If you want to set goals that truly work and empower you to get results, here is a system that really works. Use it and you will achieve great things that will surprise and amaze you.

If goal setting has not worked for you in the past, meaning you fell short, it's probably because you set your goals in general terms. General goals move you in a general direction. It rarely produces big specific achievements. You need to make your goals specific. This will help you achieve what you want more quickly. Clarity is power. And things become much clearer when you write them down. A Harvard study has shown that graduates who have written specific goals are significantly more successful than graduates who do not.

I've been setting goals since I was 17 years old. At first, they were general goals and I didn't write them down. But I did have a vital ingredient for success. I wanted to achieve them passionately.

You see, I did not have a warm supportive family when I was growing up, although my mother did instill in me a high value for education. She divorced when I was two years old and married my stepfather. He was an alcoholic and beat her. He was a strong man with forearms as big as hams. When I was a teenager and tried to protect my mother, he ground my face in the dirt. So you see I had high motivation to leave home as soon as I could. We also were very poor because of the Great Depression. So I had high motivation to make money.

Later I started writing down my goals and making them specific. It enabled me to get a job with Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Before then all I did was common labor. I loaded a truck by hand with 4 tons of cement blocks. Then I drove to a job site and unloaded it. I did this four times a day, which means I handled 16 tons, just like the coal miner song. I had absolutely no white collar experience. I wanted the life insurance job so bad I could taste it. My passion must have impressed the head of the agency and he hired me.

I was the youngest salesman they had ever hired up to that time. Barely 21 years old, I outsold every one of my 16 colleagues in my agency. I made so much money I forgot to deposit my checks until I was reminded to do so by a call from a harried Metropolitan clerk who was trying to balance her books.

I wanted still more and I got a Masters degree from the University of Michigan, graduating with honors and Phi Beta Kappa, the honor society which fosters and recognizes academic excellence.

No one in my family -- mother, father, uncles and aunts -- ever graduated from high school.

The goal setting process I now use is simple, easy and fun; yet produces profound results. I've been teaching it for over nine years and I see my clients get great results.

I think most people set their goals in general terms, like I used to do, because they're afraid to make their goals detailed and to set deadlines. They fear not reaching their goals and feeling badly. They avoid painful feelings like disappointment, frustration, feeling insignificant and being full of self-doubt.

When I am making goals, I trigger myself into the mood of a child wishing on a star, innocently full of faith and belief. I think about all the things that I really, really want. I put aside my critical self and don't worry a bit about how I'm going to do it. Because if I did, it would feel impossible and I would shut down.

I think about what I really, really want. I see it, feel it, hear it. I might even smell and taste it. Just like I wanted that job with the insurance company so I could get out of the house, be my own person, find a good woman to love. I've learned that when your desires are strong enough, your unconscious mind will find ways to make it happen. Even the universe will help you out in unexpected ways.

To make your desires strong, you need to have strong reasons why you want to achieve these things. First think of your reasons, don't worry how you accomplish these things. These answers will come to you. You just have to have big strong reasons why achieving your goals is a must.

Best wishes for a rich and rewarding business and life,

~Stan