The Focus Factor
Goals work simply because without a clearly defined target we cannot channel our energies. The human spirit has infinite abilities to accomplish most anything it sets out to. Without clearly defined targets, that energy is scattered and massively diluted. Like a laser, goals work to focus the powers of accomplishment. For example, sunlight without a magnifying glass will only warm us. With the glass, it will start a fire.

The Clarity Factor
The more clearly defined your goal is, the more power you have to achieve it. This is partly due to the obvious focus factor - the more detail and specificity there is in your goals, the more dialed in you can be in achieving them. In golf, professionals shoot not for the green (or even for the hole when putting) but on a tiny, specific spot. Focusing in on the most specific goals summons our most powerful ability to concentrate. In archery, it is not the bull’s-eye the masters shoot for, but the specific spot within it. Doesn’t it make sense, then, that if you wanted to launch a rocket to the moon you would have a better chance of hitting it if you picked a specific point on the moon to shoot for, verses just shooting for the moon itself? In a Harvard University study, graduates that wrote down their goals in very specific form were 10- to 100-times more successful at achieving them.

The Visualization Factor
Crystal-clear goals also allow us to utilize one of nature’s most powerful gifts of success: Visualization. The visualization factor can catapult us to be not just 10- to 100-times more successful than the typical Harvard graduate, but 100- to 1000-times more effective. Visualization works to create a form of instant confidence or mindset.
Visualization stimulates a powerful phenomenon whereby the human spirit and unconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a real experience and one that has been vividly imagined. When we see in our mind’s eye an event happening, when we hear the soundtrack of it and, most importantly, when we feel how we would feel when this event happens, it is as though it is really happening. Our conscious mind can certainly tell the difference. That is the discerning part of our mind - the part with all the mind-numbing judgments about people and about us. It discerns right from wrong and good from bad, all based on our values and opinions.

This is the part of our brain that keeps us playing small. It is the part of us that has chattered away at us for our entire lives usually about why we can’t do something new and challenging. But to the part of us that is powerful; the part of us that is magical and spiritual; the part of us that produces the extraordinary results in our lives, the visualized event is seen and felt as though it is really happening now. This experience - seeing, feeling and knowing - creates an instant form of confidence. It is this instant confidence that inspires us to act and attract in such a way in the moment to produce a result that matches the vision.

Caution. This works whether we want it to or not, whether our visualizations are of goals or of fears. Worrywarts are extraordinary visionaries and are, therefore, motivated to create their worst nightmares. We do not necessarily get what we want in life, but we certainly have a strong tendency to get what we expect.

The Belief Factor
In the 2004 Masters Golf Tournament, Phil Mickelson was trailing by two strokes with only six holes to play. He had just hit a bad drive and left himself with a very difficult putt. Ernie Els had just eagled in front of him, leaving him three strokes down. Mickelson had to sink this very difficult putt to even have a chance of catching Els. Phil, in his words, “kept believing and believing and believing that things would work.” And they did. He sank the putt, birdied another and sank an improbable 20-footer on the 18th hole to win by one stroke. Phil’s belief was not a function of experience. Phil Mickelson had the undesirable distinction of playing in 48 major tournaments and never winning a single one. He had been close many times and always let it slip away. He was known for being the best golfer in the world never to have won a major. Phil’s experiences in his golfing life would lead him and others to believe that he would not catch Els on this day in Augusta, Georgia. And yet in his own words Mickelson said he believed. So how do we learn to believe in something that has never happened for us?

Once again, visualization creates the breakthrough. Imagine that you are achieving a goal and celebrating how it feels. Imagine you doing this 1,000 times over a 30-day period. To your conscious mind, you have just imagined something that it might tell you will never happen. But to the part of you that inspires miracles, it is just as though you have achieved this goal 1,000 times. And when the pressure is on for you to perform, it is the spirit within you that will be summoned to act or attract (luck). And that part of you, after 1,000 times experiencing success, will have a tendency to believe. Your head may not believe it, but your body, heart and soul will.

And the sum total is … The Motivation Factor
Goals work because without them you are shooting in the dark. Focused goals work 10 times better because they laser-focus the effort and challenge us to do our very best. Visualization provides another quantum leap by providing a burst of on-the-scene confidence that gives us that natural edge - that perfect putting stroke in the heat of battle; just the right words with the right tone when the sale is on the line. And belief rallies the universe in all of its abundance to shower down on us with results, even results we may not have imagined. When you and I believe in our good fortune; when we believe we deserve it; when we believe it is inevitable, then we have a strong tendency to not be denied.

The sum total of these natural powers is what I call motivation. Motivation is the physical, emotional, spiritual and creative energies that cause us to act and to attract in such a way as to stay on our chosen path. Motivation looks like courage. Think about it. If you could get yourself and keep yourself courageous enough, what could you accomplish? Motivation looks like Enthusiasm. And again what could you accomplish with enough of it? Motivation is creativity - both the problem-solving kind and the kind that has us look at things in such a way as to give us a “green light to act.” Motivation is all of these inspirations and many more. And there is an art to developing it to serve you far beyond that of writing down things you want. Goal setting works because the alternative is nothing. And goal setting is just the very beginning to making things work in your life.