For example, let’s say your goal is to make so many sales this year. Why?

• So that I will earn a certain amount of commission. Why?
• So that I can buy a rental property. Why?
• So that I will earn asset income. Why?
• So that I will be financially independent. Why?
• So that I don’t have to ‘work for the man.’ Why?
• So that I can do what I want. Why?
• Err – so that I will be happy.

I will be happy when

You see in the example above, that deep down you think you think you will be happy when something happens, or some goal is achieved.

I was the same. For years I pursued financial independence and I used to visualise what life would be like. It seemed that when it happened it would be like fireworks going off in the night sky. Glitter and balloons would drop from the ceiling and a man in a shiny gold suit would hand me a laminated certificate and glass of champagne, whilst the local newspaper photographer snapped us for the next edition.

Nothing could be further from the truth. When it happened for me, I didn’t even realise. It took me being made redundant, to sit down and work out that yes, I was already financially independent. I didn’t need to look for another job. My wife and I went on holiday. When we returned, I came back and redecorated the house. Then after a couple of weeks, I was bored and not happy. Well not like I thought I would be. I was back to my base level of wellbeing. Was this what it was all about?

Happiness is a by-product

Here’s a quick exercise for you. Think back to times when you were happy. Choose three memories.
What were you doing, who were you with, what was happening? For me when I think of times when I am happy, they are occasions like being with my family, having a good laugh with my mates, or taking the dogs for a long walk in the countryside. But here’s the thing, at the time you don’t realise you are happy. You are just there enjoying the moment.

So, here’s a suggestion for you, why don’t you pursue these things instead.
Then happiness will come to you.

I’ve written another post called Living In The Now – My Present To You where I describe some of the magical things that can happen if you let go of living for future goals.

The pursuit of happiness is a fool’s errand. Don’t pursue happiness, let happiness pursue you.

The post Happiness is not a goal appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

Should you be living in the present, totally, or should you have goals to strive for? There are two conflicting pieces of advice on how to live our lives, but which is correct? Are they mutually exclusive or can you live with both and if so, how?

Living in the present

What do we mean by living in the present? To live like this means that we are mindful of what goes on around us in our present environment. We are not concerned about what tomorrow brings and we let go of the past. We are completely in the moment.

Sense of flow

In our work or play, we can get into a state, which psychologists call flow. Think of anytime you’ve been totally engrossed in something you are doing. The sense of time seems to disappear, and we can be often surprised to see that hours have passed.

I get into this state when I am writing, driving or long-distance running. Its deeply meditative and helps me be more productive. Compare this to multitasking or distracted work. Think of a day when you were totally distracted or interrupted. As soon as you got started on one task, a thought popped into you mind about something else you should be planning, or a notification pinged on your phone. We can be certain that we weren’t living in the present then.

Happiness

Looking back on times when you are happiest, I’m sure that you were living in the present. You might have been spending time with friends and family or you were engrossed in some worthwhile project.

This sense of happiness is derived from the fact that we have everything we need in that moment. We are fulfilled. We’re not worrying about how to pay the bills or regretting some past indiscretion. We are in the moment – in flow.

Tennis balls

But surely, we can’t operate in this state all the time. We are not tennis balls floating down the gutter of life, as Rabbi Daniel Lapin describes it. Going with the flow all the time, means that we are at the mercy of whatever life throws at us. So surely there is another way?

Goals

The opposite of living in the moment could be said to be living in the past or future. Setting goals is a way of taking us out of the present to envision some future time and what we would like to achieve.

How to form goals

To set a goal or outcome, first think of something you would like to be, do or have. Then try to make this as specific as possible, preferably with something you can measure. Common examples of goals are to reach a certain weight or earn a certain amount of money. The numerical value of these goals makes them easier to manage. We can clearly see where we are in relation to them and how far we need to go.

The benefits of goal setting

The benefit of goal setting is that we can use our will to defeat the forces of entropy. Think of the neatly coiffured garden. If no further work is done on this verdant delight, it will soon become a jungle. It will revert to its natural state. This is the force of entropy at work, and it governs everything in the universe. Order into chaos.

Our lives our no different. Without constant vigilance and good habits, our lives will become chaotic. Setting goals and outcomes is a way we can bring back order. It could be as simple as having a goal to clean and tidy the house once a week, to maintain order.

Another benefit of goal setting is that we can develop ourselves into some better version. If we are unhealthy today, we can visualise a time when we are healthy. We can put an action plan in place to eat well and exercise, so that we reach this healthier version.

The negatives of goal setting

I’ve been a proponent of goal setting for most of my adult life and I’ve grappled with apparent disadvantages of them.

Rigidity

Having too rigid an outlook can shut us off from opportunity and spontaneity. We cannot tell what the future will be like. What seems like a promising idea to pursue today, might not be so rewarding in the future.

If we are too fixated on a certain outcome, we can miss the opportunity to adjust our focus. On the other hand, if we are too flexible, we can start to drift and be susceptible to the shiny object syndrome.

Future focus

Living in the future is not a healthy way of living. Life is about the journey. Being totally focussed on a future vision can make us blind to the beauty that’s right in front of us.

Constant state of wanting and failure

If goals are the ideal, we are striving for, then by definition the present is not ideal. We want something else. This constant wanting is a sure way to unhappiness.

Likewise, if we are not a certain weight but are striving to it, we are not successful until we reach this weight. Ergo we are failing until the very end.

Goals are empty

The act of striving to reach a goal is where the happiness lies. Either you reach your goal, or you fail. In the moment of failure, or giving up, you can choose to start again or try something new. At the precise moment you achieve your goal, there will be elation. This feeling is transitory and quickly wanes.

I remember running my first marathon. After 16 weeks of hard training, I finally approached the finish line, with 100 metres to go. The crowds were cheering all us participants on. I felt elated and reached the finish line in a state of euphoria. My family were there to meet me, and we were all emotional, at what was achieved and the money we had raised for charity.

This feeling lasted about 5 minutes.

As the adrenaline wore off and my body began to ache, there was also another feeling which grew. Emptiness. This feeling of emptiness, I still remember. Looking back over twenty years later, the happiness I remember was from the training and the raising of pledges. The actual goal itself is empty. Sure, I have a medal to show for it; it’s in a box, in the loft with all my other running medals.

The meaning I get from completing marathons, is in the process of training my body and mind, in the present i.e. back when I did it. The feeling of happiness, is the memory of the happiness I felt, whilst I was pursuing the goal.

How to live in the present and have goals

So, we are in a bit of a pickle. Live in the present or live for goals? After over twenty-five years of personal development work, I have the answer. The answer is that we should live in the present and have goals at the same time. As ever, the answer to life’s conundrums is often to choose the middle ground, to walk the tightrope in between.

By all means formulate your goals using the SMART method or whatever. you choose. As soon as your goal is formulated and you have your action plan, bring yourself back to the present. Detach yourself from the outcome. Be grateful for what you have now. Find the joy in the everyday actions that will lead you to the goal.

As you progress towards your goal, look back to where you’ve come from, not forward to how much farther you have to go. When you climb the mountain, the joy comes from stopping every so often to admire the view and amaze yourself on how far you’ve climbed. Looking up towards the summit, shrouded in mist, only brings dread.

You can read about How to Set Effective Goals, where I show you how to overcome this problem of living in the present and having goals.

It’s All Ok

If you can get into a state where It’s All Ok, now, whether you’ve achieved your goals or not, you will improve your happiness. You will have goals, but you won’t be attached to them. Try to treat your long-term goals as if they were a series of stepping stones. You will then be truly living in the present and you will be astounded by the progress you make.

The post Living in the present or having goals? appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

1. The Monkey and the Computer

The author simplifies the human mind, to help us picture how it works, how habits form and what drives us. There is the human – us, our thinking mind. There is also the monkey and the computer, which both act unconsciously. The monkey will make us act if it perceives danger or opportunity (delicious food). The monkey mind will keep us safe but is rooted in our evolutionary past; it is usually inappropriate.

If our monkey mind is reactionary, then our computer mind is like a pre-programmed script. Our task then is to use the computer to help us form good habits. If we use our human mind to decide what needs doing and put work in to form a good habit, the computer will eventually take over. This good habit will then be done automatically.

Stop and think of every decision you make today, is it the human, monkey or computer who was in charge?

2. Changing large unhealthy habits

If you want to change a large unhealthy habit such as drinking alcohol, we can use re-framing to help us make the good decisions when we need to. For instance, the author says he doesn’t drink alcohol now, he used the reframe method to tell himself that ‘Alcohol is just another drug that he doesn’t take.’ In his mind alcohol is just like any other drug that he would never take, rather than a social norm. I’ve written a post on what I call Chemical Habits, which goes into how things like removing alcohol use is different from removing other habits.

3. Swap negative routines for positive ones.

Rather than trying to eliminate an negative routine, it is easier to change it to something more positive. For instance, do you listen to talk radio stations in the car? Why not change this to listening to business podcasts instead?

4. Focus on not losing first.

When we are starting out on any new venture, we will be inspired to act big. In fact, a lot of modern-day gurus will say things like ‘go all in’. Sometimes this is poor advice, for instance if you are starting a new business, it would be unwise to quit your job and ‘go all in’ until you have a proven concept and regular income. Yes, the positive thinking crowd would say, ‘be positive and trust yourself’, but it would be advisable to start small on the side, i.e., focus on not losing first.

5. Do a time audit.

This is a great exercise that I’ve done many times in the past and is recommended by a lot of authors. As usual, with anything useful, it is worth repeating. Here, Lamerton shows us how to track what we do, during a normal week, at 15 minute intervals. You can set an alarm to remind you every quarter of an hour to write down what you are doing. At the end of the week, add up and list in descending order what type of activities your were doing . Did each activity move you towards or away from your goals? You can then give yourself a score of what percentage of your activities are helping you achieve your goals. With this knowledge you can aim to improve your score.

6. The cure for shelf-help

After each non-fiction book, don’t start another one until you’ve written a report on it and implemented at least one idea. This report could even be a blog post and is a recommendation, I’ve just started, hence this post. I sometimes feel that I can rattle through hundreds of non-fiction and self-help books, but I sometimes wonder if I would get more benefit from slowing down and allowing myself to put into practice what I learn.

7. Compounding actions.

We all are aware of the positive effects of compounding on your wealth. This is where you can build a big net worth by starting to save early in your life and being consistent. Your money will increase slowly at first, but over time will start to increase exponentially. The same can happen with good habits. Adding small, good habits consistently will, at first, show little reward, but over time will provide massive improvements. Therefore, what can you do in each area of your life to start this compounding?

8. One page marketing sheet.

Here the author shares how he has been able to build up his online marketing business. Get an A4 piece of paper and list what daily/weekly actions you can do consistently, that will compound over time. For instance, sending a weekly ‘make friends’ email to your mailing list won’t achieve much, but over the months and years, if you are consistent, your recipients will come to expect and enjoy your emails, if they provide value. When it comes to the time they are in the market for your product, guess who will be front of mind? The person who provided consistent value and is liked and trusted, will be more likely to win the business.

9. How to change a negative habit no.2.

Get a normal wall calendar and some sticky dots, you can buy at a stationery shop. Every day you refrain from the bad habit, place a sticky dot on that day’s box. Consecutive days, where you were successful, will form a chain of dots on your calendar. You have another visual incentive to keep the chain going. Don’t break the chain. Also give yourself a reward for achieving a milestone, such as 7, 20, 100, 1,000 days etc.

10. Create more friction for bad habits and remove visual triggers.

This is another simple thing you can do to help you remove bad habits. Let’s say you have a weakness for snacking on biscuits and your goal is to not eat them. Every time you go to the kitchen, however, there is the biscuit barrel. Its too tempting for your monkey mind, which is more powerful than your human mind. The human mind says ‘no’ but the monkey mind says ‘sugar-sweet-survival-eat’. It’s a visual trigger for a chain of micro events that result in weight gain. There is also little on no friction involved, if repeated day in day out.

What if you removed the visual trigger by throwing away your biscuit barrel and all the biscuits with it? You subsequently enter the kitchen and there is no visual trigger. Even if you were desperate for a biscuit, you would have to visit the shop to buy some. Too much friction and the result – no biscuits eaten.

11. The Magic Ingredients for personal development.

a) Goals

Have goals and know where you are heading.

b) Why

Know your why and have a compelling reason to achieve the goal.

c) Knowledge

Do you know how to achieve the goal? If not then find out.

d) Environment

Create an environment conducive to achieving your goal. For example, you want to lose weight, then remove all junk food from the house and have your exercise kit ready and easy to use.

e) Action

Take some action every day, however small to move towards your goals. Consistency is key.

12. Goals

Once a year, sit down when it is quiet and set your goals for the following year. Most people do this at new Year, but it could be at any time of the year. I like doing this in the week between Christmas and New Year as it is naturally a time when not a lot else happens. To help you, use the following guide:

a. What do I want to:

• Start doing
• Stop doing
• Keep doing
• Do more of
• Do less of
• Try new

b. Next, get pictures of your goals and make a vision board.

Put this up somewhere prominent. You can also scan this and use as screen saver on your pc or phone. The aim here is for you to be looking at this unconsciously as much as possible. Our mind will subliminally take in the information.

c. Draft up a could-do list of things that are not a priority, but you would like to have.

I use the GTD someday-maybe list for this. As you move on through the year, if you think of more things to add, then go ahead and add them to this list. Consult this list to see what you could do next.

d. 90 Plan.

Consult your could-do list and pick 3 big goals for next 90 days. Set a reminder to repeat your 90-day review.

e. Monthly plan.

Now choose 3 smaller projects that can be done in the next month. These could be from your Could-Do list or they could be steps to the Big 3 on your 90 plan. You will therefore have 9 projects in 3 months. Set a reminder to repeat this the following month.

f. Weekly plan.

Once a week choose your One Thing. Pick just one action or small project you can complete this week that will move you towards completion of one of your monthly projects. Set a reminder to do this once per week. I love to do this on Friday afternoon, so I can enjoy the weekend knowing that I’ve set my intention for the following week. Lamerton recommends printing out a weekly calendar and marking off the time when you will focus on this One Thing. Read my post on the weekly and daily targets, where I show you how to make sure you are moving towards your goals every day.

g. Rocks, Pebbles, Sand and Water.

At the end of each day plan your calendar, first with work on your One Thing. This is non-negotiable. Then what else must you do – appointments, family etc. These are the Rocks your put in your metaphorical jar first, or commitments. Then once you’ve added your One Thing and Commitments, if you have any spare time, add other stuff from your Could-Do list. In the Jar Analogy these would be the pebbles. The gaps in the calendar you can fill with sand and water, for example, checking emails, returning calls etc.

13. Marketing.

I really like how the author simplifies his models. In marketing, building an email list is one of the most important things you can do. The author gives us 3 simple steps to follow:

1. Build a list.

In your marketing, your first job is to build your list. Create content around your offering that adds value for free. Give something away in exchange for their email address.

2. Make friends with the list.

Once you’ve started gaining followers, its tempting to start selling to them. However, refrain from this. Your next task is to make friends with your list so they know, like and trust you. You do this by sending, for example, a weekly email which again offers some information the recipient values, for free. Make it engaging by adding stories and your personality. An example could be to share what bad practices you see in your industry.

3. Sell to your list.

Only after you’ve made friends with your list can you sell to them and not before.

Conclusion

The key message in this book is to try to get as much of your activity done by the Computer Brain as possible, by forming good habits. The book describes how you can do this across many areas of your life from Health and Fitness to Business. You are also looking for constant improvement, by making small incremental changes. You will then become a Routine Machine. Read my article about the importance of forming good habits, after you’ve removed bad habits.

The post Routine Machine by John Lamerton – my 13 Takeaways appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

You can’t sell your goals but you can sell your vision. So don’t just have goals have a vision, which drives these goals.Then you become a visionary. Replace ‘should do’ with ‘will do’ or even better ‘must do’. A goal is something you are somehow obliged to do and push for. They are stepping stones. A vision will pull you. Your vision is your engine.

Imagine your future vision of yourself and your family. Where are you, what are you doing, what do you have? Imagine that you are looking at a picture with you in it. Then step into the picture as if you are looking through your own eyes. Associate with the feeling and let them flood in. I go into a lot of detail on goal setting in my book Done: How to Achieve Your Goals and Make Your Dreams Come True.

Your vision should include the goals of you becoming the sales professional who will generate the income you desire. According to Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street), his sales professional will be:

• Sharp as a tack
• Enthusiastic as hell
• An authority

Here is some more from Mr Belfort, there will be much more later.
For your customer to buy, they need to:

• Love your product or service
• Trust you
• Trust your company

1. Love your product or service.

To make them love your product or service you need to establish a case for them to buy now. You do this by establishing an airtight logical case and an airtight emotional case. You can build the emotional case by future pacing. This is an NLP term to describe a process where the customer imagines how they will feel when they own the product or service.

2. Get them to trust you with Body Language

Apart from your tonality, you can also use your body language to get someone to trust you. You do this by managing your space and time. As a caveat to this though, you need to be a trustworthy person. No amount of body language training will help you if you are not trustworthy.

When selling to women, always stand directly in front of them face to face and about 0.75 metre away (2.5 feet). Standing side on with women will appear shifty.

Conversely when selling to men you don’t want to stand in front face to face as this would be confrontational. Here you want to stand at an angle.
A word on accessories, for the man. One plain wedding ring is a maximum amount of jewellery. Definitely no pinkie ring. Leave this for Prince Charles. Tasteful cufflinks are fine, and a nice tasteful watch, can demonstrate success without being ostentatious.

Facial hair in a no-no. Sorry but the moustache, goatee and beard need to go. They make you come across as untrustworthy. I’m sorry don’t shoot the messenger. Shave them off. Your sales figures will thank you.
Hand Shakes should be neutral ie not too soft not too vice like; think of holding a bottle of wine and that wold be the grip you need. The hands should be waist high.

Dress – Wrapping the package.

Always dress your best not just to impress but for how it will make you feel inside. You don’t need to go overboard on expensive cloths. Understated quality is what to aim for. It goes without saying that clothes should be spotlessly clean and maintained. Let’s face it you could give your best killer presentation ever, but if you have a soup stain on you tie, kiss the sale goodbye.

If you have a meeting to close a sale, there is evidence that a sharp dark blue (or black) suite, a solid coloured (not patterns, checks or stripes) white shirt and a pink/red tie will get you markedly better results. This is all down to the colours of influence. Just look at any major politician and they all wear this uniform.

Eye Contact

;You should aim to be looking at the prospect in the eyes for approximately 70% of the time, preferably more. It’s fine to glance away from time to time, as if you are collecting your thoughts, whilst speaking, but when you are listening to them, keep your eyes on theirs. If you are meeting in a public place like a hotel lobby, get there early so you can find a spot away from windows, TVs or any other things that can distract you or the prospect. Your prospect needs to know they can trust you and so good eye contact is a must.

Matching and mirroring.

These are techniques from NLP. They can subconsciously influence the prospect. The principle here is that people like people who are like themselves, so by matching and mirroring you can make them feel you are like them. Mirroring is when you mirror what they do. If they touch their face with their left hand you touch your own with your right hand. Ie you are like a mirror image of them. Matching creates the same sense of rapport but is more subtle. If they touch their face with their left hand you touch yours with your left hand. Be very subtle with this as you can make them very uncomfortable if you get it wrong. It would be much easier and safer to create an air of genuine rapport t with them and you will both naturally mirror and match.

3. Trust Your Company

This is perhaps the only part you are not fully in control of, however that said you can influence if and how the customer trusts your company. Firstly never over promise what your company can deliver, this is a sure way to lose trust in your company. The saying under-promise and over-deliver is a cliche but it is true. When you are in the throes of a sale, its really tempting to tell the customer that your company can meet some deadline or quality standard which they obviously can’t. It’s much better to say no now.

Other ways in which you can create trust in your company are references. Can you ask your current customers for a testimonial or would they allow a prospect to visit them? There are many other ways to build trust in your company, such as factory visits, or you could take along a trusted Technician with you to the prospect call.

The post Being a Visionary appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

From the Selling Strategy stage, you will have your sales targets to reach. This could be annual, quarter or month. In some cases, it may be week or day. Your target could be financial ie Net Sales or Gross Revenue. It could be numbers of sales. The important first stage of achieving your target is to translate it into daily activities.

Daily Prospecting Activities

If you are lucky, your company may already have data, which shows, for instance, how many outbound sales calls it will take to make a sale. You can then work backwards from you financial target. For example, say you sell capital equipment and your annual target is £900,000 in sales. Your company’s data shows that the average sale is £30,000 in value. Then taking an average of your colleagues, it takes three proposal submissions to produce one sale. It takes five site surveys/ needs analysis visits to be able to provide three proposals. For each site survey it takes you 6 conversations, so to get five site surveys you will need to speak to 30 decision makers and pitch your offer (more on that later). To reach a decision maker on the telephone takes you six attempts due to them being in meetings, off ill, on holiday etc. From this data, you can then work out how many outbound sales calls, per day, it will take you to hit your target. In our example to make your target of £900,000 this year, you will need to make an average of 30 sales this year. (£900,000/£30,000=25). To get 30 sales this year, it will take 90 proposals, 150 site surveys, 900 telephone conversations with decision makers and therefore 5,400 outbound sales calls. Let’s now say that you will work 47 weeks this year. With Bank Holidays, training courses, etc. it will be more like 45 weeks. You will therefore need to make 120 outbound sales calls per week and therefore 24 per day. Let’s round it up, so your magic number – 25 calls per day.

Keeping Records

If you are not so lucky as to belong to a business which already has this prospecting data, you should make it your responsibility to start to record it. Here is a list of the data you should start to log:
Telephone prospect calls made.
Actual telephone contacts made with decision maker.
First appointments made.
Quotations/ proposals submitted.
Sales closed number.
Sales closed value.
You can log all this data physically on paper or in an excel file, but it could get quite messy and be difficult to analyse. This is why I recommend you consider using a CRM system or Customer Relationship Management tool. I can heartily recommend Insightly. In the beginning, selling is very much a numbers game, but if you record your performance across every area, you can actually measure the improvement in your skills. Selling then becomes more of an art.

The post Sales Targets appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

There is a correct way and a wrong way to write out effective goals. Poorly written goals may mean that you fail to achieve them or even worse, you achieve the goal and find out it’s not what you wanted anyway. How bad is that?
What follows is a formula that will ensure you have the correct goals, written in a way that will make it easier for you to achieve.

1. State the goal positively

I will lose weight is not a positive goal. Better to write:”I am now my ideal weight of x stones and pounds.”

2. Specify the present situation

You really do need to know where you are now, don’t bury your head in the sand. Eg. What is your current weight now?

3. Specify the outcome as if it’s happening now

(See, Hear, Feel). Make it compelling. So expanding on the goal above: “I am delighted, I feel as light as air as stand on the scales and it reads my ideal weight of x stones and pounds.”

4. Specific Date

Give yourself a specific date by which your goal will be achieved. This is so crucial, you must be realistic, but you must have a deadline.

5. Specify the evidence

How will I now when I have achieved it. It must be MEASURABLE (no per goals)? For instance, instead of “I will save 10 percent of my income per month”, write “By the 31st December I will have £XYZ in my savings account.”

6. Is it congruent

What will the outcome be? Now we have to do a bit of soul searching. Honestly, is the goal really you? For example during my “too many goals over-load stage”, one of my goals was to become a black-belt in Shaolin Kung-Fu – I had never before done any martial arts, it just seemed like a really cool thing to take up. It wasn’t really me though. I’ve since dropped it.

7. Is it self-initiated and self-maintained

If not make it so. This is your destiny, don’t spend your time achieving other peoples goals – what do you want?

8. Is it appropriately contextualised?

Make sure you can describe the Where? When? How? With whom? about your goal.

9. Resources

What resources do you need to help you on this goal? What do you have now? Have you ever achieved this goal or similar before?
Who else has done it? This is extremely important. You can save a lot of time and effort modelling people who have already achieved what you want. Check on-line, read books or ask people. Better still get someone who has already achieved it to coach or mentor you.

10. Can you act as if?

How? Can you behave like a slim person? What do they do? Copy them. Want to get that promotion to management? Why not dress like management?

11. Is it ecological?

This means does it fit in with your long-term purpose or will it effect those people closest to you? What will you gain or lose. What is the sacrifice? Will you miss your kids growing up, spending more time at the office?

12. Final Set of Questions

This final set of questions will uncover any hidden beliefs or obstacles, which could stop you from achieving your goal. It will also to point you towards what you can do to overcome these obstacles.

• What will happen when you do achieve your goal, what will you get?
• Then what won’t happen when you do achieve it?
• What will happen if you don’t achieve it?
• What won’t happen if you don’t achieve it?

13. Statement

Finally, state your goal as a short statement for example:
“By 31st December 2018, I will have £xyz saved in my savings account”.

Making a Start

If you feel you need more purpose in life, you should start with your long-term vision.
Perhaps, however, you feel you need more focus in your day to day priorities, instead of being bogged down with the busy-work. Then start by writing out one thing you will achieve tomorrow. Once you get consistent at achieving your daily goal, then you can start adding other goals.

By the way if you are looking to lose weight contact me and I will show you how I did it.

The post How to Set Effective Goals appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

“A business executive’s habits are amongst the most important factors that determine whether he or she will be a success – or a failure” J. Paul Getty

What are habits?

Habits are repeated behaviours, thoughts and actions that are automatic. Habits are useful, if not essential to life: we simply wouldn’t be able to function without habits. From the moment you wake and throughout the day, our day is full of those automatic actions that move us smoothly through life.

Think of any action that we take, even the most mundane like brushing our teeth. Imagine if you had to think consciously about brushing your teeth every day – twice a day. Then getting dressed and tying your shoelaces. By the time you are ready for the office you would already be exhausted and we haven’t even mentioned all the habits of etiquette – the social glue that keeps society functioning.

We have survived as a species exactly because habits are automatic. In evolutionary terms, this leaves us free to concentrate on physical threats to our existence or opportunities to find food.
All well and good then. Habits keep us alive and help us to learn new important skills. Except, not all habits are useful.

Bad Habits

As we have already suggested, habits are automatic, meaning that you don’t need to think about them. If any habit results in negative results, it’s a bad habit.

What is a bad habit

A bad habit is any repeated thought or action that results undesirable outcomes. Bad habits can also be the language that you use. Thoughts, words and actions are all linked together. Words can influence your thoughts, which then influence your actions. So be very careful what you say, because habitual negative language, will affect your thinking. If the results in your life aren’t what you want, then examine the language that you use.
Other bad habits may be just mindless activity. Do you eat when you are not hungry, in front of the TV? This is just a mindless bad habit.

Breaking bad habits

Once you become aware of the bad habit, you have already begun the process of breaking that bad habit. You are now aware. It is no longer mindless. This is therefore the first thing you should focus on when trying to break a bad habit. Become aware of it. Eat thoughtfully. Ask yourself ‘Am I really hungry?’’Do I really like the taste of this food?’ ‘How does it make me feel?’ When you become mindful about your habits, those that don’t serve you are exposed for what they are. You will be surprised to find that you can then easily change those habits.

Small habits

To change a small habit, simply perform a new habit for 21 consecutive days. It should then be permanent.

Another way to change small habits is to use reminders and props. Say that, for instance, you are in the habit of misplacing your keys. You mindlessly place them down when you arrive home. How about if you actually designate a place for these keys to live. E.g. A small saucer or tray near the front door. This is where the keys live. Make an intention to decide a place where the keys will go. Then go and put the keys there now. Now write a little note for yourself to put the keys back every day. Put this note with the keys and take the note with you the next day. It won’t take long before you are habitually putting the keys back in their new home. Once it is a habit, you can forget the note. It will be automatic.

Large habits

Sometimes bad habits are just too large change in one go. Let’s use an example of over-eating. Perhaps after years of eating too much of the wrong foods, you find yourself a little over-weight. The first thing many people do is to try to change everything all at once – the crash diet. Diets don’t work for many reasons, but the main one is internal resistance to change. We are hard wired to resist change. Any change could be a threat to our existence. Your body is also physiologically designed to get you to eat. If you stop eating, many processes in your body switch on to avoid starvation. In short your body fights to get you to eat. There is only one winner in this battle.

What’s the answer then?

You can bypass your body’s in built drive to eat, by chunking down the habit to its smallest components. So in our overeating example, this large habit can be broken down into individual meals or snacks, or even parts of meals. In his book the Compound Effect, Darren Hardy talks about making the smallest of changes, to bypass our tendency to avoid change. Tiny changes go undetected by our subconscious mind. Minute changes to your eating habits will not threaten your existence.

So you can remove one sugary snack per week from our diet and this will not cause too much heartache. You could choose Monday morning as a snack free zone.

Now you might say to yourself, that such a small change and it will have no effect, so why bother? Well this is where the Compound Effect helps. Yes, removing one snack per week will have a negligible effect on your calorie intake, say 200 kcal. However, that is 10,400 kcal per year. If 3,500 kcal collates to one pound of fat, then this would equate to nearly 3 pounds lost over the year, with almost no effort.

And that is not all. Once you have this mini habit down, you could remove another snack per week. Then another and another.
If you have never tried this method, I can assure you that it gathers momentum. Slowly all manner of little habits will change. Within a year you will be transformed. I promise you.

By the way if you are looking to lose weight contact me and I will show you how I did it.

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To start to break my longer-term goals down into manageable projects, I use a method which incorporates several goal-setting strategies. I call it the  Monthly COMBINED method. This is an acronym for Contribution, Organisation, Money, Business, Interests, Nourishment, Environment and Delegation. These are the life areas, that I alluded to before.

Contribution

These are things relating to family, friends, community or charity. It is what I want to give back.

Organisation

I use this category for items relating to time management, goal setting, computers or IT.

Money

This category includes all my financial goals, such as saving and investments.

Business

I use this area to capture all my career, work or business goals.

Interests

This is anything I do simply because it interests me. I include reading subjects, travel goals or just things for fun.

Nourishment

This is an area I use for health, spiritual or exercise goals.Ie Physical and Spiritual nourishment.

Environment

Any goal related to my physical environment would go in here. Things like home improvements or repairs. I also include things to do with vehicles and clothing.

Delegate

This final area is one I’ve added to make sure that I am delegating things, that I should n’t be doing myself. I go into more detail on this later on.
If you would like a ready made template for your Monthly COMBINED Goals, email me and I will send you one out. My email address is at the end of the book. You can then print this off for your Success Manual.
The beauty of this method is that it ensures the following things:

1. I am balanced: This means I have to have a goal in each area. Also, I do not leave any blanks.
2. I am focussed: this means I have only one goal in each of these areas and no more.
3. The goals on the COMBINED list are sacrosanct. They get top priority. For this reason, I spend a lot of time at the end of each month formulating my next month’s goals. I talk about my Monthly review in the section later on Scheduling.
4. I am guaranteed to succeed: Each goal is in three levels, a minimum, a target and a stretch. The minimum is more like a single action, which I should be able to achieve easily. This keeps me motivated even on slow months. Similarly, if I easily reach my target, I can still have something more to aim for.
5. I have intrinsic motivation: I use a scoring system so that it becomes a game to achieve my goals for the month and at higher levels, so I get a higher score.

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Now we are starting to get more specific. You are now going to attempt to translate your vision into long term goals. Later on I will show you how to write a properly worded goal, which will ensure you achieve it.
These goals will take more than a year to achieve. Think about what you want to achieve in the next five years.
The goals could be facilitating goals, which are like building blocks, for you to reach your vision. For instance, your vision may be to retire early. It may be to travel the world, having sold your successful business for a packet. A good long-term goal would be therefore to sell your own successful business in 5 to 10 years’ time. To be even more specific you could say for £20 million.

Balance

As I suggested before, this method will ensure you have balance in your life. This is why I suggest that you have at least one goal in each life area. I will talk more about the life areas later on in this chapter.
Again, print off your mission and long term goals and put them in a section of your Success Manual called Mission and Long Term Goals.
If you would like a ready made template for your Mission and Long Term Goals, email me and I will send you one out. My email address is at the end of the book.

Annual Goals

Next, we are going to break down your long-term goals into annual goals. Ideally, you would perform this exercise at the year-end, so that you have a full year ahead. If not I would give yourself at least six months.
If it is July or later for you now, draft your annual goals for completion by the end of the following year. For example if its July 2018, then your annual goals will be for completion by the end of 2019. You will be doing this exercise at the end of every year from now, so you will soon get into sync.
On your annual goals list, you will also add any other things you want to achieve, by the end of the year. These goals might not be linked to long-term goals, but they are still things you want to achieve in a year.
Again, if you would like a ready made template for your Annual Goals, contact  me and I will send you one out.

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Why is Goal Setting important? I will be honest with you, sometimes it is just good to go with the flow and let events take you where they will. However if you really want to achieve something in life, you do need to have goals.
I have lived without goals, before I knew anything about them. My career drifted, aimlessly and rudderless.
Later I discovered, through the self-help movement, the world of goals and goal setting. This is when I started to achieve things. However, before you get too excited, another word of caution from one who knows. Too many goals is worse than no goals.
Yes, I launched too many goals, I had bucket lists and to-do lists. I devoured books like David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Zig Ziglar’s Goals:. What resulted was over-load.
With my focus dispersed, I started to fail to achieve. I went nowhere in lots of areas.

The Eastern Way?

Out of desperation, I gave up on goals. I started to follow a more Eastern Zen style of being-in-the-now and learning to love the Process. This was satisfying in itself, but there always remained a niggling feeling that life’s high achievers use goals.

Finally, after lots of trial and error, I rediscovered goals. This time I developed a more mature approach. It is this approach that I want to share with you.
I will show you how you can balance the Western go-getting, goal setting style, with the Eastern enjoy-the-moment philosophy. Along with this, I will show you how you can achieve both Focus and Balance in your life.
Before we start, get your self a ring binder and some dividers. This will start to become your Personal Manual for Success.

6 Quick steps to achieve a goal.

In the following sections in this chapter, I will show you how to set the right goals, that are aligned with your values, and purpose. But before I do that I want to dispel any doubt you might have about whether goal setting will work for you. So here is a quick and dirty method to prove that this stuff works.

The Quick and Dirty Goal Setting Technique

I want you to think of something in your life you want to change, something that is bugging you right now. Or maybe it might be some project that has stalled; the loose ends of which are dragging you down. You know what it is; something that might take no more than a month to be completed, but you just can’t seem to get started on.
Let’s start at the beginning, what do you want? That should be an easy question, but it isn’t. It might be easier to start with what you don’t want. This is because there is a top down and a bottom up approach and we need to adopt both simultaneously.

Step 1.

So the first thing to do is get a piece of paper and draw a line down the centre. On the left write down the thing that is bugging you right now.

Step 2.

On the right hand side, convert this thing into its positive counterpart. For example if you don’t want a messy office, its positive counterpart would be to want a tidy office. Simple.

Step 3

Make this outcome specific, for example “I will only have essential items on my desk and work surfaces, such as PC, phone, diary and a pen. All paperwork and other items will be stored, filed or removed. The floor will be clear.”

Step 4

Here is the key – Give it a realistic and specific date. Eg. By close of business Friday 6th July 2018”.

Step 5

Make sure the goal won’t adversely affect someone or something else. For instance in the tidy desk example. “All non-essential items will be stored neatly away or disposed of, not chucked into the spare room.

Step 6

What is the one thing you can do right this minute, that will take about 15 seconds, to move this goal forward. This can be anything as long as you do it asap and then build momentum. For instance in the tidy desk example, you could pick up all loose paperwork and put in one tidy pile, for filing later. Do this now before reading on.

Have you done the 15 second task? Later I will show how this practice of taking 15 second action will eventually break the back of any over bearing goal or project.
Now let’s move on to setting your life purpose and long term vision.

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