Goal setting is one of the most important parts of success, if not the most important.
Setting goals helps you focus your efforts, it gives you a target, opens you up to new ideas and unlocks your creativity.
The classic advice is to be brief when writing down your goals, it should be in the positive active form with a deadline e.g. I have 12 million dollars in the bank by the 31 of December 2014.

This way of writing goals activates the subconscious, since you are telling it that you have already achieved the above statement. By giving yourself a deadline it becomes a goal instead of a wish, you know when you will have completed your goals so you start asking yourself the word “how”, the word “how” opens up your creativity and gives you idea after idea.

Storytelling
What is even more powerful than just stating your goal, is imagining it.
Visualizing your goals is what really empowers you and builds your future.

We humans are created with a huge amount of creativity, we have the ability to dream and imagine.
The most powerful way to set a goal is to not only see exactly what you want, but to tell yourself the story, write down the story.

In the book and movie “The Secret” they give an example of a man who liked to paint pictures of beautiful women, looking away from him. His creativity went into creating an image of women looking away from him. Sadly the same seemed to happen in his life. He was a single, good looking man, but he couldn’t get a date.
When prompted to try painting pictures of the women fawning over him, he did and he put all his creative energy into creating the truth in the painting and in his life. Before long his life had changed and he was dating multiple women. After a while he decided that he wanted to settle down with one woman, so he painted it and before long he was married, happily.

Most of us aren’t painters; storytelling is just as, if not more, powerful.
Start by deciding what you want in the 4 major areas of your life; Health, Relationships, Career and Finance, and writing it down, now you have the goal of your story, you know where it is leading.

Then start imagining how your life will look when you have achieved your goals, what will you do, how is a day in your life – Write the story of a day in your life when you have achieved all your goals.

Tell the story of your success
When you have a clear picture of your life as it is when you have achieved all you dream about – start writing the story about how you got there.
This takes more imagination and a lot more work. Have fun with it though – it doesn’t matter if it is completely correct. You are answering the question “How am I going to achieve my goals?” you are unlocking your creativity and putting it to use.

Once you have finished your story you have a guideline, you know what you should do to start on your way – all you need to do is make sure the story begins today!

If you see that unforeseen circumstances changes the path you will take – rewrite your story, re-answer the question “how?” and keep yourself moving forward.

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