Wow. I remember when I first started writing. I wish I’d known then what I know now! But don’t worry – I’m going to tell you what I know now, so you can have a super fast and successful start to your writing career.

I did ok in those early days – a few letters got published in some big magazines, I got the odd article accepted here and there in some low profile magazines, and one or two short stories received publication and a few complimentary copies.

But as I say, I wish I’d known then what I know now. I was doing ok, but I was aimless. I had no real direction to go in. If I felt particularly inspired, I might write a couple of articles in one day; I remember once writing three in a single day and getting every single one published. But then I’d bask in the glory of my success for weeks… and it was ages before I summoned the muse to write again.

This is a real stumbling block for the newbie writer. If you have real ambitions as a writer – if you want to get published (and paid for), and you have a list of magazines tucked safely under your pillow that you dream about getting published in someday… you need a plan. You need a goal.

This is something I never realised until a few years ago. You can be the most talented writer out there; you can be the next John Grisham, the next JK Rowling, or the next Stephen King… but it doesn’t matter a jot if you don’t have a plan for how you’re going to get there.

Goal setting can make the difference between doing okay, and getting a few pieces published here and there, or making a successful, full time career as a writer. Even if you only want to keep your writing in hobby status, setting goals for yourself can mean that hobby brings in several hundred pounds a month extra, and puts your name in several well known magazines every month.

So how do you go about setting goals?

Well the first and most important thing you need to do is to be honest with yourself. Grab a notepad and pen, and settle down in a comfy chair where you won’t be disturbed. Ask yourself what you’d really like to achieve with your writing. Be honest – don’t neglect to write something down because you don’t think you could ever do it, or it’s too hard, or you don’t think you’re good enough. This is like the ‘what would you do if you won the lottery?’ question – go all out and dream!

Would you like to write a book? Get a short story in a world famous magazine? What’s the one thing you’ve always wanted to achieve with your writing?

Let’s say you want to write and publish your own book. That’s a big goal. But you can do it – if you go about it in the right way. That’s where goal setting comes in. But you need to know how to do it properly – and for maximum effect.

First of all, write your goal down on a Post-It note. But don’t write it as if it’s something you want – write it as if it’s already happened. So you’d write something like this:

“I am a successful published author, and I make £1000 every month selling copies of my book online and in bookstores.”

This might sound a little strange, but it really works! The key is to write your goal down as if you have already achieved it, and then stick the Post-It note where you will see it often – ideally right by your computer screen. By doing this, you will impress the message upon your subconscious, which will get to work for you and start making your dream come true.

Sounds even stranger now, I’ll bet! Well, the subconscious is an amazing thing, but you don’t really need to understand a great deal about it for this method to work. The simple reason it does work is this – the subconscious cannot tell the difference between what is real and what you tell it is real. Whatever messages you bury into your subconscious, it will make them come true.

Think about it. Have you ever noticed how people who are down on their luck are convinced it’s because they’re naturally unlucky? And then something bad happens to prove it? And that convinces them even more… and so on, in an ever downward spiral?

And think about someone you’ve met who always seems to be doing well? They’re always optimistic, always looking for the best in every situation… and they always seem to be ‘getting lucky’?

Both these types of people have ultimately created their own surroundings. The person who expects to succeed does exactly that – because they work towards that goal, and their subconscious drives them there. The unlucky person expects to be unlucky because that’s what always seems to happen to them – so that’s what their subconscious ‘mirrors’ back to them.

So get your subconscious working for you, and think about what you would really like to achieve as a writer. I have used this technique for some time now, and I can tell you it’s amazing what starts to happen when you trust your subconscious and stick that little Post-It note where you can see it!

A while back, I set a goal to get some e-books published. I wanted to be earning £1000 a month by writing and selling articles and e-books, so I stuck my note on my computer monitor, and I found myself looking at it probably twenty or thirty times a day.

Within a couple of weeks of doing that, my first book was on sale with an online publisher, and I had an agreement with a second publisher to write another one for them. In the same short space of time, I found a website on which I could display and sell my articles (check it out at www.constant-content.com/?aref=5038 – I thoroughly recommend it), and sold a couple within five days of each other. It felt like I’d just ‘got lucky’ and stumbled across all this information… but I know it’s because my subconscious knew what it needed to do, and went for it like a heat seeking missile!

And all thanks to that Post-It note!

So you can see what’s possible. Think about what you’d really like to achieve, and set yourself some goals today. If you follow the technique above, I promise you you’ll be celebrating in no time!

Go to it – and enjoy the journey.

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Fountain of Youth Summit, which can be found at http://fountainofyouthworldsummit.com. In this excerpt, Dax Moy shares the remaining steps for the Magic 100 program for success.The Fountian of Youth World Summit with Dax Moy, one of the four most successful achievement coaches for personal trainers in the world. Kevin: WOW! What’s next?Dax: What’s next is know why you want it. To be really, really honest, most people don’t know why they want what they want. Or they will never admit it to themselves. You know what, they’ll say “oh yeah I would like a new Land Rover Discovery”, in my case you know? “Why do I want it?” Know it’s a great car. And that’s when most people start, “it’s a great car; made me feel, basically when I actually went through “why do I want it” phase, what I really, really, really came down to it was: it would make me feel successful, it would make me feel special, it would make me feel like I made it. Those are the obvious reasons. Because it is a great car, it’s got x horsepower, and the wheels are shinning; they are not really good reasons. They are not the things that I see that are going to hold you on course when things get tough, okay? But, when you know why you want it, when you get to the bottom of the real reason well, actually you know? Again, if I even dig a little bit deeper; for most of my life I felt poor, and I felt like I wasn’t going to amount to anything. This was going to make me feel rich, like I was turning into something that I wanted to do.Kevin: Right, fantastic stuff. So, we have gone through the “why”. So now; what are the next couple of steps?Dax: The next couple of steps. Know the price. There is a price for everything. You know, you want new shoes, there is a price. You want to get fit, there is a price. Too many people they enter into the beginning phases of a goal, maybe thinking about what they want it and why they want it, but they don’t actually say; what is this going to cost me? It might cost you in money. It might cost you in time, commitment, effort, and might cost you in things that; you know, if we are talking about health and fitness, the things that you may have to abstain from.
All I ask, in my personal training students here in the UK, we have; I just finished a team meeting just before I came up and some of my coaches were saying I am having problems with X, you know, and she is saying to me that she is unhappy with the right improvement that she is making. So, I said okay, let me see her journal. She has not been paying; we told her up front what the price was. We said no wheat, dairy, caffeine or alcohol. You’ve got to do your homework twice a day, which is, they are only 10 minutes homework actually, but you’ve got to do them twice a day, you are going to read these books, you are going to go to sleep at this time at night, you can’t do this, you must do this … That’s not just us being really butting up; you telling me what your stated game is and me telling you the quickest way of getting there.Kevin: I think is fantastic that you put it so simply because a lot of people do spend a lot of time planning how they are going to be healthy, and then they get right to the point where, you know? They know what needs to be done and just freeze. What’s the tipping point there?Dax: The tipping point is, very often what I have found is the people that; the people that struggle with paying the price didn’t commit successfully in the second phase, right? They weren’t really honest with why they wanted it.
Yeah, and nine times out of ten when I find the person who fails to pay the price, it is going to be someone who wasn’t really honest with themselves about why they wanted it. The other one time out of ten will be a person that once they get there, once they get to the point of paying the price is usually because they don’t believe that the paying of the price will bring them the goods. Yeah, they are terrified. If I tell you that the price is X amount of workout per week, eat this way, go to sleep at this time and you go to sleep later, you only do half the workouts, and you have changed your nutritional strategy; you have not paid the price. And you are not going to get the goods.Kevin: Wow! How do you practice differently now then you did when you first started? How has your approached changed with people, with the people you work with?Dax: I am going; I’ll rap that up in really one simple answerable word, its systems. I was always a bit of flight by the seat of my pants kind of guy. I am still very much in tune with my feelings and my emotive factors. I still pay a lot of attention to those but I’ve also tried to set systems up around things that mean; I guess I can reproduce myself. Instead of being one Dax Moy, there are twenty people in my studios doing things exactly the same way Dax Moy does them. So, you get the same workout with them that you’ll get with me. I guess that is one of the biggest things; system, I don’t just mean in terms of my business no, I’ve got a systematic approach in my year. Every single twelve weeks my family and I take a vacation, every twelve weeks without fail. I would consider my year to be spirally down if that didn’t happened. I don’t work Wednesday or Friday evenings anymore. No, that is not part of my system. I work rest of the; I don’t work weekends either anymore actually. It’s kind of like saying, look for most things there are some exceptions to the rule, but most of us, don’t live within the rule; we live within the exceptions. I think that’s what I was doing. That is what a lot of my clients do. That is what my students do. That is what a lot of my readers do. They spend their lives living within the exceptions.Kevin: Well, it kind of answers my last question. If everyone took and maybe you can expand on that; if everyone took one thing away from this particular call, what will it be?Dax: Set in place a system that will make you happy. For me happiness is the ultimate aim of life. You getting; you want to lose 20 or 30 pounds, whatever it is, because being the way and looking the way you look in the mirror at the moment is making you unhappy. With these things to be happy so, why not set in place systems that otherwise you go, you know; the best time to do this is on the days that you are feeling happier the most. And you sit down and you say; you know I am having a great day today. Why am I feeling so great today? I had a great conversation with someone today you know. I had a great talk with someone today. I went for a great meal at lunch time, I didn’t rush; I took my time; I still had time to read a book, you know. My desk was clear when I got into work this morning that made me feel completely different for the start of my day. These are all just ingredients, they are the recipe for happy and none of us have exactly the same recipe. For example, in my life, I also as well as my family; value adventure. So, that is where the twelve weeks vacation comes in. My vacations are pretty adventurous. I have lived in the outback of Australia in a camp cabana. I have parachuted on to the Great Barrier. So, if I get all the other ingredients and I go, hey I tell my family that I love them; my work is going great; I had a great meal and I read a book, but now twelve weeks have gone by and I go, God I haven’t had any adventure anymore; I start to feel less than me. I no longer feel like me. I feel that in some way I’m starting to diminish.
So, many people are going through life losing themselves. That’s because, quite simply, they are not following their own rules. If you don’t like the word rules, take that word and use the word recipe. You are not following your own recipe for what makes you happy. You know what it is; you know what the ingredients are. I need this amount of time; this amount of money; I need to read these amounts of books; this is the type of body I want; this is the type of sex life I want; this is this, this, this, this, and this, and this, and this. That’s your recipe ingredients but the only trouble is; most people either aren’t going out, you know; they are living on opposite ingredients, they are doing all the things they hate in life and they are wondering why their life is crap. They might be getting some of the ingredients but not the rest and when they do get them, they never mixed them together. What I mean by mixing them together is creating that system. Here is an interesting thing, most people are looking; I hate people all the time telling me that they are trying to create work life balance, work life balance, work life balance; you hear this? And, I used to be a coach that tried to help people create work life balance. It was only last six months you know; that is non-sense. We don’t want work life balance. Nothing in life is balance because once it becomes balance, it becomes still. Unless its movement, life’s action. So, we don’t want work life balance at all. I mean, you picture a see-saw right? When the see-saw is at balance, when its balance it is at rest; it is not moving.Kevin: Wow! You know every time I’ve interviewed and talked with you Dax; I’ve really gotten some great insights from it. This is incredible stuff and we are running out of time.
Let me do a little talk here because I have the Magic 100 program and I did it and one of my goals was to go to California and I had no reason whatsoever to go to California and I just put it down there because I just kind of wanted to go. The funny thing about it is that things fell into place, I mean almost within 30 days and I had a trip planned to go to California and I had a business meeting out there and there was an Expo out there, and then, it was just insane how it happened. Is that once you do set that intention and you write it down and you say it out allow, man it just happens. And, just as a testimony to the Magic 100 for me is that I have done it and the power of it is just incredible and so.

Your mind is the single most effective and essential tool to craft and program your thoughts, aspirations and goals. Consequently, when your goals are properly planned out, it will be very much easier to shape and design the life you want and ultimately the success you strive to attain. Yet, many people still do not even use their minds to set goals, let along take effective actions to achieve their goals.I am highlighting the mistakes of not programming your mind to set goals because your mind triggers and identifies better when you are alerted to the detrimental effects of not doing something useful and essential. For example, when a student knows that she will not score well or fail in her examination if she does not study, she will work towards studying hard and smart to ace her examinations so as to avoid failure.The same concept applies here: when your mind is exposed to the negative effects of not setting goals, you will be alerted to the importance of setting goals. Therefore, it is very important to know the worst mistakes you will make if you choose to ignore the significance of programming your brain to set goals and why these mistakes can be very costly to your quest for wealth and success.When you do not set goals, you are clearly not identifying the purpose or reasons why you do certain tasks or things. You will probably just do those things for the sake of getting the job done and not take pride and enjoyment in doing them. You will have no sense of fulfilment and everything you do will seem like a hectic chore or burden.This will in turn blur your mental vision and cause you to have no proper direction to steer towards your path to success. You will not know exactly where you intend to head, which proper ways you should take to reach there or how you can remain in the proper path.Having no purpose or no proper direction is just the start of the horrendous journey to failure when you do not set goals. When you have no purpose or proper direction, this will lead your mind to be unfocused. An unfocused mind will move in too many directions, cause you to do too many things without actually completing all of them and steer you away from your intended purpose. You will then end up choosing and taking the hardest paths and performing the most ineffective actions that will in turn churn out the most undesirable results.However, in my opinion, the most detrimental effect of not setting goals would be that it leads to procrastination. As you probably know, procrastination is the act of putting off the things that you should be doing to a later time or date. More often than not, you will end up not doing the things that you put off for too long. And not setting targeted goals to achieve on targeted dates will only increase your rate of procrastination and in turn lead you to failure.Now that you have realised the negative effects of not programming your mind to set goals, how will you program your mind to craft a proper and effective goal-setting plan to achieve the success you want?

“My dream is to be independently wealthy.”

“I’m going to find the man of my dreams.”

“My dream car is a Lexus ES-300.”

“I visited Newport Beach and saw my dream house!”

How many times have you heard similar statements from friends?  And maybe you’ve even voiced a few wonderful ‘dreams’ yourself.  (I know I have!)  It’s great to have dreams!

According to millionaire author, Michael Masterson, any dream can become a goal if it meets the following criteria:

It must be Specific: Being independently wealthy is a dream. Developing a $3 million net worth in 5 years is a goal.

It must be Actionable: Winning the lottery is a dream. Building a successful business is a goal.

It must be Time-Oriented: “I’m going to be rich someday” is a dream.  “I’m going to develop a $3 million net worth in five years is a goal.

It must be Realistic: Developing a $3 million net worth in five years is reasonable (with a great action plan).  Developing a $3 million net worth in 3 months is not.  Although winning the lottery is possible, it is not at all realistic.  (Statistically, your odds of being struck by lightening are greater than your chance of winning the lottery.)

Dreaming feels good – and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with dreaming.  But if you’d like to ‘live your dream’ it MUST be turned into a goal.  Without goals, dreams seldom become reality.

A Harvard Business School study followed the financial status of a group of students 10 years after their graduation and found that:

- As many as 27 percent needed financial assistance.

- 60 percent were living paycheck to paycheck.

- Only 10 percent were living comfortably.

- A mere 3 percent of them were financially independent.

The study also found these interesting goal setting correlations:

- The 27 percent that needed financial assistance never set goals for themselves.

- The 10 percent that were living comfortably only had general goals.  

- The 3 percent that were financially independent had not only written out their goals – they also outlined and followed the steps required to reach those goals.

Even with a Harvard Business School degree, 97% were not wealthy.  The critical difference was goal setting.  To learn more about this click here http://www.abundance-of-wealth.cup-of-life.com/Wealth-Creation.html .

So hold on to your dreams!  Dreams are a wonderful thing.  But if you’d like to turn any of those dreams into reality, you must first turn the dream into a goal.

Goal Setting – Long, Medium and Short Term Goals (Andrew Collings)

Most experts agree that anything can be achieved through goal setting. However, if you are like most people, you may have tried a goal setting program in the past and not succeeded. You may have set goals in a very happy and possibly inebriated state on New Years Eve and promised yourself that this is going to be the year you will achieve your goals – however by the end of the year the goals have not been achieved, and the list you set on new years eve is nowhere to be found.

Today dear reader, we are going to explore goal setting and share a goal setting secret that has been used by successful individuals for generations. A system that with only an hour or so a week, you will be achieving your goals in no time.

Goal setting generally consists of writing down goals and revisiting them. In order to achieve their goals successful people take this further. They have four to five main generic goals in their lives and break these down into more achievable components and goals. There program is broken down into five components for you to use as detailed below:

Long Term Goals (eg 7 – 15 years): At this level the goals are more generic and generally deal with four key areas of your life, for example, Health, Financial, Family and Social. A goal at this level under financial may be to have a net worth of $10million dollars.

Yearly Goals: These goals are written generically but within the scope of a one year time frame. The goals again contribute to the four or five aspects of your life (studies have shown that four to five areas achieves the most success). Ask yourself what you are going to have to do in the next year to achieve your goals. For example, under the above financial goal, you may state that you have to increase your net wealth by $100k. To do this you may decide that setting up your own side business is the way to go. As such, your yearly goal would be to set up a side business (in a certain field), that builds $100k worth of wealth. A good number of yearly goals is around 8-10.

Monthly Goals: We are now starting to get into the specifics of goal settings. This is where you provide the details of how you are going to achieve your yearly goals. Ascertain what you would have to do each month to achieve the goals.

Weekly Goals: Weekly is similar to monthly specific goals. Again write what you will have to achieve each week to meet your monthly goals.

Daily Goal and to do list: This is the base level of goal setting, and is the most important. This is where you take action. When starting your day, look at your 7-15 year goals, your yearly goals, your monthly goals and your weekly goals. Write a list of what you will need to do today to move yourself closer to your goal. On your to do list, highlight the key tasks that you will need to complete today. Focus on these tasks first.

And that the system in a nutshell. To recap, Develop 7-15 year goals (around four) that are a sentence each. Develop yearly goals (around 8-10) that sit under your four main goals (a few paragraphs each). Write what you will need to do each month to achieve your 8 – 10 goals). Write what you will need to achieve each week to achieve your monthly goals. Write a “to do list” at the start of each day, after reading all of your other goals. Highlight the activities on your “to do list” that will bring you closer to achieving your goals and do these first.

The system is successful because it first ascertains what you want to achieve in your life, and then provides specific goals, first at a larger time frame and then more specific to help you achieve your life time goals.

If you just write down what you want to achieve (eg have $1million in a bank account) without ascertaining the reasons why you want this, then it is more likely that your goal will come unstuck.

Good luck with your goal setting!!!