Introduction
1 - Master Potential
2 - Master Goals
3 - Master Time
4 - Master Money & Work
5 - Master Small Business
6 - Master Real Estate
7 - Master Health
8 - Master Mind
9 - Master Relationships
10 - Master Life
Conclusion

Lesson Two - Master Goals

Operational Guidelines

Visualize your successful future.
Write a defining mission statement.
Write goals which are attainable and measureable.
Stay focused by reading your goals every morning.
Realize that mistakes and failure are learning tools.
Write it down. Say it. Mean it. Do it.

Based on the Action Principles^®, The Master Success System is a life enhancing system designed to help highly motivated self-selected individuals become tough thoughtful spiritual men and women of action leading lives of purpose, passion, prosperity and peace.

Without the need for any outside input, you will choose, decision by decision to become a Master of Success. Roll up your sleeves. Begin with your mission statement, Action Principle^® #3.

Write a Personal Mission Statement

   Create for yourself an evolving document that outlines your purpose in life. Who are you? What are your values? What do you intend to do with your time to make your one life meaningful? Excepting acts of God, it is you who determines your future. You don't have to listen to those who say you are too old, too young, too poor, too unattractive, too uneducated or the wrong color, gender or nationality. They are not speaking of someone following the Action Principles^®.

   When you read inspirational passages in other books, magazines or newspaper, copy or scan them. Put everything together in a folder or box. This will serve as your motivational reserve and will help you create a personal mission statement.

   Your mission statement only has to have a few sentences or paragraphs. Refer to your mission statement periodically and don't be afraid to change it as you grow. A mission statement will help you to establish a foundation upon which you can build your dreams and goals and from which will flow your objectives and daily to-do list.

   Your goals will evolve from your mission statement. Your mission statement will help you define the person you are and what you wish to accomplish with your life. See your job the way you want it. See your family the way you want it. See the respect you will engender. See yourself developing your special talent to better the world. Now is the time. Without excuse, with your mission statement as your foundation, set your goals and start making your great life happen.

   Challenge your thinking. You are not average. Do not make your goals average. Demand and expect the extraordinary. As a Master of Success, you will live your life with your head up: alert and aware and curious. Your mission statement is a declaration of your worth to yourself. Show yourself your strength and then show the world.

   Others around you may flounder, clueless in a dazed confusion, and act impulsively. You, guided by your mission statement, will translate your goals into direction. This focus will maximize your efforts.

   You are not sitting on the sidelines of life waiting for someone's permission to advance your cause. You research, think, consider your options and act. You can decide for yourself to be well dressed, better groomed, fitter and more pleasant. You can decide for yourself to be a hard worker. You can decide to be more cultured and better informed. You can decide for yourself to be kinder and more generous.

   The average majority around you are not your role models. As many of them shuffle around in circles, you'll be running straight to a destination. With your goals and objectives in front of you, figure out what you have to do and get on with it. Clear focused, goals are everything. When asked about your life direction, your response isn't a befuddled, "Huh, what?" You are in control. You know who you are and where you're going.

   While setting and testing your goals, seek informed advice especially from those who have successfully done or are successfully doing what you want to do. There are many wonderful people, knowledgeable experienced coaches, bosses, mentors and teachers who can guide your progress. Seek them out. Listen to them and weigh their advice. Appreciate and thank them.

   Your goals are personal and you don't have to share them with everyone. Save your breath. All around you there are underachieving, self-absorbed, disgruntled blowhards ready to scoff at and put down your plans. Usually, it is apparent that these malcontents are not really speaking about you but about their own lack of ambition, laziness and disappointments.

   Set your goals so that for better or worse you have charted your own course and only have yourself to praise or blame. Don't become a dentist because your mother wants you to do so. If you are willing to sacrifice and have the passion to live as a starving artist, be happy and live creatively. Of course, as a Master of Success, there is no need to survive stoically on cold beans and keep your paintings hidden in your parent's garage. You will find the right gallery and hire a master public relations agent to pitch your artistic genius.

Curiosity, information and knowledge are your edge. Find out who has done what you want to do and how they did it. Network, join associations, read biographies, surf the web, ask and keep asking and then do.

Goals Are Your Map

   Since you can do a lot of things, you have the luxury of being selective. For what will you work long hours, read and study, test, talk about for hours, travel anywhere to find and spend your last few dollars to obtain? Your goals must reflect what you want from your life. Setting goals is the time to be egotistical, self-centered and selfish. It is all about you. Forget about pleasing them. Think you. Imagine yourself as a Master of Success. Picture your perfect life ahead. Visualize. Think big. Write it down, figure it out and get going.

   Think about the next few years but also think longer term. Where will you be in twenty years? Go further; think of yourself in old age. How about Judgment Day? You'll want to be content with the best effort that you put forth. You'll want your golden years to be filled with fond memories and not with deep regrets. As a Master of Success, you plan for good things to happen!

   You will not let the uninformed and discontented get you down. Well, don't let statistics get you down, either. Make the numbers work for you. Say that you want to start your own business but you've heard repeatedly that most small businesses fail. That's true. But what you don't hear so often is that most of those failures are first time efforts. Second business attempts succeed far more often. The first time you're a rookie. The second time you're an experienced, battle hardened veteran. If you keep trying and keep learning, you put the odds for success in your favor.

You become what you think about. There is tremendous power in your will. Victory or defeat can be self-fulfilling prophecies. Have a burning desire to succeed.

   Say you want to open the eleventh pizza shop in a town. Everyone tells you that the town only needs ten pizza shops. OK, economics may force one shop to fold. Who will collapse? Your shop will be new and inviting with a great product and a friendly staff. Yes, one shop may close but it will not be yours. Let the grumpy greasy spoon owner be the one who is forced to toss in his apron. In fact, you goal is to be the premier pizza spot in town and then to open a chain of pizza shops. Yes, all the average pizza shop owners in town should be concerned, should be quaking, if you become their competition.

   At any given time, there are thousands of unsold scripts circulating around Hollywood. Your odds of having your one script accepted aren't very good. However, your odds for success skyrocket if you just write a second script. Here's the reason. It is very hard to sell a script if you don't have an agent representing you and agents don't want to represent you if you are a one shot wonder. If you show up with two, three or four scripts and they are well written, you have a good chance of getting an agent and then getting your scripts read and sold.

   What both these examples show is that the things you often hear about starting a business or selling a script may present a distorted picture. The picture is distorted by the fact that average people are not persistent. They try starting one business and when it doesn't immediately succeed, they never try again. Or they write just one script and then when they can't sign on with an agent they end up giving up. Too many people quit on their dreams too soon. This will not be you. You will persist.

   Start right now, today, to live a pro-active life - a life that you control. As soon as you set your goals and begin to take action, you are on the road and the journey has begun. Success is the journey. Choose to make the changes and accept the sacrifices of achieving your goals.

   A Master of Success is well rounded and grounded. Look at the following life categories and decide which goals and plans fit your life journey.

   Spiritual Goals. Spiritual goals give you an opportunity to look at the big picture. What is your responsibility to the environment and to your fellow man? What do you intend to leave as your legacy?

   Family Goals. Family goals allow you to share and to enjoy life with a kindred partner and to pass on all your best qualities to a new generation.

   Physical Goals. Physical goals challenge you to be as fit and healthy as possible. You can't change genetics or avoid all accidents but you don't have to waddle through life either.

   Career Goals. Make enough money to pay your bills, spoil those you love and invest for early retirement. Be prepared to do whatever it takes by working hard and working smart.

   Cultural Goals. Cultural goals are your opportunity to fill your life with beauty and experience the good life: food, wine, fashion, music, art, theater.

   Community Goals. Community service goals present the chance for you to give back: volunteer, run for office, plant a tree, support education, honor your town's veterans.

   Social Goals. Enjoy the company of family and true friends. Host. Entertain. Throw lots of parties.

   Intellectual Goals. Never stop learning: printed books, e-books, magazines, talks, speeches, seminars, courses and the online universe are your resources.

   Investment Goals. Sacrifice today to make tomorrow easier. Be an inside trader by investing in stocks in fields in which you have a specialized knowledge. Rich people own real estate. You should too.

   Personal Goals. There is something special about you that is unique to one in ten thousand. Find and develop your talent. Share your expertise. Stop often to have some fun.

   Lifetime Goals. You have one life to live. Write a long bucket list of everything you'd like to do with your ninety plus years. Start working the list.

   Be sure that your goals reflect the outcomes that you desire. What are the results and consequences of the goals you choose? You must be sure that once you attain a goal, you get exactly the outcome you had expected. Research and keep researching. After spending a year's salary on a car or seven years' salary on a house or four years earning a college degree, you don't want to feel disappointed.

Remember that everything passes from old hands to young. There will be new Academy, Tony and Grammy award winners. There will be new Olympians. There will be new full professors. There will be new bank presidents and new senators and new admirals and new Hall of Famers. You must play if you want to win.

Create Your Map

   On your Master Success journey, goals will serve as your map references. When you decide on the changes you want to make in your life and begin to define your goals, write them down. Many successful people regard this as a critical step. If you write it down, you are taking that first small step toward accomplishing it. It may seem to be a little thing, quite inconsequential in the grand scheme. It isn't. Taking small steps, taking action, is what really separates those who will achieve their wishes from those whose lives will just be wishful thinking. You will feel a sense of power coming from just this small bit of action.

   In a college research study, 13% of students in the survey had clearly defined goals, 3% had focused written goals and 84% had no definitive goals and only a vague idea of what they would do upon graduation. Fast forward ten years and the 13% who said they had goals were making twice as much as those without goals and the 3% with written goals were making ten times as much as those with no goals.

   Think. Visualize. Write it down. Think again. Refine your thoughts. The strategies for appropriate action will begin to formulate in your mind. Your vision evolves into goals that become objectives, which become daily to-dos.

   As you write, think and act, a wonderful thing will begin to happen; it is called momentum. You will feel exhilarated. Your enthusiasm and pride in your accomplishments will spur you forward to accomplish ever more. Momentum builds. Momentum will serve to further bolster your self-confidence. In the course of researching your goals, new and better ideas will appear that will stimulate your thinking. You will constantly be customizing and refining your goal setting. These are your goals and no one else's.

   You may start out wanting to be a general graphic designer and then decide to specialize in web design. You may start as a paralegal and finish as an attorney. You begin college as a psychology major and finish with a teaching degree. In control, as a thinking person of action, you refine and make the changes which are best for you.

Think possibilities. Make sure that your goals are worth your effort.

Be Bold and Begin

   Start now. Take a step. If you want to read more, get a book and start reading. If you want to exercise, walk around the block. If you want to be more extroverted, say hello to five people and compliment three people. If you want to do some good, visit with a lonely person in a nursing home, hospital, shelter or prison. Get going. It will be hard. It will seem new and awkward. You may fall back as you move ahead. Get going. These small accomplishments will embolden you to do more and more. As a Master of Success, you are a person of action.

   Let's say you want to get rich in real estate. Start with education. Go to the library and read all the real estate books. Study real estate blogs and websites. Befriend investors who own income properties. Talk to real estate agents specializing in investment real estate. If you have no money to invest, that is your problem to solve. Start working part-time as a rental agent. Get a second night job at the mall. Find a partner. There is a way. Find it. Start small and finish big. Start with a small condo in need of upgrading and finish with several apartment buildings. This is your goal. You write it and only you can do it. Choose. You can do it.

   If you are committed to the Action Principles^®, who or what can stop you?

   There are no excuses. If you are starting with absolutely nothing, you will simply savor your success that much more. Prove your critics wrong. Play to your strengths. You write the rules. You do what you have to do. Do it for yourself and for those you love. Take out that pencil and paper or go to your computer and start now. Map your life. Goals are your life's blueprint. If you were asked, you should be able to recite your major goals. Let no one doubt your determination to succeed. You will be so excited and motivated by your goals that you can't take no for an answer.

Say it and mean it.

Let Your Ideas Flow

   Each day, take twenty minutes of quiet time. Challenge your thinking.

   If you could change lives with someone else, who would it be?

   What goals would you attempt if you had no fear?

   What projects have you started but haven't finished?

   What do you feel you were born to do?

   What is missing from your life?

   Take control. Goal setting is personal power. Many, through inaction, will rest their futures on the hard work or benevolence of others. You have one life. Why risk that life on another's whim or another's plan for you? Set goals that are challenging but realistic and achievable. Goals that are too easy or too hard can negatively affect your motivation.

   Since the Master Success journey is ongoing, so is goal setting. Commitment to a life of ongoing self-improvement and service to others takes you from one goal to the next. An interest in government in high school may lead to a major in political science in college to earning a law degree to a successful career as an attorney to a judgeship to semi-retirement as legal aid advocate. Goals become the markers from one achievement to the next.

   Be great. Believe. Go for it.

   Don't worry about the number of goals you have written. The number doesn't matter. In a later lesson, we will discuss taking a few minutes each day for personal reflection. As you give yourself time each day to consider where you are and where you are going, your written goals and the corresponding plans for achieving those goals will naturally evolve from one to the next. You will be amazed at how inspired and confident you feel about your journey. You will be focused. Your goals will be clarified and focused.

Accepting Reality

   Stay grounded. Love many things. Big dreams and goals are one thing and delusion is another. You can plan a future in aviation without becoming an astronaut. You can plan on finding a job in professional sports without playing centerfield for the Red Sox. You can plan on a future in the arts without performing at Lincoln Center.

   As a Master of Success, constant self-examination through meditation and quiet time will give you perspective and help you stay grounded. Your life goal is encompassing: to have a career you enjoy, a great family life, true friends, many interests and a sense of accomplishment. If you win an Oscar, if you become president, if you make a billion, you still want to be a happy person, a good person.

   Be forever mindful of how many superstars have screwed up life at home, of how money may corrupt, how fame is fleeting and how fragile your body is. As a Master of Success, be thankful for every good day.

Go Hardcore

   The success you achieve will be from your own initiative. You don't look for others to do your work for you. You are decisive. You are tough enough to risk failure. You are self-reliant and prepared to do the work and make the sacrifices necessary to achieve your goals.

   Examine every area of your life and decide what it is that you wish to achieve. You must be prepared to be persistent. You should start today and then continue every day for the rest of your life. You want to be one of the successful minority who have written goals and review them every day.

   This process of focusing on goal attainment should feel liberating and exciting. You have now created a map for your own life. This is a defining moment. This will be a day to remember. You are well on your way.