Jenny and Erin

Can you envision your biggest goal in life? Do you truly know what it will it take to get you there? Answering winning the lottery doesn’t count! How many times have you set a goal only to fail? Maybe you even failed during the first week, or as many experience, on the very first day. Perhaps you’ve been going about achieving your goals in the wrong way.

Stephen Covey writes in The Seven Secrets of Highly Effective People that one of the keys to reaching a goal is to achieve it twice. Twice? But isn’t once hard enough? This isn’t exactly as it appears. You see, your goal must first be brought to reality through identifying it, visioning how you will attain it and by believing in your ability to achieve it. Only after this is accomplished, can you reach your goal the second time, in physical reality.

Let’s say you are going on holiday in 6 months and you want to look GOOD in your swimsuit. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman, if you have weight to gain or weight to lose or are trying to impress the girls, the guys or a special someone. What ultimately matters is that when you put your swimsuit on you believe you look good. It’s the kind of goal you know is only possible with hard work. Great, you’ve identified your big goal. Next you need to figure out how to attain it.

Unfortunately for most of us, Covey believes it is in this planning stage where most failures occur. This may take the form of unrealistic planning (I will go to the gym 2 times a day), not truly believing in ones dream (I’m such a loser I’ll never be able to do this) or setting unrealistic expectations (I will gain 30 pounds of muscle). Before you know it, the 6 months have passed and nothing has changed. What you focused on is what you got. If all of your mental energy is spent focusing on the barriers to your goal can you really, honestly be all that surprised when you fail? You never really bought into the dream in the first place.

Why do so many of us fail here? Covey believes it is because we are focusing on the wrong thing. In an earlier post (click here to read it in full) I introduced Covey’s concept of our circle of influence (the things we can control) and our circle of concern (the things we care about but can’t directly control). Covey argues we must create the goal twice (one time in thought and plan and another time in reality). In order to accomplish this it is essential we act within the circle of influence and let go of the things in the circle of concern.

So if I want a wicked beach body in 6 months I am much more likely to succeed if I focus only on the things I can control, such as what I eat and how often I work out. The more I focus on the things I can’t directly control, such as how to come up with money to hire a personal trainer, a slow metabolism or whether the guys at the gym are going to laugh at me, the more I lessen the likelihood I am going to reach my goal.

So, if having a swimsuit ready, beach body in 6 months is your goal you can have it if you dream big, plan well, work hard and don’t quit until you attain it.

To see other posts about Stephen Covey’s habits, click here.

Related Posts:
How to Hold Onto Success
How to Win on Reality TV

This entry was posted in Stephen Covey's 7 Habits on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 by Jenny. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.