It's the first command of the "SMART" formula: Make your goals specific. Beyond the obvious purpose of providing you with greater focus, sharply defined goals pack motivating power and broaden your perception of available possibilities.

In its most popular form, the acronym "SMART" that describes the qualities of optimal goals stands for Specific-Measurable-Attainable-Realistic-and Timebound. While each of these is important, it's specificity that brings your goal to life.

Your subconscious mind interprets a goal as an instruction. If the goal is vague and ambiguous, not only are the instructions you're providing your inner mind blurry and unclear, but they won't seem very high priority.

On the other hand, when you define your goal with sensory-rich detail, your subconscious recognizes exactly what you're aiming for and gets the message that you mean business. Images are the language of the subconscious. Provide it a with sharp, clear picture of what you want, and it will interpret your goal as more than a casual instruction; it will see it as a command. It will begin relentlessly searching for relevant data from your memory bank and flagging goal-related cues and clues in your environment for your attention. It will feed you streams of ideas in your idle moments and even speak to you through your dreams. And to generate all this amazing power, the only thing you need to do is get specific about your aim.

A secondary benefit of honing your goal down to the details is the impact an explicitly described goal has on your emotions. As your definition grows richer, your desire expands. Your motivation grows. The goal becomes more energized and inspiring. You find your belief level deepening, your confidence expanding. And in a grand feedback loop, your subconscious interprets your enhanced emotional involvement as an urgency message and kicks up its power still more. It generates more ideas, finds more data from both internal and external sources, and puts its creative, problem-solving mode into high gear.

To give your goal the cutting edge, write down all the details you can imagine about it. Involve as many of your senses as you can. Imagine its color, dimensions, weight, texture, fragrance, taste, age, tone, volume, quality, speed, temperature-every aspect of it you can possibly describe.

Rather than creating a static imagine, try making a mental video of your goal, zooming in on its details, then zooming out to see it in a broader context. Imagine yourself interacting with it; feel yourself inside it. Let yourself experience it as if it is a completed reality, enjoying the satisfaction of it.

As you move toward the actualization of your goal, various features of your image may change. That's okay. Let your images be fluid. Allow outmoded details easily to disappear; add new ones as they occur to you. You will, after all, be gaining increasing information about your goal all the time.

Regardless of how the features of your goal-image change, keep your vision vivid and richly detailed. Ideally, review it nightly as you prepare to drift off to sleep. Let segments of it play in your mind as a daydream as you go through your routines.

The more attention you give to building and reinforcing the detail-rich imagery of your goal, the greater your edge will be in bringing it into your reality. Feed it and it will empower you in turn as nothing else can do.