The Goal Kicker – August 2009

Welcome to this month’s edition of “The Goal Kicker” – the monthly ezine produced by achieve-goal-setting-success.com - dedicated to helping you achieve your goals by providing goal setting related articles and reviews of the latest goal setting products available.

In this edition you’ll find:

• An article on “5 Tips to manage your time effectively”, by guest author Rigdha Acharya
• A review of “How to Raise Happy, Healthy, Self Confident Children” by Brian Tracy
• A review of the audio book ”The Secrets of Being Unstoppable”, by Guy Finley
• A review of this month’s Featured Link to www.BrianTracy.com
• ToolBOX Talk – how to get the best out of the ’Goal Progress Review’
• Our inspirational quote of the month explained.

”5 Tips to manage your time effectively”, by Rigdha Acharya

But all you need to do is manage your time now!

Here are some tips to help you make the most of your time every single day:

1.Break down large tasks into smaller ones: We all know the feeling of staring at a new complicated project feeling overwhelmed and wishing we were anywhere but here. But, even complicated tasks are not impossible to handle. In fact, most tasks become unbelievably trivial once we break them down into small pieces. Get into the habit of breaking down your tasks into small ones and tackling each individual part one at a time. This will help you stay calm as well as it will help you accomplish your goals without the urge to procrastinate.

Remember – how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!

2.Get rid of unproductive routine tasks: This includes getting up each morning and checking your email. Do not start your day on somebody else’s agenda. Get out there, take some time to focus on the goals for the day and then start working on them. Do routine tasks during slow times of the day. For example, check your emails right after lunch.

3.Look at your habits to see if they can be changed, maybe you can do certain things a different way and save yourself some time in the process.

4.Evaluate yourself Are you a morning person or a night person? Organize tasks to use whatever time suits you best. I am usually the most productive first thing in the morning and then late at night (after the kids go to bed!) - and that is exactly why I work on my most important goals during those hours. Two hours of focused work is far more valuable than 10 hours of unfocused work.

5.Learn to say NO: One of the biggest secrets of success is leadership. You need to be able to become a leader and say NO when someone asks you for a favour that can take considerable amount of highly productive time from you.

You need to be very cautious about where and how you spend your time. Time is the most precious resource you have and you need to stop wasting it and start treating it like gold.

You can learn more about how to manage your time to achieve all your goals by reading this FREE ebook – “The Time Management Secrets that will Set You Free”.

And refer to the ”Life Skills” page on our website for more information on time management.

Product of the Month – “How to Raise Happy, Healthy, Self Confident Children”

You may know Brian Tracy from his success related programs and packages, but one of how most successful programs teaches the secrets of raising super kids.

Brian's 6-CD program, How to Raise Happy, Healthy, Self-Confident Children, is celebrated by parents around the world -- there are certain things that you should know when raising children that Brian teaches in this program. He should know, he has raised 4 wonderful kids.

In this program, you will learn...

• Four behaviors of effective parenting
• How to communicate with your children on a deeper level
• How to raise high achievers
• How to help your children stay drug-free
• How to manage your time so family comes first
• How to raise super kids

Also, get Brian's Time Management For Results, absolutely FREE with purchase.

More from Brian on Effective Parenting... The role of parenting is to raise your children with high levels of self-confidence and self-esteem so that they leave you feeling completely capable of making their own way and succeeding in the world. This definition is sufficient to govern your behavior from the time your child is born to the time he or she leaves home, and for years afterward.

The biggest single mistake that parents make with regard to their children is that they conclude, usually unconsciously, that their children exist to fulfill the parents' expectations, to be what the parents want them to be.

What I learned very early, an awareness that has helped me to be a better parent, is that children belong to themselves. They are not personal possessions. Parents do not own children. The job of parents entails raising their children to feel terrific about themselves, to feel capable of dealing with the inevitable ups and downs of life.

Whether a child comes from a good home with every material blessing or a poor home with limited resources doesn't really matter in the long run. What does matter is how confident the child feels when it comes to setting goals, making decisions, overcoming obstacles and succeeding in his or her chosen areas of endeavor.

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

And if this is your belief in parenting, then you’ll just love Brian’s How to Raise Super Kids.

Book of the Month – “The Secrets of being Unstoppable”, by Guy Finley

It's called Secrets of Being Unstoppable: a comprehensive 14-hour audio program that shows you how to realize and release a secret power most of us don't even realize is ours!

A power that can help you:

• Outsmart any fearful, anxious, or stressful feeling.
• Have fun wherever you are, no matter what you're doing.
• Be daring, bold, courageous, and audacious.
• Walk straight into moments that have always scared you.
• Follow through and achieve what your heart is yearning to do.
• Put the magic and meaning back into your relationships.

Guy has worked tirelessly for nearly 30 years fine-tuning and honing this material. And now in this latest release, the staff at his non-profit Foundation have taken the very best of his individual programs and packaged them all into one complete course.

The reason I recommend this so highly is because it's one of the few programs out there that actually delivers on its promise. There are a lot of experts who talk about living fearlessly, and about living from an indomitable spirit. But they never seem to answer the one question everyone asks:

"How do I do it?" In Secrets of Being Unstoppable, you'll finally get the answer to that question. But even better than that, you'll find yourself holding the keys to an extraordinary new kind of understanding that will prove itself - by far - to be the greatest benefit of all.

I urge you to invest a few minutes of your time to read the following message from Jeff Roberts at Life of Learning. He gives a very intriguing explanation of the insights, benefits, and new understanding you'll get from this program.

So Discover the Secrets of Being Unstoppable!

Featured Link of the month - www.BrianTracy.com

The Brian Tracy website offers you all these lessons and principles that successful people have been using for years. Some of his more popular – and successful packages are:

• Flight Plan, which shows you how to succeed greatly in any area – based on Brian Tracy’s work with thousands of self-made millionaires, multimillionaires and billionaires world-wide.
• Speak to Win, about the importance of being able to communicate clearly, convincingly and persuasively.
• The Science of Self-Confidence Training Kit - something we all need from time to time.
• The Way to Wealth System, which teaches you how to start your own business, make it a success, create huge profits, and finally become financially independent.
• The Unbreakable Laws of Money Package, which can help you achieve your financial goals and put money in your pocket.

And Brian Tracy is also GIVING AWAY some of his wisdom – just check out his website for more details.

But I particularly recommend Brian’s ”21 Success Secrets of Self Made Millionaires" - in these FREE CD’s, Brian shares the secrets of wealthy success stories with you.

So check out the Brian Tracy website today and learn from this success guru’s wisdom.

ToolBOX Talk – how to get the best out of the ‘Goal Progress Review’ Tool

In the “”Life Planning Workbook” you’ll find a Goal Progress Review. It’s important to review the progress of your goals for several reasons:

• To see whether you are achieving the deadlines on tasks required to achieve your end goal.
• To make sure you’re still actually heading in the right direction towards your goal.
• To make any necessary adjustments to your action plan so that it is still achievable.
• As motivation – to see what you’ve achieved and that you’re that much closer to achieving your end goal.

The Goal Progress Review provides a number of prompts to trigger your thoughts on how you are progressing. Now, we adopt the “SMARTer” goal format for setting goals – so our Goal Progress Review tool gets you to review each of these elements to guarantee that your goals stay smart . So first of all, measureyour goal progress - goals need to be able to be measured so you can monitor progress. How you measure your goal (eg ranking system, actual measure such as weight, etc) should be established at the start of the goal setting process, along with your starting measurement. By determining your current measurement and comparing it with your starting point, you will be able to see whether or not you have progressed towards your goal.

Secondly, are you using your Action Plan - your action plan is your road map to achieving your goal, which is your end destination. If you’re not using your map, how do you expect to get there? Think about how you have set up your action plan and whether there is another method that will suit you better.

You also need to look at whether you’re achieving the deadlines on your action items – if not, why not? Deadlines are there for a reason – to keep up momentum! Perhaps your deadlines were unrealistic (don’t worry, this is common!) or your time has been directed to other more urgent activities – either way, think about why so you can adjust your action plan.

Thirdly, is the goal still relevant - Goals are established based on your situation at the time of setting them. If there has been a significant change in your life, you need to consider whether you are you still able to achieve this goal – or whether you still WANT to. Remember, goals MUST be relevant otherwise you won’t have the motivation to achieve them. Remind yourself why this goal is really important to you, and ask whether this is still the case.

And finally, consider your resourcing - is your level of resourcing (money, time, information, support) adequate? Identify any additional resource needs and where/ how you might find them.

Of course, if manual goal setting progress reviews are not your thing you can always Keep Your Goals On Trackwith Web-based goal setting software to track goals, tasks, progress & time.

For more information on progress reviews for your goals, refer to the “”How to Achieve” tab on the NavBar.

Have you got a better goal setting tool that you’d like to share with the world? Well, send it in and we’ll add it to the ToolBOX – kudos to you of course!

Our Quote of the Month – explained…

But you can’t grow within your comfort zone – and you miss out on so much if you sit there all your life. Imagine if you were stuck in the same room all your life, just how mundane that would become.

Well, your life is like a room too, packed full of all your life experiences so far. And that’s why it’s called a comfort zone – it’s filled with all things familiar to you.

How do you make your comfort zone bigger? Get out and get some more life experiences to add to your room – that’s how! And every new discovery or life experience you add to your comfort zone, the bigger and more interesting it will become.

So the longer you stay outside your comfort zone, the bigger it gets. It will grow bigger and bigger and bigger until it catches up with YOU, where-ever YOU are. And once your comfort zone includes those discoveries you once thought were ‘un-comfortable’, will now be just a normal part of life and you’ll start looking for even more discoveries to add.

But don’t worry, I’m not talking about locking the door to your comfort zone and throwing away the key! Your comfort zone will always be there when you need a breather. In fact, it’s recommended to have an escape plan back to your comfort zone if things ‘out there’ get a little rough.

So, get out of your comfort zone and see what’s out there!