Post-note 1: Diane Foreman referenced what Zac de Silva talks about in the article below, in her recent book “In The Arena” – thank you Diane, very cool to see pages 118 and 119 in your book sharing Zac’s thoughts on how to be successful
Post-note 2: Obviously Zac has been in contact with Diane (who he did not know before the mention in her book) and we are lucky enough to report that she is coming to Fiji for Nurture Change, November 2 to November 6, 2016 – we cannot wait to hear what Diane has to share with us all! OK HERE YOU GO:
I recently presented at a conference on how to be successful (based on my learning’s and real life observations) and thought it would be a great thing to share some of it with you at the start of the year (ie now). Perhaps I see things too simply but I think that being successful is easier than most people think. Do a few things well and see your chance of success grows immeasurably…
In 1979 Harvard University started a study on goal setting and success… Some graduate students were asked “have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” They found that 3% had written goals and plans, 13% had goals but they weren’t in writing and 84% had no goals at all. Ten years later, they checked in with these students again. The 13% who had some unwritten goals (ten years earlier) were earning twice the average amount of the 84% with no goals. The 3% who had taken the time to write down their goals and plans were earning ten times as much as the other 97% combined! Quite a strong statistic I would say…
I know that wealth is not a function necessarily of success but I think that “wealth” can be replaced with whatever might be important to you – as in the study proves a point scientifically that we all intrinsically know but many times do not do enough about it. So lesson one is write down your goals and plans to get there. That pre-supposes that you take the time to think creatively about what you actually could and want to achieve.
The second thing for you to do is real simple… Tell someone or quite a few others about your goals. Obviously people that you trust. When you “speak it” it means that you should be more motivated to achieve it so that you are not left with egg on your face per se. Given you trust these people, they will hopefully be interested to help you be accountable to deliver on your goals. Work out a way that they can do this for you… Lesson two; share your goals with your trusted ones…
Then you need to put something in your diary (smart phone calendar etc)… Simply make a weekly reminder flash up saying something like “My goal is A, B and C, what progress have I made this past week on achieving these goals?” Again, how simple is that… Lesson three is simply just making sure you review your goal regularly. Maybe weekly is not right for you, whatever timeframe just make it happen. This does mean it is the sort of reminder that you actually read and do…
So the 4th point is discipline. Jim Collins in his famous business book Good to Great shared how great leaders (who achieved huge success) all had one big thing in common – discipline. I know that having discipline is easier said than done for most people (thus why most of us do not achieve all that we are truly capable of) but if you put in place lesson two and three already noted, that should help with your discipline. The thing with discipline is that often it is just a habit that needs to be learned. Then the discipline hopefully will become second nature. There are some good books on how to create habits (and thus potentially grow your discipline). Do something enough and it becomes a habit, good or bad. So make it a habit (meaning you have discipline) to think about your goals, what you need to do to achieve them and how you are going in getting closer to achieving them.
Of course none of this is rocket science but if you do not do this “stuff” already, give it a go. If you already do it (probably the minority of readers), how can you be even more accountable and disciplined in achieving your goals this year? It will be really interesting to see whether you can make this year your best year yet!
Zac de Silva owns www.businesschanging.com and is a business coach, director and speaker. He was recently awarded International Business Coach of the Year. Zac owns www.accme.co which helps business owners and managers focus on the most important things in their business and team by sharing regular business thinking questions which you build into a living business plan (via the cool software that AccMe is).
(As published in the Sunday Star Times and Stuff.co.nz, January 25, 2015: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/65307698/set-your-goals-for-a-successful-new-year)
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