On Writing Goals

My dad works hard. Really, really hard.

He worked hard as a student. (Ha, ha, that part isn't true. He wasn't a very good student.)

He worked hard for his father doing construction work.

He worked hard as a baseball player.

He worked hard as a teacher.

He worked hard as a coach. (He's in the Pennsylvania Hall of Fame as a wrestling coach.)

And when he left teaching to become a financial planner... you guessed it... he worked hard.

When he made that switch (from teacher to financial planner), it was a REALLY big move. He was going from something very safe and secure to a job where his family would depend on his production alone. His income would be entirely based on sales.

My father read a lot of books to prepare him for this transition. Many of these books were self-help and motivational business books. I was only fifteen at the time, but my father would pass some of these books on to me and I would read them.

One of these books was Rhinoceros Success, by Scott Alexander.

In Rhinoceros Success, Alexander teaches you to charge after your goals like... you guessed it... a rhinoceros.

The book is cheesy. Parts of it are silly. There are religious elements to it.

When I was in ninth grade I loved it.

One of the best elements of the book was the lesson in goal-setting. Alexander tells you to write your goals on a 3x5 card (one goal per card) and place them on the night stand next to your bed. You write your goals as if they have already been accomplished and every night and every morning the first and last thing you do is to read your goals and visualize them.

The visualization part is really important. You have to picture yourself already accomplishing your goal. So I did it. I wrote a goal out and put it by my bed and started visualizing success.

I had just finished reading the book, so only had one week to visualize my goal before the first track meet of the season. It was the spring of my ninth grade year at Unami Junior High School. I decided that my goal was to break the 5 minute barrier in the mile run (1600 meters for you modern types).

To make my visualizations more specific, I wrote out my quarter mile splits for the four laps.

1:08
2:25
3:42
4:54

And what happened when race day arrived?

First quarter - hit my split.
Second quarter - one second slow.
Third quarter - one second fast.
Fourth quarter - well, check out what my dad wrote in the bottom corner of my goal card...

I hit my goal on the nose. I ran 4:54 and broke the school record for the mile! Here I am doing it...

By the end of of the season I'd run a 4:45 mile and took second place in the league championships!


Why am I sharing this with you? Because it's time for me to become more goal oriented with my writing. If I want to be a successful author, I need to first define what success is, and then I need to set the goals to make it happen.

Wanting to be successful is different from doing the things necessary to make it happen.


Signing off. I need to get a 3x5 card.