How to Achieve Your Goals by Writing Them Down

By: Royane Real
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:47
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Recently a book came out in my country about the early life of one of our most famous political leaders.

I found the reviews of this book very interesting, because as a very young teenager, this boy who later became a famous prime minister, used to write constantly in his letters and journals such thoughts as, “I must become a great man”. Or he would write “It is very important that I become a great leader of this country.”

The reason that I was so interested in reading about this man’s early writings was because he did something that is very common among people who later become successful and achieve their goals: he started to write out his thoughts and ideas on paper from a very young age.

Researchers who have studied what makes people successful have discovered that writing down goals and ideas is very common among those who later become successful.

In general, only about 1% or 2% of the population ever writes their ideas and goals down on a regular basis.

Yet, among those who become famous or successful, writing every day about their goals and ambitions is very common.

So, does this mean that people who later became successful were always so ambitious and conceited that even from a very young age they believed they would be important and they wrote about it constantly?

Or does it mean that writing about what you want to accomplish helps you to achieve your goals?

When I was researching my book “How You Can Be Smarter”, I came across the ideas of Dr. Win Wenger who has studied many techniques to improve intelligence and has written several books on the topic.

Dr. Wenger noticed this connection between writing out your goals and later success in life, and he believes that the very act of writing about your goals and thoughts will stimulate more development in your brain and will help you achieve your ambitions.

So, if you have had any goals that you have been putting off because you don’t have confidence, or don’t know where to start, why not start writing down every day what you want to achieve, and why, and how you will achieve it?

Writing by itself isn’t going to be enough to make you successful, you still have to go out and do things to accomplish your goals, but very often, writing about your goals every day can be an important part of giving yourself a boost of mental energy and confidence.

Now you may be wondering, can’t I just type out my innermost goals and aspirations on my computer? After all, this is the modern age. Wouldn’t a computer work just as well, or maybe even better, in expressing my goals as writing them out by hand on a piece of paper?

Well the answer is, nobody knows for sure. We don’t know yet whether using a computer to type your thoughts will stimulate your brain in the same way to achieve your goals as you would get by writing out the words by hand using a pen and paper.

You see, computers are so new in the history of human beings that we haven’t yet been able to sort out all the effects of computers on our development.

We don’t yet know whether people who type out their ideas on a computer will have the same sort of positive results as people did in the past when they wrote their ideas out on paper. It’s just too early to tell.

However, it is quite likely that writing out what you want using a pen and paper will work better than typing out what you want into a computer.

When you write with pen and paper, especially if you try to make your writing neat and legible, and if you try to make your thoughts complete and grammatically correct, you will use more of your body, and more of your brain than when you simply sit at a computer and type out words.

You are probably activating more of your brain when you write words out by hand.

Here is one way you can get started using the act of daily writing to stimulate yourself to accomplish your goals.

First, decide what goals you want to work on. They might be personal goals or professional goals, spiritual or financial or artistic. You decide what you would like to accomplish in your life.

If like most people, you have a lot of goals, and you don’t know what to tackle first, write them all down, and then choose from your entire list, ten goals that are practical, achievable, and important to you.

Then, out of your top ten goals, choose one to work on at a time.

And this is important – choose to work on the easiest one first!

Why? If you choose a difficult or vague goal, you may get bogged down for many years trying to accomplish it, getting frustrated, while other more easily attainable goals get ignored.

When you choose an easily attainable goal, you will feel encouraged by your success to move on to something more difficult later.

Make sure that you express your desired goal in simple language, with all the details you require to visualize it clearly.

Every day, for ten minutes in the morning, and ten minutes in the evening, commit yourself to writing about your goal. Write about your goal as if it is easy to achieve. Write about how you have all the talent and willpower necessary to achieve this goal. Write about how it will benefit those around you if you achieve it, and how it will benefit you.

Never write as if your goal is difficult, or as if you doubt yourself or as if you doubt your talent or your right to succeed.

You can even write about your goal as if you have already achieved it, and you are happy about how easy it all was.

Every day, take some time to read out loud, with feeling, what you have written.

Feel within yourself the same sense of happiness and relief that you would feel if the goal was successfully accomplished.

Once you have successfully achieved your first goal, go back to your list and pick another goal to write about and to work on.

In this way you can eventually work your way through your entire list!

Article source: Expert Articles