Peter Harrington's Blog

Dec 11, 2008

I thought this would be a good post with new years coming up

There was once a  study of students at Yale, students were asked if they set goals. 97% of the participants said no with the other 3% saying yes. A number of years later the people conducting the study went and interviewed all the students again. The 3% that did set goals had a combined net worth greater then the other 97% combined!* A large statistical discrepancy such as this is rather hard to argue against.

Now what if it was that easy? What if you could literally set goals and become wealthier then the majority of the population? Set a goal and success will come, a pretty nice law if you ask me. It is like the saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, what if this was fact and you could just have an apple a day and be healthy your whole life.

Can you really justify not setting a goal, when clearly is has been a common factor between so many successful people? Well you shouldn’t, goal setting does not take up a lot of time and is not very difficult, though a lot of people do not do it properly.

When defining a goal it is very important to follow these guidelines:

• The goal must have a time line or completion date, how else are you going to be able to tell if you completed it on time?
• The goal should be very clear. Don’t just say I want to be rich by 2010, assign numbers to the goal. Instead say “I will have $200,000 in real estate investments by January 2010″ or “I will have launched my own startup and have built cash flow to $1000/month”.
• Think positive when writing goals, the more positive the goal is the more positive your results will be.
• Discuss your goals with your spouse and/or family. This is good for a couple reasons. First it will make you accountable to your goals and second you can make sure that your goals will not interfere with theirs. But try to avoid sharing them with negative people, they will only dampen your spirit.
• Write it down.
• Read the above guideline one more time. This is very important so don’t forget. Also, put your goals somewhere that is visible. Perhaps on the fridge door, this is focus your mind as you will be constantly reminded of what you want to accomplish.

If you follow this process you will start to see a positive change in your life. So good luck and don’t forget the sky is the limit (unless your an astronaut ;))

*I only read this study and have no actual backing for it, despite its lack of proof the story still has a positive message so I’m leaving it up