Quite a few years ago as a young twenty-something, I found some of my greatest wisdom in a tiny digest-sized magazine called Success Unlimited. It’s a magazine that has its roots in the late 19th century when it was founded by Orison Swett Marden, one of history’s most prolific personal development authors.

The modern day version of SUCCESS maintains its heritage as the ultimate guide to achieving excellence, getting results, and realizing your greatest potential. Learn the insights, tips and strategies used by today’s leading entrepreneurs, CEO’s and personal development experts to get the competitive advantage and achieve more in life!

We are very honored to have an article in the August/September issue (pages 34-35). This new issue (as all issues do) includes a FREE DualDisc™ (CD & DVD in one) featuring personal development icons John Maxwell, Jack Canfield, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, Napoleon Hill, Terri Sjodin and Les Brown.

Go here to subscribe to SUCCESS or call 800-570-6414.

- Vic Johnson

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I received this goal getting formula twice in the same day from two very different sources. Both suggested I would enjoy the formula and they were very right. As my Brit friends say, “it is spot on.”

Setting Means Getting – By Tom Hopkins

The average human being has the ability to achieve almost anything. Lack of basic capability is rarely the problem, but rather finding out what you want and being willing to sacrifice, change, and grow to satisfy the want. In the sales training seminars I conduct throughout the country, I teach a 20-step system of goal setting to help people achieve and I firmly believe it can be applied to all walks of life. Here it is:

1. If it’s not in writing, it’s not a goal. An unwritten want is a wish, a dream, a never-happen. If it’s in writing, it’s a commitment.

2. If it’s not specific, it’s not a goal. Broad desires and lofty aims have no effect. It must be concrete.

3. Goals must be believable. If you don’t believe you can achieve a goal, you won’t pay the price for it.

4. An effective goal is an exciting challenge. It must demand your best and a bit more or it isn’t going to change your ways and elevate your lifestyle.

5. Goals must be adjusted to new information. Adjust them down if they become unbelievable or up if they’re too easy.

6. Dynamic goals guide our choices. If you want it badly enough, you’ll turn off the TV and get to it. Goals will show you the right way to go on most decisions.

7. Don’t set short-term goals for more than 90 days. If you set a short-term goal that takes more than 90 days, you may lose interest.

8. Maintain a balance between long-term and short-term goals. Long-term goals tend to be hidden in a fog of the future, so have some short-term goals – like clothes, cars, vacations— to keep your excitement up.

9. Include your loved ones in your goals. Involve them and they’ll buck you up when you need encouragement.

10. Set goals in all areas of your life. Have other goals besides career objectives.

11. Your goals must harmonize. Whenever you detect a conflict, set priorities that will eliminate the conflict.

12. Review your goals regularly. Remember, long-term goals can only be achieved if they are the culmination of short-term goals.

13. Set vivid goals. Define not only what you want but by when you want it, and concentrate on it for a few moments every day.

14. Don’t chisel your goals in granite. Sometimes you have to change goals to conform to your growing awareness of what’s really important in your life.

15. Reach out into the future. The idea of goal-setting is to plan your life rather than taking it as it comes. Begin by setting 20-year goals. Then 10-year, five-year, 30-month, 12-month, monthly, weekly, and finally goals for tomorrow and each day for the coming week.

16. Have a set of goals for every day, and review results each night.

17. Train yourself to crave your goals. Visualize yourself possessing what you’ve set your goals for.

18. Set activity goals, not production goals. Activity will lead to production by itself.

19. Understand luck, and make it work for you. Expect good things to happen, and they probably will.

20. Star now. Give goal-setting two hours of concentrated through today. Then set aside 10 minutes a day for the next 21 days to review and revise. After that, two minutes a day and one hour a week is all it will take to keep you on track.

Try this system if you want to achieve your goals and within 21 days you’ll be well on your way to an immensely greater and richer future.

Go to www.TomHopkins.com for a great Tip of the Day…

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Almost a third of the year has already passed. If you’re not where you hoped to be with your 2008 goals, don’t wait any longer before you get some help.

And some of the best help you’ll ever get will be available in Chicago on 5/2-5/3 at Donna Krech’s Life Success Event. Start with Dr. Denis Waitley (who has helped me reach many a goal) and Loral Langemeier (The Millionaire Maker) and finish with a whole host of world class trainers, and it’s guaranteed to get you back on track.

I’m excited to be joining this stellar cast on stage so get your ticket today and meet me in Chicago…

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For years I have promoted Toastmasters as a key “goal setting tool.” In fact, we strongly encourage all of our Champions Club members to join Toastmasters. As James Allen says, people “do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.” As you become more, you attract more.

Amit Chaudhary had a great post on his blog about Toastmasters and his experience and I have included most of it here:

Toastmasters International is an organization of clubs around the world which help members in public speaking. The clubs tend to be small in size to ensure everyone gets a chance to speak.

Late Jan 2008, I went ahead and attended the Yahoo ToastMasters club in Sunnyvale, called Yapsters as guest. It was definitely worthwhile and I became a member and have delivered my first speech.

It is obviously about public speaking, however it is useful in many ways:

As Amit mentions, Toastmasters can help you even if you don’t have any intentions of using in for public speaking. It will give you tremendous confidence and most importantly — you will be surrounded by like-minded people — and that’s a huge key to success.

If you would like to find a club near you go here….

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The first letter of the acronym for SMART Goals, the letter “S”, stands for specific. And it’s long been taught by the sages that a goal has to be specific to be effective. Now there’s some scientific evidence to back that up.

Here’s part of a story from Psychology Today: “When it comes to working out, you might think trying your best would be the way to make the most of your exercise time. But you’d be wrong. For a study at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University that pitted several motivational techniques against each other, researchers had 56 female undergraduates attempt to do as many sit-ups as possible in 90 seconds. Those who were given the vague directive “do your best” averaged about 43 sit-ups on each day of the four-day study. On the other hand, women assigned specific long-or short-term targets–”do 10 percent more than you did last time”–managed 56 sit-ups by the last day’s session.”

And it doesn’t just apply to sit-ups. Being as specific as you can possibly be “turns on” an internal system much like the homing device in a guided missile — it makes it far easier to hit your goal when your system is “on.”

To read more from the Psychology Today story go here….

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Vic Johnson, founder of Goals-2-Go.com and co-founder of the popular Champions Club, will be “riding along” with NASCAR’s John Andretti during this Sunday’s Checker Auto Parts 500 Nextel Cup race in Phoenix.

Andretti’s #49 Dodge Avenger will sport the image of Johnson along with six other experts from the website HealthLife.com which launches in December. Johnson was chosen by HealthLife to be its resident expert on goal setting.

“I’m really excited to be a part of the HealthLife team,” Johnson said, “and I’m honored to be included on the #49 car during a major NASCAR race. Racing, especially at the Nextel Cup level, has a lot of lessons for all of us who are looking for ways to achieve bigger goals and dreams. Focus, persistence, commitment, preparation and belief get you across the finish line first on the race track and on the life track as well.”

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My friend Mark Victor Hansen has achieved some remarkable success (including selling 130+ million copies of the Chicken Soup books) and there’s no question that he had to build a great team to do it. In this excerpt from his great newsletter, Rich Results, he talks about the importance of concentrating on what you do best and letting others do the rest.

In my experience, this is one of the very best (and most important) lessons you can learn that will instantly translate to success. Within weeks, and even days, of adopting this principle, you will begin to see dramatic increases in production and results. Put it to work today!

“Focusing on your primary goal is your job - it is what you have to devote most of your time to. You can’t be great at everything, so while you’re concentrating on what you need to do, hire others to do the things you don’t have time to do, or aren’t talented at doing.

For example, if someone’s primary goal is to write a book, that’s what they need to focus on - writing. If they are spending the majority of their time balancing books and sorting through their finances they’re not writing. That person should hire a bookkeeper - someone who has a knack for numbers.

Or take, for instance, someone is a brilliant businessperson, but they don’t enjoy (and aren’t very good at) making sales calls. That person would have an experienced, successful telemarketer or telemarketing service make their calls for them.

THIS WEEK’S LESSON:
Concentrate on What You Do Best - Pay Someone Else to Do the Rest

Why bother doing something yourself that you don’t love to do, are not talented at, and takes up your valuable time and energy?

Delegate undesirable activities to those who can do them faster and better than you can. The principle is: delegate or stagnate.

THIS WEEK’S ACTION STEP

A good way to decide what to do with tasks is to label them as they come in - don’t let them pile up. A great system is the 4-D Formula:

1. DO IT - these are urgent tasks that need to be taken care of right away. Take action immediately and finish the task.

2. DELEGATE IT - these are things that need to be done, but don’t have to be done by you. Hand these over to someone else immediately so you don’t have to think about them at all. Make that person responsible for these tasks from start to finish.

3. DEFER IT - these things need to be done, but not right away. Put them in a pile marked “later” and handle them after the urgent tasks have been completed.

4. DUMP IT - these are things that you don’t want to do and don’t necessary have to be done at all. On your computer it’s the ever-present “delete” key. That handles our junk e-mail.

As you really get going on your primary aim, the workload is going to increase. If you are a person who wants complete control of every little thing in your life and business you’re going to be in trouble. Control is an illusion. No one controls anyone or anything. You will need to continue to focus on your primary goal and allow others to help you. It will help to practice the 4-D Formula.”

“Build your own dream team. It starts as a concept, but it projects your future into reality.”
- Mark Victor Hansen

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A lot of people have a dream as a child of growing up to be a doctor.

Most people never realize that dream — many of them because they allow their circumstances to get in the way of the dream.

Kellie Lim was one who didn’t, even though she had plenty of “circumstances” in her life. At eight years old she became a triple amputee with an 85% chance of dying in the next few months.

What’s happened over the past 18 years is the stuff that dreams (and movies) are made of. Just ask Dr. Kellie Lim who just graduated from UCLA with her medical degree.

You can find the whole story (and a few more surprises) here…

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It’s rare for Hollywood to produce a movie that inspires us, and from all accounts, The Ultimate Gift does that and more. Appearing in theaters across the U.S. and Canada it stars Academy Award nominee Abigail Breslin, Drew Fuller, James Garner, Ali Hillis and Brian Dennehy. Based on the best-selling book by Jim Stovall, The Ultimate Gift is an unforgettable, involving story that has already created a strong grass-roots movement of giving and inspired millions of dollars of donations to charity. Watch this preview and then get to a movie theater and see for yourself.

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Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator of the massive Chicken Soup for the Soul series, recently wrote some very powerful words about how easy it is to get into action:

“Doing doesn’t need a lot of definition! It means action, taking steps toward your goals! Once you understand your beliefs and thoughts … once you know what it is you want to be and who it is you wish to become … once you are clear on your dreams and begin living those very visions in your mind … you’ve already opened the door to action.

Action actually begins when you put that initial thought energy out there. The next step might be researching the activities you want to do. It might be networking or meeting people who are in the arena you’re interested in becoming a part of. It might be signing up for a seminar within your specific interest. It might entail researching the career position you wish to hold and finding out how - exactly - to get there.

When you take initial action, it doesn’t mean that you have to climb the entire mountain next Saturday. When I decided to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro last fall, I didn’t just decide to show up at the trailhead one day with a Powerbar in my back pocket. I started with small steps several months in advance. I began to change my diet; I incorporated exercise that increased my cardio endurance; and I started doing research on shoes and equipment used by those who had succeeded before me.

It’s not the size of the step that gets you there. It’s the fact that you’re taking the step.”

There’s an outstanding DVD of Mark Victor Hansen included with the Professional Edition of Goals 2007.

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