Today's article will give you guidance in goal setting. Before reading further, picture a goal you want to achieve. This could be to earn a certain amount of money, lose or gain a certain amount of weight, attract a certain partner into your life or learn a certain skill for instance.

When most people picture for themselves what it will take to achieve a goal they will first think about what they need to do in order to get what they want to have. They might think that they need to work harder to earn more money, exercise and eat healthy to attain their ideal weight, look attractive and do friendly gestures to get a date and train hard to become skillful and talented in a given task. And when this is done, chances are that they will successfully accomplish their goal.

However, by adding an even more important step in the very beginning of this pattern you'll be able to improve your odds of succeeding even further. Ask yourself who you need to be to do the thing it takes to get you what you want. In the case of getting more money you need to behave like a rich person. You then need to think in the terms of delayed gratification, exponential compounding, financial statements with correct definitions of assets and liabilities, using good debt, the three vehicles of investments, cash flow management, market cycles, entity selections and so on. After the use of such definitions are crystal clear in your behaviour you can start doing what it takes to have greater streams of income in your life.

Moving on to the goal of getting in shape, use the same perspective. You need to be enthusiastic about exercising and keeping a diet that does your body good. If you're genuinely interested about caring for your body, not solely out of looking good in others' eyes, then your determination of staying focused on your program is more likely to feel like a natural part of your life. You need to think of yourself as already in shape, because when you do reach your ideal weight, you have to keep doing it to stay where you're at.

Following is the case of finding friends or a partner according to your desires. Remember that you need to be happy, caring, self-confident, interested and genuine so that the deeds you do come automatically from your heart. Then you'll end up having all the relationships you want, which the people in your life share with you as well.

Finally, lets say you want to try skydiving, but you can't seem to find the time or courage to go for it. Ask around and listen why and how others came to start such a hobby. If you get answers like desire to feel free or desire to face your fears then focus on those aspects to begin with. Convince yourself that by being a free spirit or being fearless you'll be able to make that jump and the experience itself will give you exactly that what you want.

Sometimes you might have a false idea of who you need to be to achieve your goal. For instance in the case of increasing your wealth you might have wrong assumptions of what kind of people the rich really are, or that it takes a lot of work in the first place to increase your income. Ask the right person for more accurate descriptions. You would not ask your dentist friend how to care for your muscles after a workout if you have an acquaintance who trains professional athletes. Neither would you ask your broke brother how to get rich instead of an old school friend who now runs several businesses and is out of the rat race.

Pick their brains and learn what kind of mind-sets they have, who they are on the inside and what lights their passion. Few people will deny telling you their story when it's about something that they're passionate about. When you keep in mind the be - do - have pattern of achieving a goal, you'll take notice of a much broader set of insights that will help you on your way.