Success is in the Details

If you’re going to get what you want in life, it is only common sense that first you have to know what you want. Even beyond that, it is absolutely essential that you take your desires seriously enough to goal-set to achieve them.

There is a good chance that the reason most people fail to achieve their goals in life is that they never really set them in the first place. Most people spend more time planning a wedding or a vacation than they do planning their lives. And by failing to plan, in effect they are actually planning to fail, by default.

Your mind is like a targeting system or an automatic pilot on a boat. Once you clearly and specifically commit to the target or destination, your mind uses negative and positive feedback from your environment, including your internal environment, to adjust your behavior.

But if you program your mind with vague desires, nonspecific goals, or fuzzy ideas, the feedback will be meaningless. For example, if you goal-set for a better standard of living, how will you know when you have achieved it? Any improvement at all will be something better. But if you have a highly specific target, such as doubling your income or tripling your production, you will always know when you are on track and exactly how far you have left to go at any given moment.

As the saying goes, “If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there”? Remember, you have the power to achieve whatever you want in life, and commitment to specific goals is the surest way to tap into that power. Ultimately, success is in the details.