Book Summary of GOALS by Brian Tracy
Jay Gallagher
Book Summary of GOALS by Brian Tracy
10 Second Quick Summary of the Book GOALS by Brian Tracy
The book GOALS by Brian Tracy teaches:
- How negativity in your life is stopping you from being a success
- Why writing down your goals is crucial to making lasting changes to your life
- Why Multi-Tasking is a myth that destroys productivity
- A simple but effective way to set and achieve goals in every area of your life
Introduction
Book Summary of Goals by Brian Tracy
Setting Goals Will Change Your Life
Most people have vague dreams of becoming successful…someday, but only a small number of people go on to actually achieve any high level of success. Why is this? What makes successful people different from the rest of us? The difference is that successful people understand the incredible power of setting goals.
In this summary, you’ll learn how you can change the direction of your entire life simply by setting the right goals for you and then dedicating yourself to work on your goals until they are achieved. Goals can be small daily tasks or an all-consuming dream. No matter which goal you have, you’ll learn how simply focusing on your goals will allow you to achieve anything.
Goals-Key Principle 1
How to Transform Your Life Through the Power of Your Mind
What if you could be a success in anything you chose to do? What would you want to do if you were guaranteed success? Sounds like wishful thinking, doesn’t it? Think again. You have the power to be a huge success in any and all areas of life. All it takes is the right mindset.
Thoughts are powerfully creative things. Your thoughts shape your world in concrete ways. When you hold a thought in your mind over a length of time, your reality will start to align with that thought. If you spend your time thinking about becoming a success in any chosen field, eventually you will do so.
The key principle is that you can transform your life by using the inherent power of your mind simply by writing down your goals.
Successful people constantly think about two things:
- What they want.
- How they are going to achieve it.
If you want to be successful, model yourself on successful people and dedicate your mind to your goals.
Unsuccessful people spend their time thinking about all the things they don’t want; their problems. They’re consumed with all their problems, worries and petty concerns and try to find out who or what is the cause of their problems. If they only changed their thoughts from their problems to their goals, their problems would lessen as they moved towards their goals.
But just thinking about your goals is not enough. You must write down your goals to achieve massive success. Brian Tracy talks about a groundbreaking study done by Harvard University in 1979. The researchers asked recent graduates of the Harvard MBA program a question: Had they set any specific goals for their future? Only 13 percent had set any specific goals at all and only 3 percent had written their goals down. An astonishing 87 percent had no goals at all. The researchers followed up 10 years later and made an amazing discovery. The 13 percent of students who had set goals were making on average twice as much money as the 87 percent who had no goals at all. Even more astounding were the 3 percent who had written down their goals. That group were earning, on average, an amazing ten times as much!
How can just writing down your goals have such a huge impact? Written goals give your life meaning and direction. Unsuccessful people lack those very things in their lives. Goal setting also creates a virtuous cycle. When you start to achieve your smaller goals, you become more confident and become capable of achieving even bigger goals.
Key Principle 2
Rid Yourself of Negativity and You Will Change Your World
When Brian Tracy was 22 years old, he was broke, sitting in his tiny unheated apartment feeling sorry for himself when he was hit by a revelation. No one was coming to save him. He knew at that moment that if he wanted to improve his situation, it’d be up to him alone. He thought to himself these life changing words:
IF IT’S TO BE, IT’S UP TO ME.
It was only then that he started to accept responsibility for his own life and his life started to change.
Accepting responsibility sounds easy but many people never manage to do it. Look at all the people in the world who blame other people for their problems. When someone gets fixated on the idea that the world around them, or their parents are the reason they are unhappy, they become stuck in a pattern of thought that traps them in the life they have.
The key Principle is: Rid yourself of all the negativity and you will change your world.
People who can’t accept personal responsibility are usually drowning in a sea of negativity which makes it hard to achieve success in any part of their life. Negativity like self-pity, jealousy or anger make it hard to set goals and work to achieve them.
Think about how people can react to getting fired. A positive goal-oriented person just shrugs it off and looks for a better job. A negative person wastes their thoughts, time and energy feeling anger and bitterness which traps them, stealing the inner resources needed to move forward.
The first step to stop negativity is to stop justifying your negativity. Negative people are always quick to explain to others exactly why they are justified in their anger, jealousy and bitterness. These justifications create a sense of righteousness that reinforces the idea that they are correct, trapping them into a cycle of failure.
Another cause of negativity is hypersensitivity. When someone becomes overly sensitive to what other people think about them and how they are mistreated, it allows other people to determine their own worth. Now, when anyone expresses the slightest disapproval, they are thrown into a cycle of negativity. The key to overcoming hypersensitivity is to remember that other people don’t think about you much at all. Think about yourself. How occupied are you thinking about others? Other people are the same way, preoccupied with themselves not thinking about you at all.
Key Principle 3
Write specific goals that are both challenging and come with a definite date
Most people have no direction in their lives because they don’t know how to set effective goals. Goal setting isn’t hard if you know the six key principles.
- Goals must be specific, and detail focused. A vague goal is not a goal at all but a mere wish. Wishes don’t come true. Goals do. Don’t write down things like you want to be “happy”. Write down concrete goals that can be easily defined and that you can easily visualize. The key principle is that goals must be specific, challenging, and have a deadline.
- Goals need to be measurable. Don’t write a goal to “make a lot of money.” Instead, write down the exact amount of money that you want to earn over a certain time period.
- Goals have deadlines. The deadline must be realistic so that you believe it’s possible but remember that there’s no such thing as an unrealistic goal, just unrealistic deadlines.
- Goals are challenging. Your goals must be just outside your comfort zone. The most effective goals create a bit of stress that forces you to stretch yourself to achieve them.
- Goals must be in harmony with the other goals you want to achieve. When two of your goals contradict each other, you’ll be working in cross winds and won’t be successful. Brian Tracy gives the example of a man who wanted to both play golf every day and be successful in business. Each one of those goals was achievable but not both at the same time.
- You must have one overarching goal that preempts all your smaller goals. This one big goal is the singular goal that defines your purpose in life. Achieving this one goal will have the biggest impact on your life and make all your other goals more achievable.
Key Principle 4
Search Your Soul First to Achieve Your Goals
Before you start setting your goals you need to ask yourself one question. Do I really want this goal to become real? This is the crucial question because in order to achieve any goal you must first want it. This must be a burning desire so that you are able to do the work needed to achieve it.
Only personal goals that you set for yourself and have a burning desire to achieve will be achieved. Goals set by others won’t give you the urgency you need to be successful.
The key principle is that you must search your soul first or your goals will not be achieved.
You must have unshakeable faith that you’ll attain your goals. Do you believe, deep down in your soul, that you will achieve it, even if it takes more time and effort than you first thought?
To encourage an unshakable faith, you must set reasonably realistic goals. Don’t have a goal to have immense wealth in just one year. You won’t believe an unrealistic goal is possible, so you won’t have a burning desire for it and when you fail to become successful, you’ll lose your confidence.
Now that you have your goals in mind write down exactly how your life will improve once you have achieved it. The better your reasons and the more you visualize your life as a success, the more likely you will develop the desire needed to become a success.
Key Principle 5
Don’t Be Afraid of Failure
How often have you failed? How do you think of yourself after having failed at something? Successful people fail more often than unsuccessful people. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is their attitude towards failure. Successful people see failure as feedback. They learn from failure, dust themselves off and try again. Unsuccessful people either never step out of their comfort zone and try or they give up at the first sign of failure.
The key principle is to step outside your comfort zone and don’t be afraid to fail – a lot.
Look at failure as just temporary. Failure is just the price you pay as you work towards success.
Use failure as feedback. Ask yourself why you failed. Identify all the challenges that have held you back. Ask yourself what you need to do to overcome these challenges. Remember, there’ll always be challenges along the way, so concentrate on coming up with solutions and then take action again.
Develop this skill of problem solving. Start by solving little problems first. As you move forward the problems will become incrementally bigger. Solve those problems. Keep going and you’ll develop confidence and abilities you didn’t know you had. You’ll become a leader as other people see that you can solve both your problems and theirs as well.
A positive attitude is the key to overcoming challenges. Remember that you have the intelligence, the skills and the tenacity to overcome any challenge and achieve your goals.
Key Principle 6
If You Fail To Prepare, be Prepared To Fail
Success is rarely just from dumb luck but usually springs from detailed, thorough plans. You must make these specific plans in order to create a roadmap towards your future.
Inc. Magazine conducted a study of 50 startups. Some just jumped in without any business plans and others spent months working on their plans before opening for business. Guess what the outcome was. The companies with business plans were much more successful than the ones who decided to just “wing” it.
The key principle is If you fail to prepare, be prepared to fail.
The funny thing is that when the CEOs were asked if they actually followed their plans the answer was usually no. So why should you take the time to prepare a business plan if it doesn’t matter whether you follow it? The purpose of the business plan is to force you to carefully think about every challenge you may face before you start. This planning process allows you to organize your thoughts and ideas. It forces you to prepare for worst case scenarios. It also helps you to identify the best opportunities in your industry and take stock of your strengths and weaknesses. Starting without a business plan means that you are unaware of these crucial things.
Business plans can also help you realize that your goal is either unworthy, undesirable or unattainable. This may sound like a bad thing, but you’re going to find it out eventually. It’s best to find out before you waste your time, effort and resources.
Key Principle 7
Develop Time Management Skills to Take Control of Your Life
Time-management skills are really self-management skills. If you’re going to achieve your goals, you must control how you spend your time. No one can control time. We can only control how we spend our time and ultimately, how we spend our lives.
Focus on the tasks with the highest value, not the highest urgency. High-value tasks are the ones that bring you closer to your goals.
The key principle is that when you properly manage your time, you take control of your life.
Unsuccessful people don’t know the differences between a high value task and a low value one. As a result, they waste their time on tasks that may be urgent but have little impact on their overarching goals. Successful people spend most of their time on only those high value tasks that move them closer to achieving their goals.
Multi-Tasking is a myth that kills productivity. Successful people focus on Single Handling high value tasks. They identify what task they are going to complete and then focus 100 percent of their energy towards completing that task until it is completed. Unsuccessful people will find any excuse to take a break and seek ways to divert their attention.
Thomas Edison, the famous inventor, was a master of single handling important tasks from conception to completion. He wrote that this ability to single task, more than anything else, was the reason for his success. Use the mantra: back to work, back to work, back to work any time you find your attention diverted.
Use Time Blocking to carve out huge chunks of time up to 90 minutes long to focus on high value tasks. The best time to have these uninterrupted chunks of time is usually early in the morning. When you complete your most important task in one fell swoop first thing in the morning, it sets up the rest of your day and the rest of your life for success.
Book Summary of Goals by Brian Tracy Final Thoughts
The key principles of GOALS By Brian Tracy are:
- Decide what you truly want
- Write your desires down
- Come up with a detailed plan
- Cultivate a positive mindset
- Develop great time-management skills
- Be persistent until you achieve your goals
- Be a go-giver, as well as a go-getter
Remember, No one is a success by themselves. You’ll need help from the people around you. The best way to get help is to offer help first. Always think about how you can help others and you’ll find yourself surrounded by people helping you.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this book summary of Goals by Brian Trac
