieving their goals had accumulated more (in the ways we can measure success - money and status) than the other 97% combined. What is especially interesting about the study is that the 10% who had taken some of the steps hadn't achieved this great success.

According to traditional/typical methods of goal setting, the first step is to identify the goal. The second step is to break the larger goal down to smaller, attainable goals (realistic) and then measure progress and adjust as necessary.

This approach works just fine if the goal isn't too ambitious. Perhaps that's what they mean by realistic.

For example, if your goal is to save an extra $1,200 this year traditional goal setting steps work. You break it down into smaller, more attainable goals. $100 per month. Then, you further break it down into even smaller, attainable goals. $25 per week. Even smaller goals would be $5 per day (workdays). Then you make a plan to not stop for a latte and muffin on the way to work every day and pretty soon you have your $1,200. Similarly, if you want to lose 20 lbs in 6 months, you could break it down into monthly, weekly, daily and even per meal goals.

While that works for this small goal, what about the big ones? What about the goals with a non-obvious plan? What if you want to lose 200 lbs.? What if you want to save enough money to send Junior to college and he's currently a senior in high school?

That's why we need to look at a different method of goal setting.

What is the most overlooked step in setting and achieving goals?

Imprinting

Most people set the goal then immediately jump to how they are going to get there (most goal setting courses teach this method, overlooking how to harness the power of the unconscious mind).

Think about the traditional method for goal setting. We set the goal. Then we ask ourselves, how are we going to achieve it? Pretty soon we realize that the goal is too big so we back up our goals (to what's realistic) and don't achieve as much as we are capable of achieving.

What if you didn't need to know how to achieve your goals when you set them? You could set your goals much further out. That's the great news about the second step to goal achievement - imprinting. It allows you to set whatever goals you want for yourself without needing to know how they are going to be accomplished. This is the important step that 97% of the population misses.

When do you do your best thinking? In the shower? In the car? When you relax before you go to sleep? Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night with the solution to a problem? Wherever it is that you do your best thinking it is likely not in a classroom or a meeting room. The value of imprinting is that is opens us up to alternatives. Our subconscious records every experience we ever have. Every word of every book we have ever read. Every success. Every failure. The trick is to give yourself the proper challenges to access the information database that you already have.

Beliefs that are imprinted into our subconscious mind are exceedingly resistant to extinction and reversal. They have a profound effect on all of our future behavior.

For example, when a foal (baby horse) is born, the breeder makes an effort to be present for the birth. If not, then very soon after. Then the breeder (or trainer) spends an enormous amount of time during a compressed time span (about three days) to imprint the new foal. This process involves helping the animal become comfortable with human touch and human presence. The breeder or trainer works with the animal's hooves, legs, body, ears, mouth, etc. to get the animal "used to" the touch. The result is a lasting effect on future behavior. Even in adulthood, the horse will exhibit positive behavior when the appropriate stimulus is present.

Like the horse, you and I have become "used to" reality as we know it. Reality has been imprinted in us. When we imprint a new vision or a goal for ourselves, we must lock onto the new vision. This causes us to experience discomfort and enables us to release the creative genius we all have within us to reach our goals.

We move toward that which we think about. So, what are your thinking about? If you don't imprint the way you want to be next week, next month, and next year, then you have not set up your goals. Once your goals are vividly imprinted then your subconscious system takes over. Your system is goal-oriented. When you get off target, stress sets in and adjustment takes place. High performance people are constantly thinking of goals. They think in terms of the goal being accomplished.

Through the imprinting process, habits, values and beliefs can be changed. The more powerful the imprinting process you use, the more easy the transition you will have to your new habits, values and beliefs.

Let's compare your goal setting with the process of bringing a new human life into the world. Right after conception has occurred, there is no visual evidence of a new life yet. It takes several months before there is any visual evidence that a change has taken place. And several more months before birth. Isn't it wonderful that parents have been given nine months to plan for and get used to the idea of the change?

Your goals are much like pregnancy. First you decide what you want - give birth to the idea. Then you must go through a period of incubation. This is a period of time during which no conscious effort is made to solve problems but which terminates with a solution. This is the imprinting stage.

Goal setting is actually a very simple activity of getting used to the new vision instead of current reality. Simple - yes. Easy - not at all.