Build Wealth With This Goal Setting System

Learn Todd Tresidder's Personal Goal Setting System That Helped Him Retire Early And Wealthy… So That You Can Do The Same.

Success is a choice. You alone decide what you want and how you will achieve it. If you don't set goals then you are implicitly handing your life over to divine fate and betting on luck to provide for your needs. But when you set goals you are pro-actively choosing a life path with self-responsibility and playing a role in your destiny – and that can make the difference between success and failure.

If you aren't writing your goals out and reviewing them regularly then you aren't setting yourself up to win. You are shortchanging yourself and your financial future. Without goals your life is like a sailboat without a rudder: it will just spin in circles. Without goals your daily life is as purposeless as driving a car without a destination in mind. Goals are the focal point that gives your life direction and drives successful forward momentum.

In order for you to realize your potential as a human being then goal setting is as necessary as breathing. I like to think of the time spent writing and reviewing my goals as an investment in my future. It doesn't cost me time: it saves me time by eliminating waste. The process creates amazing results and nobody will charge you a dime for it. Where else can you risk nothing and get a huge potential reward? It's a no-brainer: everyone should do it.

Yet, surpisingly few people take advantage of this free and proven formula to success. In fact, Harvard Business School conducted a study on goal setting and found:

• 83% of the population doesn't have clearly defined goals.
• 14% have goals but they aren't written down.
• Only 3% have goals that they commit to in writing.

After a 30-year follow up, the conclusion was the 3% with written goals earned an astounding 10 times the amount of the 83% group. Impressed? Well, other studies have shown people with written goals also tend to have better health and happier marriages than people without goals. Are any of those results motivating enough to get you to write out your goals?

The bottom line is proper goal setting is essential to your success, yet few people do it. If your want to retire early and wealthy and be part of the 5% who create financial security in their lives, then you will make maximum use of this free and incredibly valuable tool.

Five Ways Goal Setting Helps You Build Wealth

Your life is an endless series of daily choices, and how you manage those choices will determine the outcome of your life. Yet, most of our decisions are made subconsciously. By setting goals you set a context from which you are consciously making your daily decisions. You are applying the resources of your mind to accomplish a specific outcome. As a result your life moves toward the goal.

The reason goal setting works so well is because specific changes occur in your mind as a result of writing out your goals. Your awareness is affected in five different ways each giving you a competitive advantage over others who do not set goals:

(1) The first advantage develops from your mind asking questions about how you will achieve the goal. Asking the right questions is more than half the battle to achieving the goal in the first place because it focuses your attention. Forming a goal and asking questions about how you will achieve it actively engages your mind in resolving the discrepancy between where you are now in life and where you want to go.

(2) The second competitive advantage results from focusing your attention on where you want to go. Without goals your mind is in a vacuum and has nothing to focus on. Negative focus creates negative results while no focus creates random results, and goal oriented focus creates the results you desire most. Goal setting lifts your objective up from underneath the bottomless pile of possibilities that exists in the world and puts it in the forefront of your mind.

(3) The third competitive advantage results from forming a compelling vision in your mind representing all the reasons why you want the goal. This helps motivate you to put forth the effort to achieve the goal much like putting a carrot in front of a horse will draw him forward to take step after step to reach his goal. Desire is a powerful motivator.

(4) The fourth advantage occurs when your personal competitiveness begins to work in your favor as you strive to achieve your goals. You don't want to let yourself down so you compete against your own standard of acceptable performance. This can sometimes escalate into an internal race to achieve because the competition can motivate you to excel and work harder just to prove that you were capable.

(5) The fifth competitive advantage of goal setting is your mind begins to notice opportunities to achieve the goal that might have otherwise been overlooked because of the front-of-the-mind awareness resulting from setting the goal. For example, have you ever noticed when you want something that it suddenly appears everywhere when before you never noticed it? It's as if a beacon got turned on in your mind that illuminates everything in the outer world that can help you achieve your inner goal.

I had that experience recently when I decided to buy a Lazy Daze brand motor home and started noticing them everywhere. I never noticed the Lazy Daze brand before, but my eyes were guaranteed to pick that particular brand out from all other vehicles on the road. I didn't notice other brands of motor homes or other vehicles: I only noticed what my mind had set its sights on acquiring.

Your mind works the same way with wealth and investing. You will see possibilities and solutions you never would have noticed had you not set the goal and committed to it. By creating a heightened awareness around your financial objectives by setting goals, your mind will be prepared to recognize opportunity when it appears.

You can think of setting goals as planting a seed in your mind. When you develop a plan to achieve the goal and practice daily habits congruent with achieving the goal it is like giving the seed water, sunlight and nutrition. With this nurturing the seed becomes a tree with a good strong trunk and full of branches. In the fullness of time, it will produce delectable fruit and a lifetime of happiness and meaning. The same will happen with your wealth building goals if you set them in writing and nurture them every day.

Goal setting works: it is worth the effort. But how do you do it?

My Seven Step Annual Goal Setting System to Build True Wealth

After years of trying and discarding many different goal-achievement techniques, I have settled on a relatively simple annual process that just plain works. It integrates the best practices from many different sources and adds a few twists and turns of my own to form a repeatable habit that you can follow for a lifetime.

The key point to notice as you learn my annual cycle for goal setting is that it's designed to be a habit. This is extremely important because goal setting is another one of those things that is incredibly important to do yet easy to procrastinate or forget about. Everyone knows they should set goals and review them regularly, but judging by results few people actually do it. The Harvard study cited earlier found only 3% of the population actually walked the talk, and other studies have come to similar conclusions. As is so often the case, we may know what to do but seldom do we actually do it.

So what about you? Are you regularly setting goals and reviewing them? Are you walking the talk? Remember, to know and not do is to not know at all. The information in this article may sound "old-hat" to a lot of readers, but the very same people who are yawning probably aren't walking the talk. Four of the most dangerous words in the English language are "I already know that". You may know it intellectually, but if you aren't already setting and achieving goals habitually then it would pay you to follow closely below so that you can begin using this valuable tool to its fullest potential.

Step One: Begin The Goal Setting Process In January

We begin our annual goal setting cycle in the weeks surrounding New Year's Day. Why? Because it is virtually impossible to forget or avoid this annual holiday event and the New Year is a natural time to reflect on achievements from the prior year and start thinking about what we want to achieve in the coming year. In short, it is a perfect time to begin a goal setting cycle.

Your first task is to review your written goals from the prior year and compare them to your actual results. Inevitably, your results will exceed expectations in some areas and disappoint in others. The critical point here is to not judge yourself because you are not your results. Instead, I suggest positive reinforcement by rewarding yourself for all that you did achieve in the prior year: take the time to celebrate your wins because you deserve it. Also note areas where you came up short because that is honoring reality.

What are your results telling you? If you came up short on a goal then what was the cause? After all, if you said you wanted a goal but didn't achieve it then there is opportunity for learning. Did something change? Did other goals take a higher priority, or did obstacles get in your way? Maybe you're just not really committed to that goal and should drop it or change it.

You don't get to be right or wrong during the review process because that will not serve you. There is no value in belittling yourself for missing a goal because that will just take away from honoring your successes. The purpose is simply to get clear on what worked in the prior year and what didn't. Just notice the facts and make conscious what happened but don't judge yourself.

Where did you meet with success, and where did you come up short? Your objective is to learn from experience and improve your goal setting for next year based on what you discover. You are creating an active feedback loop so you can correct and adjust your goals every year and get what you want out of life.

This correct and adjust process works much like rocket guidance systems. When a rocket is launched to a faraway destination it is traveling off course roughly 80% of the time. Yet, the same rocket will hit its target with pinpoint accuracy. The key is correcting and adjusting. The rocket knows its goal and is constantly correcting its trajectory during flight until it arrives at the destination. You will do the same thing by reviewing your goals each year and learning from your successes as well as your failures.

Step Two: Prepare Financial Statements

The next step during the annual review process is to compose a "quick and dirty" income statement and balance sheet. This task is particularly easy around the turn of the year because annual tax statements must be prepared showing your assets, income and spending.

When you prepare these statements you are treating your personal finances with the professionalism of a business. You are respecting your money.

I also suggest plotting your net worth and residual income on a chart so you can track your progress toward your goal of financial freedom. This is very important if you are working toward the goal of financial independence or retirement security.

Once you've updated your financial statements and reviewed your past goals, you are then complete with the feedback loop portion of the process. You now have a solid foundation on which to build your new goals because you have a current snapshot of your financial picture and understand what worked from the prior year, what didn't, and why.

Step Three: Ask The Right Questions

The next step in your annual goal setting process is to decide what you want to create with your life moving forward by asking yourself some questions:

• What do I want this year?
• What will it take for this year to rate as a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10?
• If failure was not a possibility because I am guaranteed success then what would I do? How would I play the game of life differently?
• What values do I hold dear that I would like to honor in the New Year?
• What is frustrating or dissatisfying about my life, and how would I like to change it?
• If I graded the various parts of my life (relationships, business, money, health, recreation, etc.) on a 1 to 10 scale, what grade would each receive and what do I want to do this year to create the grades I really want?
• What objectives would make the biggest, most profound difference in my life if I accomplished them?

Step Four: Compile And Prioritize Your List Of Goals

After I have answered these questions, I get together with my wife to create a combined goal sheet for the family. She follows a similar process independent of me and creates her own agenda independently. We then compare lists and create a combined family agenda for the year that is broken into two categories: the first list has business and financial goals, and the second list has our personal and family life goals.

It is important to note that we don't just add the lists up to create one summation list. Instead, we negotiate the goals knowing that we must focus to succeed. Less is more. This is critical. More goals doesn't equal more success, but more focus on just a few goals that really matter to you will equal more success.

We compare our goals to the "10 Keys To A Winning Goal" checklist found in Step One of the Seven Steps to Seven Figures course that this article is excerpted from, and we put on the back burner those goals that don't make it to the top. After years of practice, we have learned to enjoy greater balance and happiness by focusing on just a few critical goals and actually achieving them rather than setting ourselves up for disappointment by getting spread too thin with too many goals.

What amazes me about this process is how powerful it is while being deceptively simple. It never fails to redirect our thinking and create clarity and cohesive focus for both of us to operate as a team and create a more satisfying and fulfilling life for our family. It redirects our lives and keeps us from drifting aimlessly or living day to day.

Step Five: Get Into Action To Achieve Your Goals

Once you've set your goals, you now have a whole year to achieve them. But how are you going to do that? What is your next step? My suggestion is to divide and conquer.

Keep things simple by picking from the list only those goals that are the most exciting and juiciest of all so you can focus your energy. What is your top priority for the year? What is the most time sensitive or immediately compelling goal on your list?

Once your goals are prioritized, then you can pick either of the two strategies from below to begin executing your plan of action. I offer two different strategies because each is appropriate for different situations depending on conditions. Certain goals and personality types work best with one or the other approach. Which of the following approaches is best will depend on your personal style and the particular goal you are pursuing.

Next Step Approach: This is a forward looking approach where you just pick the next step to achieve your goal and complete it before figuring out the next step and so on until your goal is realized. You don't worry about the big picture with all the planning issues, which might bog you down because too much is unknown or the whole process is too big to grasp. Instead, you just determine whatever the logical next step is and trust it will take you to the next step and so on until the path becomes clear. You are like the rocket that is correcting and adjusting its flight path. This also helps you avoid the "get ready to get ready" syndrome so that you can get started right now.

Reverse Engineering: This approach requires you to start with the whole plan in mind from the beginning by reverse engineer it into tasks to be completed then further subdivide the tasks into additional actionable steps. Keep breaking it down until you have daily actions that will take you to your goal when completed. The advantage to this process is it breaks big tasks down into bite size chunks making the whole process very easy to grasp. It is most effective for analytical personality types or situations where the entire path to the goal can be understood and mapped out in advance.

Both of these approaches help you succeed by reducing the intimidation and confusion that is sometimes associated with larger goals that take us into unfamiliar territory. They reduce the fear factor by transforming goals that are too large to grasp into actionable items that are easy to execute. Each strategy answers the question, "where do I start" and "where do I go next" so that you don't get stuck in procrastination.

Step Six: Persist Until You Achieve Your Goal

Once you have picked your goal and developed your plan to achieve the goal then the rest of the game is simply a matter of getting started and not stopping until you reach it. Every time you complete an action step you are one small step closer to your big goal. Just keep on correcting and adjusting until you get there with rocket-like accuracy.

Step Seven: Maintain Focus By Reviewing Goals Regularly

Finally, the last part of this annual cycle is you must create a habit of refreshing your goals throughout the year. This means you must review them regularly and rewrite them as necessary. The purpose of this step is to maintain your focus throughout the year as life's clutter attempts to distract you from what is important.

By reviewing your goals regularly you are counteracting all the forces outside of your control designed to sideline your plans. Some people like to post them on their wall, keep a copy on their desk, or post them in their Day Timer or PDA. Whatever is convenient and will remind you on a regular basis about your goals so that you maintain front of the mind awareness is what's important.

In summary, the seven step process you just learned is designed to do one thing: make goal setting a habit. You must habitually create and refresh your goals to gain all the value from this incredibly effective tool. By following a habitual goal setting process you will become part of the 3% that outperforms the other 83% by a factor of 10 to 1. You will also put yourself firmly on the road to retiring early and wealthy. It truly works. 

Goal Setting System Key Points

There are three major points you should take from this article:

Practicing goal setting and reviewing your goals is necessary to create all you are capable of creating in this lifetime. Not using goal setting technology to the best of your ability is simply wasteful. It is the equivalent of flushing opportunity down the toilet.

Goal setting engages your mind in five different ways to achieve your goals. This gives you a distinct competitive advantage over others who do not regularly set and review their goals. This competitive advantage can make the difference between retiring early and wealthy or living a lifetime of financial mediocrity.

The most effective way to get all the value out of goal setting available is to make it a habit. Set your goals at least annually, and review them at least monthly. Build a regular cycle out of the process so that it becomes an integral part of your life. If you set goals in a random or irregular fashion then you will get random and irregular results. If you set and review your goals regularly you will move them to the forefront of your mental awareness which will create more consistently profitable results.

The bottom line is if you want to retire early and wealthy, then regular goal setting must become an integral part of your life practice. Financial coaching is a great tool to add accountability, support, and additional insight to not only setting goals but also following through long enough to actually achieve them. Let us know how we can help.

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