Well, as I come to the end of my 8-part series on how to create goals you're likely to achieve, I arrive at my rest with my favourite criterion. This is that our goals need to be "Living".

At first, this may sound strange but its meaning is simply that goals must come "alive" to us on a daily basis. We are strange creatures. Our awareness of time is strongly focused on today, with a span reaching with some clarity to yesterday and tomorrow but not much further! It is as if a python had swallowed an elephant – there's a big bulge in the middle of our timeline! The returns diminish as we get further and further away from the central focus that is "today"!

It is almost as if our system really does reboot after every period of significant sleep, bringing a new locus of focus.

When I first began to realise the power of goal-setting, I went to town. I had a gorgeous binder full of fantastic images of what I'd like to have, be or do. The problem was that when I shut the cover on the folder, I shut the contents off from my mind. I closed the book.

Far better to re-energise your goals on a daily basis. And to do this, you just need a humble notebook. There is something visceral about jotting down a reminder of your key and core goals – great and small. We know that the memory traces are already in position, we just need to remind our consciousness that these are the destinations we wish to head towards, right here, right now. This strengthens the neural pathway to that dream, and makes it ever more a path of least resistance.

Then, instead of being "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" – the dreams will stay "insight, in-mind" – and you'll find that this is one way that dreams become reality.

So let it be written (daily), so let it be done (daily). [With a pencil??? They are so tactile!]

-----oOOo-----

Whilst mnemonics may not be everyone's cup-of-tea, they do help me with this particular checklist-for-transformation. So here is a summary of our POWERFUL journey together over 8 posts.

P was for 'Positive' – framing our desires in terms of what we want rather than what we don't want.

O was for 'Own-Control' – choosing goals that we had the power to influence.

W was for the 'Win-Win' – making sure there was a big enough 'win' to motivate us to persevere.

E was for the 'Evidence' – the sensory signs that would let us know we were on or off track.

R was for 'Resource' but also for 'Resourcefulness' – that 'Resilience' that works with the 'win' to keep us going.

F was for 'Faith' – requiring an occasional jump when a humble step would seem far safer.

U was for 'Unique' – keeping our goals simple and single – the KISS principle.

L was for 'Living' – breathing life into our goals every day by taking the simple action of (re)writing them down on a humble note-pad.

May all your good dreams come true x

Lex

A Moodscope member.