The Success Manual

Precision is the difference between true Desire and idle, meaningless “wishing” or “hoping.”  If an individual’s Goal is to make “lotsa money” or “get rich someday” that is nothing more than wasteful wishing, dreaming or hoping.  The result: the Goal will never be achieved.  It just isn’t going to happen unless the Goal is made more – much more – specific.

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Success Key: S.M.A.R.T Goal Achievement Method – Part 1: SPECIFICITY

Several years ago during a teleseminar with Vic Johnson I was introduced to a great Goal achievement method: S.M.A.R.T.  I had never it heard of SMART, although it had been apparently been around for a few years.  Vic proclaimed that it is basic, easy to follow, and is so effective that he and his business team consistently use it every time that they set Goal, whether large or small.

If you have never heard of SMART, I think you will find it incredibly helpful, despite its simplicity.  For those of you who have heard of SMART, perhaps a bit of a refresher is in order.

Simply stated, SMART is a method to use whenever you establish a Goal that significantly assists you in the process of attaining your Goal, thereby increasing your likelihood of Success.

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Okay, you already figured out that SMART is an acronym.  Let’s get down to what it means.

S – Specific

M – Measurable

A – Achievable

R – Realistic

T – Time (specific time; certain day)

Simple enough, right?  Now let’s apply the method to a Goal.

For our example, being that yesterday was the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere of our home planet, I thought it might be nice to use an example that is a little different – not the usual “X amount of money by next month” hypothetical example.

On Sunday, as a Father’s Day event, my wife and I took the kids to a neat little place near the New Jersey waterfront called the Tuckerton Seaport.  A walking, village type of museum, the Tuckerton Seaport brings you back a hundred years or so to life on the bays – when “baymen” made their living harvesting clams, waterfowl and other natural resources using hand made wooden boats and bird decoys (the decoy shows and exhibits in this part of the East Coast are phenomenal).  As we scampered about, the kids got a blast out of a little wooden boat that looked like something that could be readily built with some detailed plans, rightful knowledge and appropriate tools.

Our Goal: Build a 12-foot wooden boat to row around a small farm pond.

Now, let’s apply SMART to our Goal.

Part 1: Specificity

All Goals must be specific – very specific.  In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill repeated extols the serious requirements of Definiteness of Purpose and Definiteness of Plan.  You need to know exactly what it is that you are shooting for and definite means for attaining it.

The Success Manual Boat. To build your boat, you need to have a Specific Image of the Goal. Take away: The more SPECIFIC your Goal, the more likely that you will attain it. Get Specific NOW.

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Precision is the difference between true Desire and idle, meaningless “wishing” or “hoping.”  If an individual’s Goal is to make “lotsa money” or “get rich someday” that is nothing more than wasteful wishing, dreaming or hoping.  The result: the Goal will NEVER be achieved.  It just isn’t going to happen unless the Goal is made more – much more – specific.

Why?  First, if all you want is “lotsa money,” how in the world are you going to know when you have arrived?  I would surmise that, if you are an inhabitant of the US or other areas of the world, by standards compared to third world, impoverished countries, you likely would already be considered wealthy.  “Lotsa money” is not only vague and non-specific, but it is 100% subjective.  “Lotsa money” means something very different among Donald Trump, the average middle-income resident of this country and a homeless, earthquake-stricken family of Port au Prince, Haiti.  The Goal should be specific enough that it means the exact same thing to any observer, i.e., 100% objective, not subjective.

Second, while God certainly reads your heart, if you are not specific enough with your prayers, affirmations, visualizations, etc., God and His abundant Universe are not going to know how to respond.  Tell God exactly what you want.  Otherwise, as with our “lotsa money” example, you are merely sending out vague, static-filled and ambiguous messages.

Here is another example of looking at the issue of specific requests: When ordering dinner at a fine restaurant, what would your waiter better understand: 1) if you merely asked for a delicious meal high in protein, or 2) if you ordered the roasted duck with wild mushrooms, cranberries, water cress and pine nuts in a wine reduction demi-glace served with roasted herb-crusted exotic Peruvian root vegetables (of course, the special for the evening).  The answer is obvious.  By being specific, the wait service fully understands and is able to deliver that which you Desire.

Take away: The more SPECIFIC your Goal, the more likely that you will attain it. Get Specific NOW.

Applying this principle to our boat project, we need to be as specific as possible.  We already decided on a wood boat, 12 feet in length, that can be rowed (as opposed to a sail boat or other type of surface craft) on a small farm point.  Nothing fancy, nothing big, nothing that needs to be sea-worthy, i.e., is able to handle heavy weather and water conditions.  Seems pretty specific, but is it?

If you had to start right now, what would you do?  Chances are, if you had a pile of wood, tools, some hardware such as nails, screws, etc., you could walk out to the garage right this instant and start building your boat.  But why would you?  If you did, with no further precision as to your boat, how realistic is it that you would Succeed with something water worthy and that would last?  Probably not too good.

So, let’s get specific – real specific – with our boat.  I would recommend that we jump on the computer and start doing some research on boat building.  Or, perhaps, find a great book of actual boat plans.  Ah, yes . . . plans.

Definiteness of Purpose; Definiteness of Plans.

We need bona fide, legitimate plans that lay out, step by step, how to build the precise boat that we Desire.  As such, you continue your search on the computer and eventually find the definitive small boat-building website, and lo, there it is – the perfect little wood boat – something that you already imagined.  Wisely, you spend the $25.00 to buy the detailed, engineer-quality plans on how to build the boat, download them to your computer, print them up and give them a heavy review.

We now have a Specific Goal.  The Goal has been defined with precision and specificity, as the plans contain each and every detail necessary to build the boat that you have been dreaming about.  There is nothing subjective about the Goal - anyone from anywhere would be able to determine whether or not you built the boat (achieved the goal) based on pictures of the boat as per the plans.  The Goal has been objectified, a critical step in the process.

And, even better, you now have a very precise picture of the ultimate outcome: images of the boat which – whether you realize it or not – are being imprinted upon your conscious and subconscious mind.  The more you focus on these images, and the process of building the boat according to the detailed plans, the greater the likelihood that you will realize your Desire.

But wait – there’s more.  The more you focus on the idea of the boat, and the more that you fall in love with that little boat (e.g., you play mental videos of you and your children out in the boat, having fun, teaching them to row, etc. – all good, pleasurable images), building the boat is more than a Desire – it now also becomes an Ideal!  Ideals are Ideas in which you fall in love.  If you are in love with the building the boat and what it represents and means to you and your children, again - the greater your likelihood of Success.  Finishing the boat becomes less a matter of Will Power and more of a matter of Want Power.  Want Power is stronger and highly more effective.

From our little boat example, the importance of a Specific Goal should be obvious.  The more Specific YOUR Goal, the more likely that you will Succeed in achieving it.

So there you have it: S – SPECIFIC.

Of course, there is more to the formula.  A Specific Goal is an absolute crucial first step, but that it is still a first step.

In our next Success Key Post, Part 2 will address the M – Measurable.

Until next time, Peace my Friend, and - Namaste!

To your Health, Wealth, Prosperity and Success,

The Success Manual Team

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