I’m referring to the goals and accomplishments that will drive you to the success you desire.

So what specifically is your life designed to accomplish?

Brace yourself…

Right now, your life and career is perfectly designed to achieve the results you are CURRENTLY GETTING!

And, if you aren’t getting the results you want, that simply means you haven’t designed a life strategy that will get them for you.

Think about that!

When you set the right objectives (the ones that get you to your goals the fastest), you focus your activities like a laser.

Why?

Because every decision you make will be judged by its ability to move you closer to your stated objectives.

So how do you determine and set the right objectives for your life?

Honestly, the right objectives will vary from person to person, and business to business.

But as you plan and strategize your life, there is one overriding definition you must use as a yard stick to engage in this behavior properly.

The RIGHT OBJECTIVES are the fewest number of accomplishments, and the least number of objectives you can determine that will allow you to reach your goals.

This is really at the heart of what it means to be a strategic thinker. It’s the core idea that makes your life efficient and profitable.

What sense does it make to take fifteen steps, when only five will get you where you want to go?

To learn how to fast track your life and results based on the right objectives than check out the 100 Day Challenge.

Over 42,000 people from more than 80 countries around the world are waiting for you to join us in the most extreme performance acceleration program on earth!

The following is a question I want you to seriously consider as the answer will tell you a lot about your future and ability to change. This question has allowed me to coach people to make monumental performance gains in all areas of their lives and careers.

I’d love to see your answers and will do my best to use them in the creation of future lessons and posts.

And the question is…

Q: Can you make yourself do something you really don’t want to do, in order to get a result you would really like to have?

When you are able to answer this question affirmatively, you will experience a massive shift in your perception of the immediate future.

This single concept can dramatically alter your relationships, your finances, and even your health!

The deeper question, of course, is:

What result would you like to have?

• How healthy (or unhealthy) are you willing to be?
• What kind of marriage do you really want to experience?
• Does it really matter to you whether or not your family is debt-free?
• Okay . . . So you want to be in peak physical shape . . .
• You desire a marriage filled with love, excitement, and laughter . . .
• You crave freedom from the stress and uncertainty of monthly bills . . .

BUT…

What activities must be done – with a single-minded focus – to achieve the life you long for?

And can you make yourself do those things?

I am betting that you can!

Remember, I’m The Goals Guy and I have personally witnessed the amazing changes people can make when they challenge themselves to do the things they really don’t want to do.

There it is. No more sugarcoating or explanation needed.

Do you truly want to succeed in your chosen endeavor?

Do you want to radically and permanently change your life?

Then, can you make yourself do something you really don’t want to do, in order to get a result you would really like to have?

Yes or No?

WHAT TO DO NOW? Post your response to these questions. I look forward to reading your replies!

I’m often asked for my definition of success. Here goes…

Success is the end result of doing the Right Things… the Right Way… at the Right Time… for the Right Reasons.

What more could be asked of you if you are consistently doing your 4 R’s?

In my book — nothing!

So, what’s the difference between Efficiency & Effectiveness?

• Effectiveness is doing the Right Things…for the Right Reasons.
• Efficiency is doing them the Right Way…at the Right Time.

Keep this in mind, no matter how efficiently you do things, if they are the WRONG things to be doing… or you are doing them for the WRONG reasons… you will never have your HEART in the battle—so you are defeated before you even get started.

WHAT TO DO NOW? Comment and share your thoughts on this post.

I’m referring to the goals and accomplishments that will drive you to the success you desire.

So what specifically is your life designed to accomplish?

Brace yourself……

Right now, your life is perfectly designed to achieve the results you are CURRENTLY GETTING!

And, if you aren’t getting the results you want, that simply means you simply haven’t designed a life strategy that will get them for you.

When you set the right objectives (the ones that get you to your goals the fastest), you focus your activities like a laser.

Why?

Because every decision you make will be judged by its ability to move you closer to your stated objectives.

So how do you determine and set the right objectives for your life?

Honestly, the right objectives will vary from person to person, and business to business.

But as you plan and strategize your life, there is one overriding definition you must use as a yard stick to engage in this behavior properly.

The RIGHT OBJECTIVES are the fewest number of accomplishments, and  the least number of objectives you can determine that will allow you to reach your goals.

This is really at the heart of what it means to be a strategic thinker. It’s the core idea that makes your life efficient and profitable.

Think about it, what sense does it make to take fifteen steps, when only five will get you where you want to go?

To learn how to accomplish your goals faster and easier than you ever thought possible, check out the 100 Day Challenge.

Strategic questioning is a process whereby you ask yourself, bigger, better, and bolder questions that initiate an internal dialog and which draws you into a more exciting future with new possibilities.

Throughout my coaching and training engagements, I have used this process to help people rip the lid off their current way of thinking and open up their minds to a whole new future.

Here are a few of those questions:

• If everything I’ve done up until now was just the beginning, what’s next?
• What do I have to become in order to get all that I want?
• How far can I go?

Each of these questions acknowledges the past, but uses it as the foundation for a new stage in life.

Unfortunately, far too many people won’t ask a question if they don’t already have the answer to it, but this limits them to thinking within the realm of what they already know.

Your current questions, ideas, and efforts have brought you to where you are today, but if you want to produce bigger results, you need to think bigger too!

Breakthroughs occur when you engage with open-ended questions like:

• What’s next for me?
• What would it look like if this worked out?
• What do I ideally want my life to look like?

While some questions are inherently unanswerable, they are still valuable because of where they lead you even if that’s only to other questions.

As you keep inquiring, you’ll naturally seek out solutions and structures that allow you to explore your ideas and create new things in the world.

WHAT TO DO KNOW? Click here to learn how to create a new future and remember to Comment and Share your feedback with friends and colleagues.

Nothing concentrates the mind or tests our character like a demanding goal — the desire to be something better than we are, to be the complete person that we are meant to be.

However in the course of achieving any goal, we can all expect to experience both triumph and tragedy.

Winston Churchill

Why?

No great achievement in your life will arrive without obstacles, including physical and monetary limitations, the unpredictability of nature, Murphy’s Law, or resistance from the outside world.

In fact, we should be thankful for all obstacles, for they are our practice ground. Each new victory prepares us for a greater future victory.

We ultimately express our greatness not by the acts we perform, but by the perseverance that made those acts possible.

Wrap your mind around this idea…it does not matter how slowly you go on the path to goal achievement, so long as you do not stop.

There is great virtue and glory in never giving up and never giving in!

WHAT TO DO NOW? Click here to learn how to be become an unstoppable powerhouse and remember to Comment and Share your feedback with friends and colleagues.

It has to do with what I call personal constraints which are often defined as limitations or restrictions.

You should be able to answer this pretty quickly.

Question #1 What is the number one familiar behavior that holds you back from being successful but you keep repeating?

Question #2 What negative impact has this behavior had on your life?

Question #3 What specifically can and must you do differently to in order to ensure greater success?

Most people are oblivious to their primary constraint and as a result continue to repeat an ongoing cycle of unproductive behavior.

You on the other hand, if you can identify it, than you can immediately begin working to correct it and I’d like to show you how.

Identifying personal constraints is not usually an easy process. In fact, sometimes we have the most trouble self-assessing, which means that a close friend, spouse or colleague can be incredibly helpful.

Before you can overcome your personal constraints, you will want to understand these three principles:

Principle #1 Everyone Experiences Personal Constraints.

Some are inconsequential and some seem insurmountable. The primary constraints that people “OWN” have to do with self-confidence, self-control and maintaining effective relationships.

Principle #2 Constraints Control Your Results.

The constraints set the ceiling of your performance as you can’t rise above constraints that you don’t or won’t address.

We are sometimes blind to our constraints, but we also tend to cling to some obvious constraints that stare back at us in the mirror — a common one being stubbornness.

Principle #3 Winners Have Fewer Constraints.

Those with the least personal constraints…WIN.

You must understand that it’s not necessarily the most talented or the hardest working people who win but rather those who remove their most impacting constraints.

Please give these three questions the time and attention they deserve as the answers will point you toward a breakthrough and help you to make monumental performance gains and that is what the 100 Day Challenge is all about.

WHAT TO DO KNOW? Click here to learn how to be become an unstoppable powerhouse.

Everything is possible!

I am often asked for a simple, effective, and no-nonsense approach to goal setting that can be used by anyone regardless of age or situation.

What follows is what I affectionately call the 30-Day Extreme Makeover. Follow it to the letter and you will be quite pleased with the outcome.

It’s a simple six step process that is easy to learn, easy to apply, and perhaps most important easy to get results from.

• What do you specifically want to achieve in the next 30 days? Be precise or don’t bother moving to the next step.
• Why is the achievement of this goal(s) so important? Be clear on the key drivers and motivation.

• Who will help you to achieve this goal? Be sure that these are the right people.
• Where do you stand in relation to this goal? Be ruthless as to current strengths and weaknesses.
• How do you plan on accomplishing this goal? Be deliberate, identify the exact steps, tasks, and assign responsibility.
• When will victory be claimed? Be committed and follow one course until successful.

What To Do Now? Click here to download the goal setting form and remember to Comment and Share your feedback with friends and colleagues.

Twenty Important Questions

I’ve got an exercise for you and suggest you take some time to sit down with these questions…think about your answers…challenge yourself…write them down…then go to work!

1. What problem or seemingly overwhelming challenge did you conquer in the past year, and what is your greatest challenge or unsolved problem that exists in your life right now?

2. In what area of your personal or professional life would you consider yourself most improved, and what area will you focus on this year?

3. What are you going to do to improve your industry and product knowledge in the New Year?

4. How many inactive customers will you revive and turn into regular customers again? What do you need to do to make that happen?

5. What will you do to ensure you’re protecting your best customers, and adding more value to the relationships? How will you sell even more to them?

6. How many new customers will you bring on this year? How do you plan to do that, specifically?

7. What will you do to improve your physical health this year?

8. What, specifically, are your sales and production goals for the new year and how does that break down into quarterly and monthly goals?

9. How much more money will you make this year? How will that happen? What will you need to do, today, to take the first steps in that direction?

10. What will you need to do to increase THAT number by an additional 10%?

11. What are you going to do demonstrate excellence and raise the bar of those around you to perform at peak effectiveness?

12. How much time are you going to spend, daily, to improve your own sales skills? What will you do?

13. In which areas will you improve your personal, family, and spiritual life?

14. How are you going to maximize the use of your time? Where will you cut out the time-wasters in each day?

15. What task or projects have you been putting off that you will take care of within the next two weeks?

16. What challenge, wish or desire–that you’ve never attempted before–will you finally achieve this year and how will you do that?

17. Where are you going to write all of this down so you can review and revise your plans regularly?

18. What will it LOOK like when you accomplish everything you’ve just been thinking about?

19. How good will it FEEL?

20. What will it SOUND like when you achieve these things?

Okay, here’s one more question…

21. Why COULDN’T you do all of this?

Any answer to that last one is not a reason, but rather a self-imposed limitation, excuse, or lack of desire or effort.

The biggest deterrent to success looks us in the mirror every day.

What To Do Now? Click here to learn how to make this the best year of your life and remember to Comment & Share your candid feedback with friends and colleagues.

Today Not Tomorrow

If your sales are down and your expenses are up, when would be a good time to craft a new sales plan?

How about next month? It will never work. You need to start today, you need to start right now that’s when you need to change your strategy.

If your pants are tight, and you’re out of breath by simply climbing the stairs, when would be a good time to change your diet and focus on being healthy?

How about after that heart attack? That’s crazy, you need to change and implement a new way of eating today.

If your debt is high and your savings are low, when would be a good time to change from being a spender to a saver?

How about the day after you file for bankruptcy? You’ve got to be kidding me? You need to start right now-today!

When should you start doing anything that you really want to do? You need to start today, not tomorrow, always today.

It’s Time for a Wake-Up Call

If your results right this very instant are not where you want them to be, and if you have more excuses than goals achieved, when would be a good time to get back to the fundamentals of goal setting, focus and execution?

How about when you get to the end of the year and realize that it’s been the worst year of your life?

Of course not, that would be completely irresponsible.

Today–right now is the best time you’ll ever have to take control of your life.

If you’ll allow me, I’d like to show you how to achieve every goal you desire, faster than you ever thought possible.

by Gary Ryan Blair

It is a wonderful and timely message for living a full, rich life of excellence and prosperity by doing everything you want today and not putting it off until tomorrow.

Simple Truths Publishing has created and priced this wonderful book so that you can give it as a gift to every person on your gift list.

If there is anyone to whom you want to share the gift of success or someone who needs to be reminded of the importance of goal setting?this is the gift for them!

I am very proud of this particular piece of work and very excited to finally be able to offer it to you!

Enforce Self Discipline

Discipline is the umbilical cord of success. Refusing to apply discipline is a withdrawal from the bank account of what is possible.

Discipline is the virtue that gives you the courage and the inner resolve to do what you said you would do – when you said you would do it – period!

Study anyone who has achieved a measure of greatness and you will be studying discipline in motion.

Study a knucklehead on the other hand, and you will be studying procrastination in motion.

Discipline is the cornerstone of self-mastery. You exercise discipline for the same reason you take a bath. Without it you stink!

You may not be breaking any laws by not disciplining yourself, however success requires a higher standard of performance and accountability than that!

Discipline is the source, the wellspring that lets you live the life that you deserve. You must strengthen your inner core if you are truly dedicated to manifesting your highest potential for personal and professional success.

With discipline, you will possess the inner fire needed to focus on your primary goals and realize your dreams!

The more you practice, the more proficient you become.

Just like everything else in life, the more you practice toward results, the more proficient you become.

At first, the practice is a royal pain in the behind, and you experience a healthy dose of frustration when you don’t see immediate results that you had hoped for.

You must practice the basic fundamentals of achieving results if you want your goal to be achieved.

Low achievers have a kind of blasé, laissez-faire attitude, when it comes to preparation. While high achievers prepare well and practice in advance to perform at their very best, low achievers are satisfied with being second-rate. They have forgotten or may not know what a first-rate result is and that it consists of hours of preparation and practice.

The practice range is where your skills are refined, honed, dissembled and eventually reassembled.

Visualize successful performance.

What you see IS what you get!

Professional athletes are exceptionally adept at visualization.

• A professional golfer never tees off without first playing the course in his mind.
• A professional downhill skier never goes downhill without first visualizing the entire hill in her mind.
• A professional ballerina never performs without first performing the entire ballet in her mind.

They execute first in their mind and then through action.

By the time they are ready to perform they have already played the event in their mind, so that all that’s left to do is execute what they have already visualized.

This sort of positive reinforcement gives the professional an advantage in any endeavor.

When they perform well, they are not surprised at all. In fact, they expected to do well because they preformed flawlessly in their mind first – they visualized success in advance and you can do the same!

Manage your calls with professionalism and discipline.

1. Make a list of the talking points you want to discuss.
2. Prioritize the sequence of the items so that the most important items get discussed first.
3. Have at your fingertips the files or papers to which you?ll need to refer.

Manage your outgoing and incoming calls with the same level of professionalism and discipline that you would with any business meeting.

Make the decision.

One of the most important parts of being organized is figuring out what to do with all that paper.

The sheer volume can be overwhelming therefore you must have a system in place that manages the way you handle paper and you must be diligent in sticking to that system.

Decisions today aren’t hampered by a lack of data, but rather it is an OVERABUNDANCE of data, some good, but most of it useless papers that flood each area of your life.

You must be mindful of the material you allow yourself to read. Unless an item fits into what is important and moves you closer to your goal, it is probably better left unread.

When a piece of paper arrives on the scene, you have four options:

1. Act on it – immediately
2. File it away to be acted on later
3. Delegate it to someone else
4. Toss It

Touch paper as few times as possible and handle each as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

While sometimes impossible to do, have a one-touch goal as your ultimate objective and enter the process with a get-in-get-out mindset.

Often the boldest and best method for handling paper is to increase the number of items you pitch into the trash can!

Work your system to accomplish the tasks on your list.

Your time management system might be good or bad, conscious or unconscious, but don’t be deceived; you do have a system for being organized or disorganized.

Your office or home might be in shambles. In that case, whether you admit it or not, your system consists of living in a mess.

Let’s be honest my furry friend. You must have an organizational system that helps you to manage time and achieve your goals.

In order to develop a new, more effective organizational system, you must first:

• Identify the system that’s right for you.
• Simplify the system so that it isn’t a burden.
• Monkey with the system so that it is truly your own.

ALL performance and organizational systems need to meet certain basic requirements in order to be effective.

Your organizational system must:

1. Be in Writing – If you’re relying on your memory, you’re toast. No matter how bright you are, memories fail, time escapes you, and things will slip through your mind and the proverbial cracks of productivity.

If you only write down half the things you need to do, your system is only 50% effective. If 75% of the things you need to do make it to your list than your system operates at 75% efficiency.

Whatever system you choose, it must force you to write everything down if it is to be 100% effective.

2. Be Convenient – Since you are always on the go your system must be portable and convenient to access at all times. If you write your plan down but don?t keep it with you, what worth is it?

Your organizational system is no good to you if you are in one location and it in another.

3. Be Easy to Read and Understand – No one needs to understand your system but you. Keep it personal and make it work for you. Abbreviate where you can and do all you can to save time.

You don’t need to spell correctly in your system or use correct grammar; the objective is to work your system to accomplish the tasks on your list.

A feeing of accomplishment precedes a completed item.

Compartmentalization is a critical step to achieving goals and getting the results you want.

After you establish your goals and priorities for a day, hour, or a particular meeting or project you must compartmentalize.

Compartmentalization means focusing on each individual item without letting any one activity encroach upon the timing and effectiveness of any other.

It’s easier said than done, however if you want to achieve your goals in the fastest manner possible you must take the following steps to maximize your ability to compartmentalize:

• WRITE down every action you plan to take.

Underperformers keep their goals in their head while high achievers put their plans to paper in an organized manner. After you’ve committed your priorities to paper, you gain clarity and control which allows you to free your mind of worry and anticipation.

• CROSS items off your list.

A feeing of accomplishment precedes a completed item. Every action moves you one step closer to your desired goal and ideal outcome.

• CONCENTRATE on the present.

Focus on the here and now, you cannot change the past nor can you control the future.

If you find that you are having trouble compartmentalizing your time and activities, look at your list and remind yourself of what’s most important – your current focus. Like a rubber band, this will snap you back to the matter at hand.

Goals never fail. Only implementation does!

A flawed premise of success is that the goal is the most important ingredient in the stew of success, and that you win or lose based on the merits or worthiness of the goal. How wrong and casualty-creating that premise is as the best goal or most honorable intention cannot survive poor execution.

Goals never fail. Only implementation does!

Unless you execute properly and remain focused until completion, the goal and that means ANY goal is irrelevant. My observation over time is that success is 10 percent vision, or what some might call goal clarity, and 90 percent execution.

In this post, I wanted to offer some thoughts on why execution is the key to greatness, define what good execution is, and describe how you can execute well and get good at it.

The difference between those who have goals and plans but don’t succeed and those that do succeed is simple.

Those that succeed are able to execute well and follow through until completion.

What is good execution?

Good execution is all about making good decisions and making things happen. It’s about reacting well to unpleasant and unexpected events.

Execute until the goal is achieved.

It’s about building capabilities into your life and business, the capability to be efficient and effective in respect to those factors that are critical to your success. It’s about FedEx making sure that the package really does arrive the next day.

How does one execute well and get good at it? You must focus time and resources on the core activities necessary for achievement.

There are always more tasks to do than there are time and resources available to do them, therefore go for the high-impact activities.

You must hold yourself accountable for deadlines and adjust tasks accordingly. Slipping deadlines are a symptom of poor execution and a lack of discipline. Set realistic deadlines, monitor your progress, and make timely decisions to meet your deadlines. You must execute or die!

The success you enjoy depends upon many things, but mostly it depends on you and your ability to execute until the goal is achieved!

Execution Strategies

In computer science there exists a term called the divide-and-conquer algorithm.

What this algorithm basically does is that it breaks down a larger problem into smaller sub-problems and each of those sub-problems are then broken down into even smaller sub-problems.

You continue to break down all the sub-problems until you have a bunch of small and easily solvable problems -- if you solve all of these small problems, then you’ve solved the main, bigger problem.

You can apply this same algorithm to your life and to your goals.

I find that many people have big dreams and big aspirations but when it comes time for them to actually start working on it, they stand there confused and unsure about which direction to take. The most common complaint they have is that they don’t know where to start.

So how would you apply the divide-and-conquer algorithm to your life or business?

Let me explain how by sharing a real life case study.

When Michael Jordan first retired from the NBA in 1999, he did so with an astonishing average of 31.5 points per game -- an NBA record.

In addition to being an incredible testament to Jordan’s skill as a basketball superstar, the record is a great indicator of his mental drive and determination.

No matter who the opponent was, Jordan got his 32 points every night for 13 years.

If you break it down and examine how Jordan achieved this incredible feat you have to embrace the philosophy of Divide and Conquer.

High achievers develop the ability to break their goals into manageable bite sized increments. It’s important to understand that large goals and overwhelming tasks are only intimidating when you look at them in totality.

The first step toward managing what seems unmanageable is to break each task into smaller increments, in other words divide the goal into morsels and conquer each task one at a time.

By focusing on the smaller objectives instead of the large whole, your tasks seem easier and your anxiety and blood pressure are certainly lowered.

One of life’s most important lessons is that a large goal consists of a bunch of smaller ones.

EVERY big goal or project can be reduced to a series of small jobs and activities.

This attitude and philosophical approach will help you to maximize your results in dramatic fashion.

You can do the same thing with time. Every day has 1,440 minutes. Assuming you need 8 hours or 480 minutes of sleep, you’re left with 960 minutes in which to achieve the goals you set for yourself in a given day.

Divide and conquer your day into manageable bites of between 15 and 30 minutes. Divide a task that’s likely to take an hour as consuming four 15-minute time increments and you will conquer your tasks in an orderly and results oriented manner.

So how did Michael Jordan divide and conquer his way to success, the answer is amazingly simple; he averaged 8 points per quarter (divide) and multiplied (conquered) his was into the record books and became a legend in the process!