Seen On The Back of My Business Card – 3 of 4

“The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief.” – Seneca

This is self-evident (at least to me), but does beg the question: how does one create a high degree of passion and belief in a goal or endeavor? Two words: authenticity and clarity.

Your goals must be yours. They cannot be what your parents wanted for you. They cannot be what your spouse wants for you. They can’t be what your friends want for you. And they certainly can’t be what society wants for you.

Your goals must be absolutely, completely yours for you to have full access to all the passion, energy, creativity and drive you (truly) have.

The other key is clarity. You must know exactly what you want. Vague goals yield (no/) vague results. When you know what exactly your goal is, you can precisely break down the steps required to achieve it. Without clarity you won’t know if something is helpful or useful, and, more often than not, will defer action. Goals love action. They insist on it.

So, you must have passion and energy to achieve goals worthy of you. And you need authenticity and clarity to have passion and energy.

  • What do you really want?
  • How will you know when you’ve achieved it?
  • What are the steps required along the way?
  • What is proper order of the required steps?

The answers to these questions are the key to achieving your goals — without them achievement is random and rarely satisfying.

[I’m doing something a little different this week: I am featuring the quotes I had printed on the back of my new business cards.]

Similar Posts

  • The Power You Have

    If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. – Marcus Aurelius The simple truth of these words is SO powerful. Whatever you’re feeling is the result of what you think…

  • The Beauty of Problems

    I think there’s a great beauty to having problems. That’s one of the ways we learn. – Herbie Hancock Every experience has something to teach us. Even (so called) “problems.” Don’t let when things don’t go exactly the way you planned get you down. 1) you can learn from it 2) it might lead to…

  • From Thoughts to Destiny

    Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny. – Mohandas Gandhi Not much…

  • If Not This, Then What?

    All we are is peace, love, and wisdom, and the power to create the illusion we’re not. – Jack Pransky Every instant of our life is a choice point. Through habit or conscious choice we decide what we’re going to do, or not do, and how we’re going to do it. These choices come from…

  • Find Your Peace

    Each one has to find his peace from within. And for peace to be real it must be unaffected by outside circumstances. – Mahatma Gandhi This reminds me of something I heard in the past: real peace-of-mind is being unaffected by both the bad and good opinion of others. So, cultivate and nurture a peace that…

  • The Price Must Be Paid

    Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense illustration of the perfect compensation of the universe. The absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price, — and if that price is not paid,…