I want to show you the back side of my business card! "Mitt målkort" means my goalcard. And "jag är så glad och tacksam nu när:" means I am so happy and grateful now that:
I have a print also at the backside of my business card. What is the idea behind that you might ask. It is a "goal card" on the back side because I want to give something of practical use value along with my information. In this article I explain why the goal card will help you reach your goal faster!
We think in pictures and we visualize every day wether we like it or not. The thing is everything man has created has first been a mental picture from the imagination. What are you wearing on your upper body for example? It is a mental image from someones mind that has been more or less modified and been manifested so you can wear it. These principles might be obvious when thinking about it but I want to explain a bit more so the goal cards meaning and use will become more clear.
How did you paint such beautiful paintings? “I dreamed my paintings and then I painted my dreams” said Van Gogh. a nice image of the visualisation process.
What I have at the backside of my business card is a "goal card". The idea is not new in any way but is included as a part of the programs I facilitate from the Proctor Gallagher Institute. Thinking into Results is also the program I coach.
Lesson one it "TIR" is about setting goals and why setting goals is so important to a rich and happy life according to many. I of course share this opnion. The goal card is a really important part of that lesson. The reason is that if we have chosen the right goal, that is something that comes from deep within. We have searched and really found something that evokes strong motivation, joy and enthusiasm. Something big and strongly emotional. something which we mostly reject before we look carefully at it because we think of it as not possible to reach. One could almost say that goals which strongly engage become magnetic. The higher the purpose, the stronger pull.
So what do you want to create? How do you want to design your life? Beacause if you don´t design it circumstances or someone else will. Where are you five in five years? What is worth changing you existing life for? A worthy goal is something you feel both excited and scared of at the same time. something you´ve never done before. A big enough goal makes you find talents you never knew you had.
But the goal for the goals is not first and foremost to reach them but to grow as a person., that is increase your awareness. Maybe this sounds contradictory but with the right goal the goal process is that of growth or greater awareness. And that is where you are at most of the time before you set new goals.
“Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal” said Earl Nightingale. What is your worthy ideal?
To define yourself from your future
Can you live your life without rear mirrors, that is wothout lessons from the past? No, probably not, I guess no one can! But this is Joe Dispenza says: "You are either defined by a vision of the future or memories of the past."
This qoute is really interesting! Joe means that we even can be adicted of the chemicals of the body that creates our feelings, even if we feel bad about them. We recognize them, they have become part of our life and they feel safe and familiar. But in that case we live too much in the past, thinking the same thoughts over and over again which results in the same feelings which gives the same results over and over and over again. The total opposite is of course to direct you attention towards a goal and let it define you.
This is what Steve Jobs said about his goal and the focus created when driven by a strongly emotional goal.“if you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don´t have to be pushed, the vision Pulls you”. So what has happened here? What is he really saying? He is saying that all resistance is gone. a person that can express himself this way has found his passion, his reason to get up in the morning. And the passion had found him.
Alfred Adler expressed it this way:“I am grateful for the idea that has used me”. So what did Alfred mean? To me he means you become one with your destiny and see your purpose that you see the idea expressing itself through your life so important and powerful that you totaly surrender to it and realise that one can best serve your fellow humans through it. The vision, the goal or the idea shows you the idea!
So who are you compared to the creative genisus? They were not any different than you and I. We have the same abilities and mental faculties. To say otherwise would be to look down upon ourselves. It is the passionate, more or less obsessed people that has made this world a better place for you and me. The ideas that used them lives on still today and will do so a long time.
The principles:
Life is change and motion. Everything changes wether you like it or not. So to try to cling on to something or relive experiences from the past is not only dumb but doomed to fail. Because if you are not moving forward advancing then you are heading backward.
It is about what agenda we want to live by. Are we setting the agenda for our own llives or do we let someone else do that for us? Because if it isn´t you it is somebody else. In five years, do you want to end up in a life you designed by yourself or end up in something your circumstances and other people showed you? The choice is yours!
As you sow shall you reap. As you see the harvest you use the spring. The goal is the harvest. Only with the harvest in mind you can be present in the now by seing a time laps from the goal that makes todays work obvious, the sowing. Or if you are to build a house. When do you start building? the answer is as simple as obvious, when the house is finished! very few people start building a house without a blueprint or a clear mental picture in their mind. The finished house gives us a direction a starting point when to build or how to work with a blueprint. Nikolas Tesla was a man who had so strong lively images os his inventions thet they seldon needed testing. They worked right away after assembling. We can see something before it exists, otherwise it could and would never come about. The trick is to not let your circumstances limit you.
“The exercise of the visualization faculty keeps your mind in order.” writes Genevieve Behrend in the book “Your invisible Power” from 1929. So what does that mean? Well it means that the practicing of visualisation alone has value since it gives your thoughts order. To me this is big! There is a purpose of its own to practice your imagination for later on when you need it. To put your imagination to work with creating more and more detailed pictures. Take control over your imagination and direct it towards towards what you want, or else your imagination takes control over you and you will experience what you think about most which usually is something which you don´t want. You start doubting and worrying. That is what a unfocused imagination does, it worries and doubts. Because if we don´t have order in our mind, which results are we creating then? Decisions will be more easy to take with a goal and it will become clearer what to do when you with greater confidence move towards your goals. This has really been a aha moment for me personally.
This is a extract from the book "The miracle of right thought” by Orison Swett Marden written 1910. Maybe a description from experience in poetic form.
“Our heart´s longings, our soul aspirations, are something more than mere vaporings of the imagination or idle dreams. They are prophecies, predictions, couriers, forerunners of things which can become realities. They are indicators of our possibilities. They measure the height of our aim, the range of our efficiency. What we yearn for, earnestly desire and strive to bring about, tends to become a reality.
Beautiful, right? Further..
“Our ideals are the foreshadowing outlines of realities behind them—the substance of the things hoped for. The sculptor knows that his ideal is not a mere fantasy of his imagination, but that it is a prophecy, a foreshadowing of that which will carve itself in “marble real” When we begin to desire a thing, to yearn for it with all our hearts, we begin to establish relationship with it in proportion to the strength and persistency of our longing and intelligent effort to realize it.”
What does modern science have to say?
In modern scientific terms one talks about RAS in these conditions. Then what is RAS? RAS is short forReticular Activating system which are a number of nerves at the base of the brain stem which works as a guard and lets only relevant information take form in our awareness. It acts as a filter in the massive amounts of information our awareness has to sort out from our body and our suroundings. It filters away what does not match our beliefs about ourselves and let that in which does.
Ras does this automatically. So depending on which toughts you permit to dominate your mind, wether you have goals or not, RAS will adjust and create a filter for that way of thinking. So what happens if you set up a goal that you constantly repeat? Well RAS will start acting according to the filter you give it! Namely that the goal is important and relevant and the physical sensations that relates towards your goal gives new associations. Circumstances, coincidences and the "right" people will come forth if you have specific goals which are important to you and which is priority for you and which you repeat through constant repeteieion.
Your awareness will become selective automatically if you use RAS to your avantage. But in the same way RAS can create negative circumstances with the wrong focus. So the more you concentrate on you goal the more effective RAS will work to your advantage. One example to how RAS works is if you over hear a conversation and what they are talking about relates to you business and you end up with a new customer. Something that would never have happened if you had not had your goal in mind. Or you just bought a certain car with a certain color that you never saw before but with the car in mind RAS puts them in your sight. RAS selects information so that we can focus at all.
This is a really powerful tool that your goal card helps you put to work. What you repeat with full focus in detail becomes a habit and what RAS will help you come to reality. From a huge amount of information the thing you asked RAS to help you find emerges. Your task is to make and repeat your image as clear as possible. The way to your goal has always been there but now you have given your RAS the task to lead you there. The goal needs to be big for your RAS to work properly.
Risk is inevitable
To live like this takes courage. You need to believe that things you need shows up in time. But you can learn to be more brave. It also takes sacrifice. But one needs to ask oneself, what does your safety and cowardice cost you? Can you really live fully without taking risks? Persistence and seeing failures is a must. Because you will fail on the way towards a big goal you have never been close to before. But with the right goal you will get up after falling and keep on going!
“Goals are not promises, they are commitments.”
Ed Mylett
P.S the next article will be about how to handle the fear which always shows up in the porsuit of big goals. Du can learn how to dare if given the right tools!
Welcome to contact me if this article makes you curious.
/Petri
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