SMARTER Goal's, now we've got you going

Defining our goal is particularly important because our subconscious requires very clear instructions of what we want.  Any vagueness or self doubt when defining our goals will result in a poor picture a weak vision of what you will achieve.  

 

'SMARTER' is a useful memory tool with which to remember the fundamental principles of effective goal setting, explore our goals more fully, and ensure that they are as clearly and precisely defined as possible.

Specific: Your goal or goals should be always be clearly and positively defined, the why you need to achieve it.  In this way, they should relate to outcomes and actions that are specific rather than ones that are general.  Rather than simply say that we are going to be a better manager or that we are going to get fitter, we should be looking to describe in exactly what way we are going to be a better manager and in exactly what way we are going to get fitter. Note if you are unable to articulate clearly the why, the likelihood is 'ITs NOT A GOAL'!

 

Measurable: Our goals should also be measurable such that we have a benchmark against which to monitor our progress on a weekly, daily, hourly basis...you get the idea.  In order to do so, we should be asking ourselves how we will know when we are a better manager and how will we know when we are fitter.  If we look at the goal setting process as a path that we intend to follow, we need to know where the path starts and where the path ends.  We also need to have established milestones along the way in order to ensure that we are not deviating from the path that we have chosen.

Attainable: Many people set goals that are completely out of reach for them or knowingly impossible to achieve.  Although this practice is clearly self-defeating, many people do this in order to have a built-in excuse for not achieving their goals.  We must always have a realistic chance of reaching our goals, combined with a belief that we can reach them, in order to stay committed to them.  This is the essence of “realistic” goal setting, although we must be careful how we use this term – extraordinary things are not achieved by realistic people!  The use of “fantastic” goals – those that relate more to the original dreams and aspirations that motivated us towards making our goals in the first place – can be extremely useful too.  Incorporated within our visualisation they can be extremely motivational and help support our realistic goals – so long as we employ them appropriately.
 
Repeatable: Your goals should achieve long term change.  Short-term and intermediate goals (sub-goals), meanwhile, provide useful “stepping stones” that can help us to maintain our focus.  In order to do this, however, our goals not only have to be measurable – they need to be repeatable too.  This also helps in monitoring our progress towards our goals.

Time-phased: In order for our goals to be measured in any real way they need to be time-phased.  All to often people have goals that they are going to commit to “someday”.  Goals such as these are very rarely achieved – and certainly not within the timeframe originally intended.  Having developed an action plan we should immediately place a “start” and “achievement” date on our goals and use this time scale to monitor our progress.
 
Exciting and Fun: Many people set goals that are so low as to present no challenge to them.  Often this is because their goals are ones that they feel that they “should” be working towards rather than ones that they really “want” to work towards.   Sometimes it is because they have borrowed someone else’s goals rather than deciding upon their own.  Goals should be motivating and, as such, need to be exciting.  If our goals do not excite us, we need to redefine and upgrade them or exchange them altogether. And remember to enjoy the journey.

Recorded: Recording our goals is extremely important – both by communicating them to other people and simply writing them down.  By doing so we provide ourselves with prominent permanent reminders of what we want to achieve and how we are going to achieve it.  In this way, the use of goal setting cards can be extremely useful in helping us to maintain focus on our goals, whilst written agreements, pledges and declarations can enhance our level of commitment by tying us into a “psychological contract”.

SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, YOU’VE GOT THE HOW TO SET YOUR GOALS, KNOW THE LIMITATIONS YOU POSSESS AND NOW HOW, SO DO IT, MOVE YOUR LIFE FORWARD AND ACHIEVE YOUR DREAMS. BE WHO YOU DEFINE YOURSELF AS!

The Why

The Why Guy, one of TEDs talk top 20 for good reason.

BARRIERS TO GOAL SETTING

Did you set your goals? No why not? Lets have a look at the Barriers to Goal setting....

Whilst goal setting undoubtedly has massive and proven benefits, there are a number of barriers that will, has or may prevent YOU from setting them! 

 
All too many people have never heard of goal setting and do not appreciate its power and benefits: For others, goal setting may make them feel uncomfortable or embarrassed, or amuse them because they have never been through the process before and are unfamiliar with it.  
 
Some people have heard of goal setting but might not understand the benefits of goal setting: And even when people do understand the benefits, many are still uncertain as to how to set goals and the process involved.  If we are unsure as to the benefits of goal setting, we need only consider peak performers, their levels of performance and what they achieve, and what they do that makes them peak performers – goal setting will invariably be “in there” somewhere. A good starting point is to re-read the last blog and then make a commitment to yourself. 
 
Some people have a fear of rejection: Some people might understand the importance of goal setting but be afraid that other people might laugh at their goals or make “fun” of them for wanting to improve their performance and achieve more.  By declaring our goals to other people we always risk ridicule or rejection by other people.  This is especially true of people who are afraid that we might “out-achieve” them, or people that have low self-esteem themselves and feel threatened by our goals. Are you a VICTIM or VICTOR? Although we often need other people to support our goals, it is often a good idea to be selective as to whom we share them with, whilst we can always use a person’s comments of rejection as a form of personal motivation.
 
Some people have a fear of failure: Invariably some people believe that it is “better not to have tried at all, than to have tried and failed”. Remember there is no such thing as failure, only feedback.  By writing down our goals we put them into perspective and become committed to them.  Unfortunately, this can sometimes create a problem when we have low self-esteem ourselves, or when we may not totally believe in our ability to achieve our goals.  As a result, we may be reluctant to declare what we want and set goals in case failure to achieve them leads to de-motivation and a further lowering of self-esteem.  However, if we set a goal and achieve only 50% of that which we would hope to achieve, it is still 50% more than we would have achieved if we had not set goals in the first place!  Whilst we might not achieve everything that we dream of, we can never achieve anything unless we at least dream of it first!
 
Some people have a fear of success: Strange as it may sound, some people find that continued failure provides a certain sense of security.  Such people invariably like to blame their failure on external factors or other people because it absolves them of personal responsibility.  For others, repeated failure might make other people feel sorry for them and provide them with a certain sense of belonging or importance.  They fear success, therefore, because by achieving it, their attention is inextricably drawn to the potential that resides within them.  This forces them to take personal responsibility for their actions and results and can makes them feel uncomfortable.  Or they might fear losing the sympathy of others as an “acknowledged failure” for whom nothing has gone right in the past.  It is only by taking personal responsibility, however, that we can start to realise our goals and our true potential in the future.

So what are your barriers? What's really stopping you from achieving your dreams?

Come On Get Your Goals Set & Realise Your Dreams

 

Read a great book and wanted to share the philosophy with you all; 7 Strategies for Wealth and happiness by Jim Rohn.

To keep it really simple just follow these instructions, however before I get started a health warning! Don’t read on unless you really do want to move your life in a direction you aspire to, you want to achieve, you have dreamt of and feels right for you. Tired of that negativity in your mind telling you ‘not to be daft, you’ll never achieve that, who are you trying to kid, let’s get back to reality ‘ or you ‘so call friends’ telling you to be realistic, there are more important things to deal with, it’s a nice idea BUT!

Let’s remember dreaming is a right we inherited as a child, dreaming of what you were going to get for your Birthday or Christmas, what you were going to be when you grew up! What happen, when did you lose the ability to dream and by virtue change and take control and responsibility for your life? Maybe it’s because we are not happy with a label like dream, it’s too fanciful, too fairy tale and not realistic! OK let’s put a ‘grown up’ name to it, let’s call that dream a goal. The biggest difference having grown up is realising there are ways and means to realise a goal or a dream.  We didn’t know what would be involved with becoming an astronaut as child, however we have a better idea today; probably a few scientific degrees, I guess being able to fly, maybe fit and healthy. Now clearly that sounds simple enough, but we can all see that alone is a great deal of work and commitment. The point is you are all able to achieve our goals once we know where we want to go.

So what? This is about choice, deciding to do something different, if that you then this simple exercise is as good a starting point as any………READ ON>>>>>

So we are going to have a brain dump! First step is to find yourself a piece of paper and a pen. Got it GOOD, now divide the page into 6. Top left write BE, Top right write DO, the left to right in the remaining boxes SEE, HAVE, GO and finally bottom right SHARE:

 

 Now this is the good part, don't get into a 'flat spin' or 'too in depth' just start writing and write down your goals for the next 10 years under these headings.

What do I want to BE?

What do I want to DO?

What do I want to SEE?

What do I want to HAVE?

Where do I want to GO?

What do I want to SHARE?

The key here is not top write to much detail, the the saying goes 'keep it simple stupid'! So don't write lengthy descriptions, just write a brief memory jogger. "I want a Porches 4S" as 4S.

So how long should this take...well no more than 15 minutes, there will be time to refine and reflect in due course. The important thing is to write what comes naturally.

Next you'll need to write the number of years it is going to take you to achieve each of the goals. Don't be too definitive round it up or down to years, general 1, 3, 5 or 10. Now just pop the number with each of the goals. What's important here is to ensure you have balance in your forecasting. There's little point to having lots of 5 and 10 years goals and no 1 or 3 years, its likely to result in 'just putting things off', postponing what it is you need to get started. Likewise without the long term goals you'll be lacking some long term vision and something to really strive for. At this point you'll end up with multi-layered goals, you'll be able to maintain momentum, as you reach and achieve one goal you'll be already on the way to the next and so on!

Now with all the goals you have written you need to prioritise the top 3 or 4 in each time category. Your now going to distil what each means and represents, you need to write a paragraph on each detailing the following:

• A description of what you want; and be detailed, really tap into your minds eye, relay visualise the goal.
• The reason why you want to achieve or acquire the item, its likely at this point that you will find out if you really want it or its just a passing fancy and not a goal. Bottom line if you cant define why you should class it as a whim and reprioritise and replace it with a goal.

The point here is the real reason is the driving factor the real motivation behind the goal, so spend some time here as this is what will inspire and keep you focused on achieving it.

Once you have completed this process why not have your goals written out and presented nicely in a  journal or diary and then make sure you review them each and every week. Assess what progress you make and measure it, how much closer you are to achievement. Doesn't matter how little it matters that you are ever closer towards realising.

So get writing!

Here Jim talking about Goal Setting:

 

Jim has some great books which will help in your pursuit of your dreams and making them a reality.

The Inner Chimp

Dr Steve Peters: From chimps to champs

When British cyclists want to use brains as well as brawn in the pursuit of glory, they turn to him. Some of the riders are aware of the danger of allowing the Olympics to haunt them." That is the psychiatrist Steve Peters' graphic description of how the prospect of the London Olympics this summer is affecting some athletes in the long, slow build-up to what could be the most critical event of their lives. However, it is a fairly safe bet that if anybody can vanquish those ghosts, it is Peters.

As Britain's cycling success has grown and grown, so Peters' work with track racing's two most high-profile athletes, Victoria Pendleton and Sir Chris Hoy, has become relatively well known. After all, when Pendleton calls Peters "the most important person in my career", or Hoy says that "without Steve I don't think I could have brought home triple gold from Beijing", people tend to take notice.At the 2012 Games, it will be Peters' job as British Cycling's "head coach" – as he is known inside the team, pun fully intended – to make sure the riders who will spearhead Britain's medal hopes are as successful as possible.

 

At the London Olympic test event the weekend before last, just as at almost every major GB track engagement since before Athens 2004, Peters' slight, silver-haired figure could be seen, hovering on the wings of the British contingent. Given that he was one of the four-man core management team in Beijing for the all-conquering GB cycling squad, and given the success of his work in other sports – "around 10 right now," he says – one imagines his presence alone is reassuring to the riders.

This summer, Peters will be in the same velodrome in Stratford, east London, in the same role. But he recognises that the stakes will be way higher than usual for his charges, higher than any before. Hence the "ghosts".

"People look to the Olympics as a special event," Peters says, "and it's quite self-evident to say that London is going to create an enormous spotlight on our particular athletes. For most of the athletes in Olympic disciplines, they've got one shot every four years and that's quite critical compared to other sports, where there are tournaments going on every week."

So intense is the pressure that Peters has created special "coping strategies" that are designed to handle both failure and success in London.

"We have a policy in place for those who are possibly doing a swansong in London," he says, "and what options they have after the Olympics. But we also have safety nets in place for those who don't perform so well, or for those who perform really well and then you have this dive after the Olympics, which is what we saw after Beijing."

Peters' work has already helped to ensure that, despite the British team having done so well in Beijing, there has been no collective increase in their fear of failure.

"Not at all. What we've done as a team is say, 'Wipe out the past, it's a level playing field'," he explains. "Don't forget, in cycling they've changed some of the events and limited us to one athlete per event. We cannot achieve what we did in Beijing" – eight gold medals, four silver and two bronze – "it's not possible. So therefore we're coming to do our best and deliver what we can."

Cycling has its own psychological pressures, Peters says, "because [imagine] you're a cyclist and miss other sprinters making a breakaway move. There's a lot of tactical stuff. But a 100-metre sprinter just looks at his own start, his own lane. The rest don't bother him."

"And in snooker" – Peters works with the former world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan – "missing an easy ball means you may have to sit there listening to your opponent clinking away at the balls. The pressures in each sport are totally different and each cyclist has very different concepts of what pressure is. There is no single recipe book."

Talking of books takes us neatly round to the one that Peters has just published, The Chimp Paradox. Put in a nutshell, this is the mind-management programme that lies at the heart of much of Peters' work, in which the irrational, emotional side of a personality is depicted as a chimp. Peters' book teaches you how to "train" your chimp, despite it being stronger than the rational "you".

One fan is Sir Chris Hoy. However, Peters is at pains to point out that there is "nothing on sport in this book".

"What I normally do with athletes," he says, "as I do with anybody who comes to me, is [to say to them], 'Can we understand what's going on in your head, what sort of machine are we working with? So the book asks you to 'discover' your machine and then it's a question of where you want to apply it. That's the same for everybody.

"And clearly I do not want to give away anything before the Olympic Games, on how I deal with elite sport. That was never going to happen."

The Chimp Paradox is refreshingly free of psychobabble, making it very accessible. This is something Peters says is probably due to his background in education.

"I've been a lecturer at Sheffield University for 20 years now," he says, "and when you're teaching doctors it's very important to get your ideas across simply and effectively so they can use them in a practical way."

Peters says he has "cheated a bit by simply saying there's a chimp and a human", because in fact there are between six and 10 different bits of the brain that "think". But that would be too hard to explain. "The chimp, on the other hand, is a concept everybody can grasp and which is usable."

If Peters is giving away nothing about how he treats athletes prior to London 2012, he does reveal the areas in which he operates with them. It's what he calls the "15 per cent" that makes the difference between a good athlete and a brilliant one who might, say, win three gold medals at one Games, à la Hoy.

"If people are functioning at an 85 per cent level of their capacities," he says, "they tend to be happy and complacent and say, 'I'm doing really well, I'll skip the last 15 per cent.' But that's where the trivial details [that make the difference], such as being slightly overweight, tend to be.

"But I would say there are some very astute people around, and Chris Hoy is one of them, who recognises there are mental areas where he could improve. So he comes along and he says to me, 'Give me the extra 15 per cent. I want to be at 100'."

Hoy, Peters says, was far from falling apart at the seams when he first met him. "This was a man who was fully with it. But he recognised he could get an extra bit out of my training by using mental skills. He learnt those skills, he moved from 85 per cent to 100."

Peters also points out that this does not mean his athletes become obsessive through working with him. "It's perhaps the opposite. Normally at 100 per cent they're more relaxed."

You could say that the "chimp concept" sounds a shade childish. Peters agrees that it sounds amusing, not to mention unthreatening, but says that is intentional, if only to a degree.

"The model I've invented is fun, but... it has a very serious side. My intention [in the book] is to give some quality of life to a lot of people who are struggling to get that. But I don't want it to come across as if this is some amazing concept that I've produced and if you don't use it then there's something wrong with you."

Some of the riders are aware of the danger of allowing the Olympics to haunt them." That is the psychiatrist Steve Peters' graphic description of how the prospect of the London Olympics this summer is affecting some athletes in the long, slow build-up to what could be the most critical event of their lives. However, it is a fairly safe bet that if anybody can vanquish those ghosts, it is Peters.

As Britain's cycling success has grown and grown, so Peters' work with track racing's two most high-profile athletes, Victoria Pendleton and Sir Chris Hoy, has become relatively well known. After all, when Pendleton calls Peters "the most important person in my career", or Hoy says that "without Steve I don't think I could have brought home triple gold from Beijing", people tend to take notice.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_NIgp8GGps

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/dr-steve-peters-from-chimps-to-champs-7462498.html

This is an awesome book!

 

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence Theory (EQ - Emotional Quotient)

Emotional Intelligence - EQ - is a relatively recent behavioural model, rising to prominence with Daniel Goleman's 1995 Book called 'Emotional Intelligence'. The early Emotional Intelligence theory was originally developed during the 1970s and 80s by the work and writings of psychologists Howard Gardner (Harvard), Peter Salovey (Yale) and John 'Jack' Mayer (New Hampshire). Emotional Intelligence is increasingly relevant to organizational development and developing people, because the EQ principles provide a new way to understand and assess people's behaviours, management styles, attitudes, interpersonal skills, and potential. Emotional Intelligence is an important consideration in human resources planning, job profiling, recruitment interviewing and selection, management development, customer relations and customer service, and more.

The EQ concept argues that IQ, or conventional intelligence, is too narrow; that there are wider areas of Emotional Intelligence that dictate and enable how successful we are. Success requires more than IQ (Intelligence Quotient), which has tended to be the traditional measure of intelligence, ignoring essential behavioural and character elements. We've all met people who are academically brilliant and yet are socially and inter-personally inept. And we know that despite possessing a high IQ rating, success does not automatically follow.

Different approaches and theoretical models have been developed for Emotional Intelligence. This summary article focuses chiefly on the Goleman interpretation. The work of Mayer, Salovey and David Caruso (Yale) is also very significant in the field of Emotional Intelligence, and will in due course be summarised here too.

Emotional Intelligence - Two Aspects

This is the essential premise of EQ: to be successful requires the effective awareness, control and management of one's own emotions, and those of other people. EQ embraces two aspects of intelligence:

• Understanding yourself, your goals, intentions, responses, behaviour and all.
• Understanding others, and their feelings.

Emotional Intelligence - The Five Domains

Goleman identified the five 'domains' of EQ as:
Knowing your emotions.

1. Managing your own emotions.
2. Motivating yourself.
3. Recognising and understanding other people's emotions.
4. Managing relationships, i.e., managing the emotions of others.

Emotional Intelligence embraces and draws from numerous other branches of behavioural, emotional and communications theories, such as NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Transactional Analysis, and empathy. By developing our Emotional Intelligence in these areas and the five EQ domains we can become more productive and successful at what we do, and help others to be more productive and successful too. The process and outcomes of Emotional Intelligence development also contain many elements known to reduce stress for individuals and organizations, by decreasing conflict, improving relationships and understanding, and increasing stability, continuity and harmony.

http://www.businessballs.com/eq.htm

Daniel Goleman is a great source of further information on EI, I particularly enjoyed 'The New Leader'.