Getting to Your Goals

Dr. Bruce Eichelberger

Successful people know about the importance of setting goals. Not only does every personal improvement coach, author and speaker mention this idea, it's also just common sense. After all, "if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

So why, after you've set your goals, don't you always reach them? One reason could be that you haven't made your desired outcome clear enough. Without a very clear, sensory-rich idea of what you want, you cannot fully engage the creative power within you to take you to your destination.

Even though we don't often think about it, our experience of the world is always represented in terms of our 5 senses. We know about the world because we see, hear, feel, taste and smell it. This is also true when we remember past or imagine future experiences. This basic fact is one of the keys to making your goals more tangible.

The way to use this is simple yet powerful. When you are setting your goals, do so using every one of your senses. I'll use a very basic example of this to show the idea. Let's say that you are setting a goal of having a specific new car. To set this goal in your mind, you could get a picture of the make, model and color of the car that you put in a prominent place where you can see it every day. This helps you to see your goal.

You could then go to the dealer and take a test drive. You'd feel the smooth, yet powerful acceleration, the texture and support of the seats, the feel of the steering wheel in your hands. You then use this experience every day by remembering exactly what it feels like to drive your dream car. You'll also want to address the emotional part of this in your goal-setting process. How happy are you while you drive your new car?

And what about the sound of the engine? You could use that as well in the full sensing of your goal. Of course, you also have the opportunity to smell that 'new car smell' when you test drive it, so you can incorporate this in your goal-setting process.

Let's see, we've used everything except taste so far. What if you imagined driving your new car to your favorite restaurant and eating your favorite meal there? Can't you just taste how wonderful this would be?

Once you gather all your sensory experiences, every day you can spend time seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and even tasting your new car goal. Experience it as if it is already happening. You've now made the experience very full and the goal very clear. When you do your goal setting, you have a much clearer idea of what the experience of the goal is like. When you get to your goal, you'll definitely know you've arrived.

This same process can be used for other types of goals as well. Do you want to improve a particular relationship at home or at work? Do you have specific business or financial goals you'd like to reach? Is better health one of your goals? All of these types of goals happen much more quickly when you are specific about what you want and use all 5 senses. Spend some time making your goal setting rich with sensory information and see how much more quickly you reach them!

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Goal-setting is a kind of communication with yourself. Achieving your goals is more powerful when your communication with yourself is sensory-rich. Getting agreement with others is also more powerful when you are aware of how they process information with their senses. In EQ: Communicating with Power, you will learn the skills used by the most powerful communicators in the world when they communicate with themselves and with others. The next EQ class is scheduled for September 22-24, 2005. Click here to learn more.

Today's action step is to take just one of your goals and make it sensory-rich. You can choose a relatively small one, or go for it and choose one of your really big ones. Select at least 3 visual, 3 auditory, and 3 tactile or feeling perceptions that represent to you what it will be like to reach this goal. If possible, also include smell and taste perceptions. Write these down.

Then, using these sensory perceptions, when you next do your 5 & 5, include a minute of time to get excited about this goal. Really let yourself step into the experience of having it right now. You might also want to write down how this feels. Do this for at least 30 days and see what happens.

We'd love to hear how your sensory-rich goal setting goes for you.  If share it with us, you might even see it in a future newsletter! Send it to newsletter@empoweru.net.

Tangible literally means "able to be touched." It also has the extended meaning of something that is capable of being realized by the mind. This is the way we use it in today's message in the sentence, "This basic fact is one of the keys to making your goals more tangible."