Listening for Inspiration

The second step to achieve success with any worthwhile goal you desire is to listen for inspiration. This is part of a four part series:

• Three Simple Steps to Success
• Setting Goals
• Listening for Inspiration
• Taking Action

Once you’ve set your goal, you’re ready to start looking for ways to achieve it. Often, when you first set a goal, you won't know how to achieve it but once you set your sights on your goal, you can then start working towards it.

What should you do after setting your goal? Listen for inspiration on how to achieve it.

Defining Inspiration

Inspiration is the process of being motivated or stimulated to do or feel something.

It often comes in a flash as a sudden moment of clarity. Inspiration can come as a sudden idea that catapults your knowledge giving you the means to do or accomplish something. Driving down the road, you
may see a billboard in a different way and get a flash of insight. Listening to someone talking, you may suddenly gain a deeper understanding of a topic that has been elusive. You may get a sudden shift in your perception while reading a book or article.

Great speakers, such as John F. Kennedy often inspire us. In one speech in 1962, he said “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are
hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” These words inspired many people within the United States space program and seven years later in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in Apollo 11.

We are often inspired by other people’s actions. It can be as simple as seeing someone bend down to pick up a piece of paper and throw it away, and become inspired to do something similar, or as grand as
seeing someone raise a million dollars for a worthwhile cause and decide to do something similar.

There’s an important point to remember here. After inspiration is action. After you receive the flash, you need to do something with it.

Encouraging Inspiration

If you want to achieve a specific goal, you’ll want the inspiration to achieve it. One of the best things you can do to encourage inspiration related to your goal is to repeat it daily. Write it on 3 X 5 card and repeat it in the morning, or before you go to bed, or whenever works best for you. However, repeat it daily. This keeps your goal at the forefront of your thoughts and helps get your mind working on receiving and recognizing inspiration when it comes.

As an example, imagine your goal is to take and pass the Security+ exam by a certain date. When you remind yourself of this daily, it will be on your mind and you’ll be more likely to think about ways to achieve your goal.

In contrast, imagine someone thought to himself on the first day of last month that he might like to get the Security+ certification. However, he did not set a goal and did not regularly remind himself of this desire. It’s very possible his mind will be occupied with thoughts that have nothing to do with the Security+ exam.

Create a List of Action Steps

One way to get going on a goal is to sit down, think about your goal, and come up with a list of at least ten things you can do to get a step closer. You’ll probably come up with five rather quickly but
stick with it until you’ve written at least ten.

If your goal is to earn the Security+ certification by a certain date, your list may start with:

• Identify the objectives of the exam
• Identify study resources
• Purchase study resources
• Read ____ pages a day
• Spend ____ minutes daily creating notes

Once you come up with the list, prioritize the action steps. Identify what needs to be done first, second, and so on. This is very useful when you move onto the next step for success: taking action. This
list tells you exactly what you need to do. You start with item 1, and when you’re done, you move on to item 2. Keep doing this until you complete the list and achieve your goal.

It’s very possible that the first list you create isn’t the best. No problem. Creating the first of anything is often the hardest but once you’ve created it, improving it is easy.

As you start working on your goal, you will likely get flashes of inspiration to add steps to your list or to do things a little differently. Excellent. Modify your list. But notice that these flashes of inspiration come because you are focused on your goal and how to achieve it.

There’s More

There are certainly many more ways to encourage inspiration. However, the two items I’ve mentioned (repeat your goal daily and create a list of action steps) are enough to get you started.

Also, I want to stress that this can work for any worthwhile goal that you believe in. Imagine Nicole has the following goal:

• “I am earning more than $5,000 a month providing a worthwhile service to others.”

When she sets the goal, she may not have any idea what worthwhile service she could provide to others that could earn her $5,000 a month. However, there are many people in the world that are doing so, so why not Nicole? And the number doesn’t need to be $5,000. It can be any number Nicole believes is possible for her. If she sets it at $5,000 and achieves success with her goal in a year, she may choose to
set a new goal with a higher number that didn’t seem so believable to her at first.

Your Turn

If you haven’t done so, I strongly encourage you to take the time to write down a goal for yourself and use this information to help you listen for inspiration. Success is within your grasp for any worthwhile goal you desire.

Coming next: Taking Action.

Setting Goals for Success

The first of three simple steps to achieve success with any worthwhile goal you desire is to set a goal. This is part of a four part series:

• Three Simple Steps to Success
  
• Setting Goals
  
• Listening for Inspiration
  
• Taking Action
  

Goals. There’s no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There’s no telling what you can do when you believe in them. And there’s no telling what will happen when you act upon them.

- Jim Rohn

Goals Matter

I’ve taught many courses over the years. In one University course, students were given enough information that they could take and pass a technical certification exam. I stressed to students each time I taught the course that it was achievable, but they needed to take it shortly after class ended.

Often, I was disappointed to learn that as many as 90 percent of the students simply didn’t take it. When I asked what prevented them from taking the exam, they gave me a whole range of reasons but nothing that was insurmountable.

At some point, I changed my approach. On the first night of the course, I told the students the date when the course ended. After explaining they could successfully pass the exam shortly after the course ended, I asked them to pick a date when they thought they’d have time to take it. Then, as a class, we all went to the registration center in the University and I helped them register to take the exam on the date they picked.

They were able to change the date if they had to, but now they had a real, concrete goal.

Interestingly, the numbers flipped. Instead of only about 10 percent of the students taking and passing the exam, it changed to about 90 percent. People had the date in mind and they made a solid commitment to achieve it.

I used the same procedure for about a year and the results were consistent - about 90 percent of the students that completed the course, also took and passed the exam.

Unfortunately, people in the registration center started complaining about me flooding them with 15 to 20 people on my first night of this class. The University told me I had to stop and students had to register individually on their own. Despite teaching the exact same course and providing a lot of encouragement for the students to register on their own, the number of people taking and passing the exam shortly after the course ended went back down to about 10 percent.

Admittedly, I helped this process along. I encouraged them to set a date and helped them register which solidified their chosen date as a goal.

However, anyone could set a date and register on their own. And actually about 10 percent of the students did so without my help. I still taught the same course and gave the same level of knowledge needed to take and pass the exam. The only difference was when all of the students wrote a date down and registered for the exam, it resulted in 90 percent of the class taking and passing the exam instead of 10 percent.

Try It With an Exam

If you're studying for an exam, try this. Write down a simple goal statement identifying the exam you'll pass and the date. For example, if you're studying for Security+, identify a date within 45 days from today and write down something like this:

I am so happy that I have taken and passed the Security+ exam by _____(the date you set).

Feel free to substitute any other word for "happy" that will express how you'll feel once you've passed.

More Than Just Exams

It's easy to think that this only applies to taking and passing certification exams. It is actually much more. The truth is that when you take the time to set a goal and write it down, you are much more likely to achieve it.

You can do anything you truly desire if your intentions are clear and focused. Anything. The first step is declaring your intention by setting a goal. If you set goals, you’ll have a clear idea of where you want to go and what you want to achieve. On the other hand, if you never identify where you want to go, well, who knows where you’ll end up.

Maybe you want to earn a six figure income in a job you love providing a service to others. Set a goal. Maybe you want to write a book that will be enjoyed by millions. Set a goal. Maybe you want to... Well you get the idea. Just make sure it is a worthwhile goal and is something you desire.

Create Well-Formed Goals

You give yourself the best chance for success if you use well-formed goals. I'll write more about well-formed goals sometime later, but here some basics.

• State what you want. Use positive words identifying what you want, not negative words indicating what you don’t want.
• Set measurable goals. Your goal needs to be specific enough so that you’ll know when you’ve achieved it.
• Set believable goals. If you believe in the possibility of achieving your goal, you will put in the time and energy required to achieve it.
• Write your goals down. The process of writing your goals down helps you to focus and ensure they are clear. They are also easier to remember and measure.

You Don't Need to Know How

One last thing. You don't need to know how you'll achieve a goal to set it. As long as you set a worthwhile goal and it's something that you desire, you'll figure out how. As a simple example, suppose Bob decides he wants to earn the CompTIA A+ certification. He won't necessarily know how to do so. However, once he decides it's something he wants to achieve, and starts focusing on the goal, ideas to achieve his goal will start to come.

In the next article in this series I'll talk about listening for inspiration. After setting a goal, ideas to achieve it will start popping into your head. As ideas come, you need to take action. After taking some action, more inspirational ideas will come.

Three Simple Steps to Success

You can achieve success with any worthwhile goal you desire by following three simple steps. It’s true. Anything. I could call them the three secret steps to success but they really aren’t secret. They are:

1. Set a goal
2. Listen for inspiration
3. Take action

This simple formula works for anything you may want to achieve. It can work to help you pass a certification exam, get into the college of your choice, get the job of your dreams, write and publish a book, fill your life with wealth and abundance, create a product, or provide a service.

Anything.

If it’s so easy, why aren’t more people doing it? That’s a great question.

I know these three steps are easy to follow. However, I also know they aren’t common knowledge. For example, there are important elements to goal setting that can help people set and achieve their goals. Unfortunately, these elements aren’t widely known, taught, or practiced. Similarly, many people don’t understand how accessible inspiration is, or even how to recognize it when it comes.

These steps also take a little bit of discipline. Success comes by taking regular action toward a worthwhile goal and it takes discipline to set a goal and take regular action toward that goal. Failure is much easier because you can simply choose not to act. However, if you’re willing to take a few steps to identify what you want and bring it into your life, success is within your reach.

How Do You Achieve Success

Many times I’m asked how I’ve achieved something. For example, someone may ask how I earned my certifications, or how have I been able to write various books. The answers can be long and varied, but there’s a simpler answer. I’ve learned the secret of succeeding at any worthwhile goal I desire by following these three steps.

I won’t say that I’ve perfected them in my life. I continue to work on self-improvement. However, these steps have helped me enjoy some personally rewarding successes, and I continue to use them in my life.

If you give these steps a try, see how they work, and start using them regularly, you’ll notice that there is a great deal of depth to the concepts. There are many underlying reasons why they work. I’m won't attempt to describe the full depth of these steps within this series of articles, but I do want to give you practical steps you can start using right away for any worthwhile goal.

Worthwhile Goal

A worthwhile goal will not cause harm to you or anyone else. Often, you’ll find that a worthwhile goal not only provides benefits to you, but also benefits others. For example, you may be seeking a certification. Earning the certification will benefit you, but it will often increase your value to an employer and the knowledge you gain may help you prevent or resolve problems as an employee. Of course, the more valuable you are to an employer, the more likely you’ll be to earn more compensation for the services you provide.

Desire

When seeking success, your desire is an important element. In other words, seeking success based on someone else’s desire probably won’t get you far. However, if this is something you want to achieve, you can.

Of course, it is possible for others to motivate us to desire something and this sometimes works. For example, an employer may tell you that you have 30 days to pass a Security+ certification exam. Assuming you want to keep your job, the desire to earn this certification will be strong.

My Success

Many times I’m asked how I’ve achieved something. For example, someone may ask how I earned my certifications, or how have I been able to write various books. The answers can be long and varied, but there’s a simpler answer. I’ve learned the secret of succeeding at anything I desire by following these three steps. I won’t say that I’ve perfected them in my life. I continue to work on self-improvement. However, these steps have helped me enjoy some personally rewarding successes, and I continue to use them in my life.

I’ll follow this article up with three more blogs on the following topics.

• Setting Goals
• Listening for Inspiration
• Taking Action

If you’re interested, stay tuned.

“You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.”

- Marie Curie