The Power of Writing Down Your Goals

Today I’d like to take a moment to just chat about the power of writing down your goals. There are lots of studies and statistics. The Harvard study; where they study how many people wrote down their goals versus the ones that didn’t and the ones that did many years ago, had accumulated much more of the wealth than the ones that didn’t, and so on. Many studies, many statistics. However, I like to look at what happens in my world.

Being a business, leadership, and team coach for 12 years. Every quarter we write down our goals, scaled down from our yearly and long-term goals. The last quarterly planning workshop we facilitated was a couple of months ago. One of the participants that’s been coming consistently to the planning sessions stood up and talked about the fact the first time he did this process he didn’t fully realize the power of it.

He said, “Coach, I started writing down my goals of what I wanted to achieve. I put a number out there that I really didn’t think was possible, and then I created a plan and action steps. And I was surprised at the end of the quarter, that I actually exceeded the number.”

I have another gentleman I work with. We had a call a particular morning and he was telling me, “Coach, everything I wrote down, when I started working with you, of what I wanted to accomplish with this organization, the steps to the ladder I wanted to move up in advancement, I’ve achieved them all. This is amazing. I never thought this was possible.”

Myself, some of the goals I wrote down five, ten years ago, really honestly, didn’t know how I was going to achieve them. I didn’t really believe whether I could get it done or not, but I’ve checked them all off. When you get really clear on the power of writing your goals down, creating a plan, and finding your circle of people who believe in you, and encourage you, versus knocking you down saying, “It can’t be done.” First of all, there is no word can’t, only can. When you surround yourself with the right people that encourage you, go for it. You then start achieving these goals, and your belief in yourself starts rising. What happens then usually is a couple years down the road you say, well, I just have to write down bigger goals, because it seems like everything I’m writing down, I’m achieving. I’m checking things off my personal bucket list that fifteen years ago I would never have even imagined writing them down, never less achieving them. And it’s all the power of writing your goals down.

If you are one of those, who has it all in your head, my question to you is, how’s that working for you? I challenge and encourage you to filter everything from your head, write it down, or better yet join someone like myself on a quarterly planning session, get in the room with 30, or 40 other business owners executives, and team members who are getting clear on what they want while creating a plan for it. Get yourself in that circle of like-minded people and see what they’re accomplishing and what they’re doing to reach their goals and you’ll soon be one too.

If you’re not writing your goals down, it doesn’t work. Get clear on what you want. Don’t think how you’re going to get it. Just get clear on why you want it, what you bring to the table, what impact you make on this world by achieving those goals, and the Universe will deliver.

COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, global speaker, and published author. He is a proud Action Coach Franchise partner as well as the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice. Businesscoachmichaeldill.com