When most people make a goal, they state something they want to do or achieve, set a completion date, create some checkpoints for the goal, and then cross items off their list as they get done. Unfortunately, such an approach rarely leads to long-term success.
Why? Because the traditional goal-setting formula most people follow was developed in the early 1900s in manufacturing to enable company executives to monitor the number of units coming out of a factory by a certain date. It’s a great measuring stick if you’re manufacturing products, but if you’re trying to improve yourself or achieve something non-tangible, it’s a woefully ineffective and out-of-date process.
For example, if your goal is to have a better relationship with your spouse, the traditional goal-setting formula simply won’t work. Can you realistically set a completion date for the “better relationship” to occur? Can you define specific action steps that will enable you to create a better relationship with your spouse? Sure, you can decide to do things such as a weekly date night or spend an hour each day talking with your spouse, but are those items you can cross off a list once you do them, never to think of them again? Probably not. That’s why the current goal-setting formula that people use is incomplete.
All goals fall into one of two categories: “Be” goals and “Do” goals. Just as the names imply, “Be” goals encompass anything you want to be (a better spouse, a more productive employee, a more successful business owner, a more compassionate friend), and “Do” goals describe anything you want to do (close 20 sales, attend a child’s softball game, wash the dishes, hire a new employee). The traditional formula of goal setting only takes into account “Do” goals. Yet for most top achievers, 80 percent of their goals are “Be’ goals and only 20 percent are “Do” goals. They’re more concerned with character attributes than arriving at a final destination point. They know that character attributes often enable them to attain successful levels.
So it’s not that top achievers don’t set goals; rather, they set goals differently. Rather than use the word “goal, ” top achievers use words like “destination” or “performance” or “habits.” They don’t cross items off a list and forget about them, they build upon their accomplishments to reach even greater levels of success.
If you want to be like the top achievers and attain new heights of success, then you need to use the proven “4 P” formula top performers use. By doing so, you’ll be able to achieve amazing results.
1. Amazing Potential: Every single person has an incredible amount of potential. Unfortunately, most people have no idea how significant their potential is. The fact is that you can do anything and you are worthy of anything. You simply need to believe that.
Top achievers have no doubts about their potential. They believe they can accomplish anything they want, no matter how lofty the desire. If they want to close 20 sales by the end of the month, they know they can do it. They believe in themselves unconditionally. Therefore, to be like a top achiever, you too need to believe that you can accomplish anything you dream. The sky’s the limit, so think big.
2. Amazing Possibility: While you have the potential to do anything you can conceive, you don’t truly understand what’s possible unless you see someone else doing it or something similar. For example, for decades no one believed it was possible to run a mile in under four minutes, but since Roger Bannister broke the “four minute barrier” in 1954, many athletes have improved upon his record. Once athletes saw what was possible, they pushed themselves to do better and accomplish more.
The same holds true in the business world. When we see other people close contracts, invent new products and offer new services, we see what’s possible and we make our own vision for our future. We recognize our possibilities by what we see and believe. Once we believe it, that vision turns into a desire. As we believe and desire those things we see more possibilities around us. Going back to our example of closing 20 sales by the end of the month, as long as we see other people in our company or industry closing sales, then we see the possibility that exists and we can build upon that. We may even be able to get specific, such as seeing what specific product sells best, what price point sells most, etc.
3. Amazing Probability: To make something probable, you need to surround yourself with people and events that increase your chance of success. Think of it this way: If you were at one end of a long room, and at the other end was a dart board, people would say it wasn’t probable that you could put a dart in the bull’s eye. But with every step closer to the dart board you took, you’d increase your probability of getting a bull’s eye.
Those steps you take forward are what you learn, the relationships you have, the things you surround yourself with, and the preparation you put in. In our sales example, we could surround ourselves with customers who could fulfill our objective, other salespeople who could teach us the techniques we need to know, circumstances where we would have the ability to pitch and sell, and self-improvement venues that would enable us to think and act like a top producer.
4. Awesome Performance: Most people have heard the phrase “Give a man to fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” But the truth is that if you teach a man to fish he doesn’t eat for a lifetime; he’s just a man in a classroom. In order to eat forever he has to get out to the lake with a fishing rod and start fishing. So the last step to achieving great things is to get out there and actually do something. That’s what top achievers do. So if you were trying to close 20 sales by month’s end, you would now need to put everything you’ve learned and observed into action. Action, not knowledge alone, is what creates results.
5. Make Your Life Amazing: All top achievers go through this four-step process. They recognize their potential, they see the possibilities, and they turn those possibilities into probabilities by learning and putting themselves into positions where they can gain more information and surround themselves with the right people. As they accumulate this information they turn it into performance by actually doing something with it. That’s really the secret to achieving all your life’s goals.
Remember, success is
not an event. It’s a journey. That’s why performance is so important,
and consistent performance is nothing more than a habit. So if you want
to be successful, you need to identify the successful attributes you
want to display and make them habits. It’s not sufficient to do
something great once and then expect your life to be brilliant. You need
to continually strive to do bigger and better things. Rather than cross
accomplishments off a list, you need to build upon them so you can
achieve even more. Only then can you truly accomplish everything you
want in life—all without ever setting a single goal.
想成功就不要设定目标，你信吗？
大家都说想成功就要设定目标，可是Vermeeren博士却说，想成功就不要设定目标。他到底在“胡言乱语”些什么呢？看了也许你就明白了。。。
大部分设定目标的时候都会申明一些他们想做或者想达到的事情，设定一个达成日期，创建一些关键的步骤，然后当他们达成这些目标后，就把目标从他们的列表中删除。
为什么？因为大多数人遵照的传统目标 设定程式发展于20世纪早期，它是为了让公司的执行官知道在设定的日期内，工厂生产了多少数量的产品。如果他们是加工物品的，那个这是一个有效的测量方 法。但是如果你试图提升自己或者取得一些无形的东西，很不幸地这种方法是无效而且落后的过程。
例如，如果你的目标是和配偶有更良好 的关系，传统的目标设定程式是没有用的。难道你可以设定一个达成日期然后等着良好关系出现？当然，你可以下定决心做一些事情，例如每周约会之夜或者每天用 一小时好配偶谈心，但是你做过这些之后，难道就可以把这些事情从你的列表中删除，不用再想起他们了吗？未必吧！这就是为什么现今人们使用的目标设定程式不 成功的原因。
所有的目标都属于两个范畴：“成为 （be）”目标和“做（do）”目标。就像这两个次蕴含的意思。“Be”目标包括所有你想成为的东西（更合格的配偶，更加多产的员工，更加成功的商人，更 有同理心的朋友），而“Do”目标可以描述任何你想做的事情（达到20个销售额，参加孩子的垒球比赛，洗盘子，雇佣一个新的员工）。传统的目标设定程式只 考虑了“DO”目标。然而，对于顶级成功者，他们80%的目标是“Be”目标，只有20%的是“Do”目标。他们更多的考虑性格特性而不是到达最终的目的 地。他们知道性格特性能偶让他们达到成功的水平。
所以顶级成功者并不是不设定目标；相反，他们以不同的方式设定目标，并且不用“目标”这个词。顶级成功者喜欢用“目的地”或者“绩效”或者“习惯”这些词。他们不会从列表中删除目标，然后彻底忘记，他们根据自己的完成情况达到更高的成功层次。
1.惊人的潜力： 每个人都有令人难以置信的潜力。不幸地是，大多数人并不知道他们的潜力有多么的重要。现实就是你能够做任何事情，你也值得拥有任何东西。你只需要相信它。
顶级成功者从来不怀疑他们的潜力。他 们相信自己能够完成任何想做的事情，不管他们的期望有多么的高。如果他们想在月末达到20个销售额，他们就会相信自己可以做到。他们无条件相信自己。因 此，像顶级成功者一样，你太需要相信自己可以实现任何自己梦想的东西。高空是界限，让自己的想象无极限。
2.无限可能： 虽然你有可以潜力可以做任何你想做的，但是你仍然不会真正理解可能性是什么，直到你看到有人做它或者相似的事情。例如，几十年以前没有人相信不到4分钟可 以跑1英里。但是自从1954年Roger Bannister打破了这个记录之后，许多运动员在他的记录上又取得了进步。一旦运动员看到什么是可能的，他们就会努力做的更好，更多。
同样的道理在商业世界也是成立的。当 我们看到其他人达成合同，发明新的产品，以及提供新服务的时候，我们知道什么是可能的，于是我们给自己的未来制作了愿景。我们用自己看到的，相信的东西来 确定可能性。一旦相信，那种愿景就成为渴望。因为我们相信，并且渴望，于是这些事情就更加的可能。回到我们那个关于月底达成20个销售额的例子，只要我们 看到公司或者工厂有人达成了目标，才会看到可能性的存在，知道自己也可以设定这样的目标。我们甚至可以更加具体一点，例如看到什么产品最好卖，什么价格最 合适等等。
3.惊人的概率： 为了让某些事概率提高，你需要你周围的人和事，他们会增加你成功的概率。可以这样想：如果你在一个很长的房间的尽头，另外一个尽头是你的投飞镖板，人们会 告诉你说，你不可能把飞镖扔进靶心。但是随着你每一步越来越接近靶子，你在增加自己投中靶心的机率。
你前进的脚步就是你学到的，你拥有的 关系，你周围的东西以及你为之做的准备。在销售的例子中，我们让那些可以帮助我们实现目标的客户在我们周围，其他的销售人员可以教我们需要的技巧，环境是 我们可以有能力销售，自我提高的优点可以让我们想一个高效率的生产者一样思考和行动。
4.非凡的表现： 大多数人都听过这个谚语“授之以鱼不如授之以渔”。但是真相是你教一个人怎样钓鱼，他不能受用一生；他只是在教室里的学到的。为了受用一生，他必须带着钓 鱼竿，去湖边开始钓鱼。因此，最后一个达成伟大目标的步骤就是走出去并且实际地做点什么。顶级成功者正是这么做的。因此如果你准备在月底达到20个销售 额，你需要把所有你知道的和观察到的都付诸于行动。行动创造结果，而不是仅仅是知识。
5.让你的生活充满精彩： 所有的出色成功者都在践行这4个步骤。他们找到自己的潜力，看到可能性，然后通过学习和把自己放在可以得到更多信息和正确的人周围，从而把这些可能性转化 成机率。当收集到信息的时候，他们就把这些信息转化成行动。这些就是实现你人生目标的真实秘密。
记得，成功不是一个结果，而是一个过 程。这就是为什么执行变得如此重要，而且坚持不懈的行动只不过是个习惯问题而已。因此，如果你想成功，你需要了解那些你想要展示并把他们变成习惯的成功特 性。你需要不断地努力做更大、更好的事情，而不是把完成的从列表中删除，你需要以这些为基石达到更高的目标。只要这样你才能真正达成任何想要的东西——所 有而不是只设定一个单独的目标。
