This is a series of 5 practical articles, which will teach you my method of achieving any goal in record time.

In Step 1 I told you about the importance and power of setting a vision and precisely defining a goal.

In Step 2 I told you about the difference between your internal goals (your motivation) and external goals and why you need to define both.

Once you have your external goal (the target for your automatic navigation system) and your internal goal (your motivation or your fuel) set, you are ready to plan your travel.

Let's continue to compare planning a trip by setting up any goal plan.

Step 3. Planning: Building a Map & Preparing your Resources

Planning a Journey

Once you know where you want to go (you know the country, location and the hotel including all the features you want) it is necessary to plan your travel and find out what steps you need to take to get there. Let's stick with the travel example.

Once you know which hotel you want, you need to book it. If it is available, you need to find out, how to get there. So you check airlines and see what options they give you at the available dates. You book a flight. Then you decide what you need to take with you. Then (as the date of departure comes closer, you'll pack your bags and prepare all your documents).

This phase of planning and preparation is just as necessary for your goal journeys. You need to find out, what options you have to get there. Maybe there are several options - you could travel via plane or ship, so maybe your goal could also be reached via several routes.

Once you know your options of travel, you select the one that feels preferable to you, and then you define the steps you need to take on that route to get to your destination.

An Example

Let's say your goal is to get fit in 2010. You've envisioned your experience of fit (what that means to you) in Step 1. Then you asked yourself why you want to get fit in the first place to get your root emotion, which acts as the drive or fuel for your journey. Now you take a look at the options to get there. Of course, there are many ways. You can select from a vast bunch of fitness programs or combine them and build your own route. Yet what you do is you select one and then define what steps you need to take on that route. Let's assume you took weight lifting as your option (or maybe part of it). Now you need to get a plan on how weight lifting would get you from couch potato (= Status Quo) to Fit Person (= Vision of Future Experience). You select some training routines and schedule them into your calendar. You select steps that consist of ever-increasing stretches so you make sure that you'll get to your goal in the time frame you want.

While in this phase of defining your steps, you also need to find out, what resources you need. These could be tools, people or information.

Conscious vs. Subconscious Focus

Always consider your internal goal from Step 2 while doing it. It is crucial, that you connect with your internal feeling while setting up a plan. Why? Because maybe your mind came up with a plan based on weight lifting, but your emotions aren't keen on this way of doing fitness. Maybe your root emotion for getting fit is to feel vibrant, alive and energetic, but your subconscious associates pain, muscle cramps and absolutely no fun with the planned route that your mind came up with.

The important thing is that you will ultimately fail with every plan that your mind came up with while focusing only on the outer goal (= losing weight) and not considering what your internal goals really want you to experience (= feeling vibrant, alive and energetic).

Your subconscious wants to experience this feeling not only at the end of the journey but with each step. It is much more focused on the experience of the journey than it attaining the target (that's where your mind is always thinking of). We could even go so far as to say that your mind is only focused on the end result while the subconscious doesn't know and doesn't care about it. All the subconscious cares about is the experience of each step in the current moment (=the NOW!).

I will talk more in Step 4 about overcoming the difference between these 2 focuses.

At this stage, it is important to find out what options you have (brainstorm it) and select one that your mind and your emotions feel good about.