Published on: 29 April 2016

Is writing down your goals enough?

Mark McCormack in his book, What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School, tells of a Harvard study conducted between 1979 and 1989. The graduates of the MBA program were asked, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”

3% had written goals and plans.
13% had goals, but not in writing.
84% had no specific goals.

The 3% were earning on average ten times as much as the other 97%.

Although this finding illustrates that writing goals down is important in order to achieve your goals, adding visualization to goal setting makes success far more achievable.

Seeing Is Believing

Before we can believe in a goal, we first must have an idea of what it looks like. To paraphrase the old adage: we must see it before we can believe it.

This is where visualization comes in, which is simply a technique for creating a mental image of a future event. When we visualize our desired outcome, we begin to “see” the possibility of achieving it. Through visualization, we catch a glimpse of what is, in the words of one writer, our “preferred future.” When this happens, we are motivated and prepared to pursue our goal.

Visualization should not be confused with the “think it and you will be it” advice peddled by popular self-help gurus. It is not a gimmick, nor does it involve dreaming or hoping for a better future. Rather, visualization is a well-developed method of performance improvement supported by substantial scientific evidence and used by successful people across a range of fields.

The Power of Visualization has always been here from ancient times. More recently, it has been used by Athletes and Olympians to guarantee success and to recover from sports injuries faster, it has been used by Psychologists, Health Practitioners and Doctors (including Oncologists) to promote healing, and it has also been used by Visualization Masters in ‘The Secret’ to ensure success.

This is an excerpt by Dr. John Demartini, one of the Visualization Masters in “The Secret” on goal setting and visualization.

“At what age can we start setting goals?

I believe that human beings have an orientation with intention to accomplish what they intend and goal orientation starts from the very beginning. When a baby reaches out to touch a mobile or look at a colour they have an intention or goal to bring it closer to them so goals start from the very beginning. We have a goal to get out of the womb and get into the room. As far as we can trace back we are goal orientated.

Many times people set expectations on themselves that don’t match what is truly meaningful and they self-defeat.

But setting goals that are truly meaningful, that are aligned and congruent with your highest values/a set of priorities, regardless of age, expands their potential and increases their confidence of achievement and awakes up natural born leadership.

Anytime you have a goal or an intention that is truly aligned, truly meaningful, you won’t give up on it, but anytime you set an impulsive quick and what you think is an important goal, you have a tendency to want to give up on it if it gets challenging. This can be self-defeating to confidence.

It is very important to set real goals in real time with real strategies that mean something.

Where to start?

Start with where you feel certain and let that expand with what you know as you grow. So if you have to ask the question whether this is important to you it’s probably not. But if you know inside and your life demonstrates that you are willing to work towards something this is the goal to reach for.

Do pictures help?

We are visual creatures. One of our primary senses is vision and without a doubt a visual picture is worth a thousand words. I am a believer that holding a vision and making sure it is congruent is a very powerful tool on achievement.

Do you remember the books “Chicken Soup for the Soul”? When they launched it their publicist who did all the media for the book kept on taking pictures of stacks of books until they had a picture of a million books. The authors imagined themselves with Oprah holding up their hands, talking about their book. They had these images and they ended up on the Oprah Show and sold over a hundred million books. They saw it in their minds eye before they executed it in their reality.”

The many benefits to train your brain to visualize include:

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