cannot directly change the future. If you state your goal in the future tense,
it will remain in the future forever. However, if you state it in the present, as
if you already have it now, you will produce the results you want.
Reach Out and Reasonable
The reach-out part of the goal should stretch you beyond your current situa-
tion. You do not want to make the goal too easy; otherwise you will not
feel satisfied when you achieve it because you were not stretched. Every
human being wants to grow and stretch, whether they realize it con-
sciously or not. Do not limit the size of your goal based on your current ca-
pability or results. The tools in this book will add vastly to your capability. If
accomplishing your goal does not require that you gain new skills and
learn more about what interests you, then it is not enough of a stretch. Re-
member, if you reach your goals easily now, then you’re not stretching
yourself enough. Make the goals bigger!
The goal also must be reasonable—it must be attainable. Perhaps
you’d like $1 million by tomorrow morning. This is not reasonable un-
less you already have millions of dollars that you can use to achieve the
goal. If your goal were to achieve $1 million in five years, this would be
reasonable. Remember, scale back dreams as necessary to make them
achievable.
Time
You must include a specific date by which you will achieve your goal. If
you do not state a specific time in your goal, it will always remain in the fu-
ture. Your unconscious mind will take the path of least resistance and pro-
duce only what you ask it to produce now. When you put a date on your
goal, your unconscious mind knows that it must figure out a way to achieve
what was asked of it. It will find a way to produce the outcome in the spe-
cific time frame you asked.
There is some art involved in selecting these dates. Use your feelings as
a gauge to know whether your dates are reasonable. If you wonder “Why
bother to get started?” then the desired completion date is too far away. If
the date throws you into a panic, it’s too close. Experiment until you come
up with a date that challenges and energizes you. Here is an example of a
SMART goal:
I now have $1 million in my prosperity bank account on December
31, 2009.
This goal assumes that you have little or a moderate amount of income.
It also assumes the goal was set in the year 2004. This goal would not be
appropriate for someone who already has close to $1 million in a bank
account currently or with a $500,000 income. For those individuals, the
goal would have to be increased to include the reach-out requirement.
Goals Are Not about Measurement Anymore 149