If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

Henry David Thoreau

At what point did you stop setting real goals for yourself? I don’t mean goals like waking up on time for work, or washing the dishes before you run out of clean ones. Those are much too simple for testing your real potential. Instead, you should have goals that give you a taste of self-actualization, that push you closer toward your fanciful thoughts and dreams. Do you even know what your goals are anymore, or are you at a lull in life, when things just feel like they aren’t moving in any particular direction? Perhaps the workdays seem like a rerun that have played a few too many times, or the daily routine doesn’t stray far from the vicious cycle of work, going home to watch television, mindlessly stumbling across the internet, and then finally falling asleep without anything significant to remember. If that’s the case, it’s time to find the escape route, hit the eject button, turn a new leaf, or whatever you want to call it, because your life is wasting away in front of you. Even if you aren’t living a daily rerun yet, you shouldn’t actively pass those days blissfully unaware of when your chance will come to do the things you dreamed about. Instead, you have to take action, so start by thinking of a particular dream you always had, then ask “Starting today, why not pursue that dream, isn’t it worth chasing?”

Your reply might be “Of course it is worth chasing, but life is hectic—it gets in the way. Face it, I’m too busy to do that now because there isn’t enough time outside of my obligations. Besides, I might fail and leave myself with a big mess.” Be aware, that is no answer. That is an excuse which only attempts to protect your self-esteem by urging complacency in the daily routines that the mind considers as known, certain, and comfortable.*

* The effects of self-esteem, and several important psychological hurdles to goal pursuit, will be covered in section two of “The Two-Minute Challenge”.

Is your problem a lack of dreams, or perhaps fear?

For over a decade, the popular periodical, Investor’s Business Daily, spent fortunes analyzing leaders and successful people from all walks of life. After years of studying and printing the success stories, they formulated a list of ten traits that all of those exemplary people shared. Although all ten of the traits are worth your time reviewing, there are two in particular that need to be introduced here.

The first is “how you think is everything,” which means successful people think of positive outcomes, they think of their future success even before they have discovered it.

The second is simply “decide upon your true dreams and goals,” which means successful people have clearly defined goals that align with their dreams.

By setting clearly defined goals, you can see progress in what might previously have seemed like a long and pointless daily grind. Active pursuit of your goals will also raise your self-confidence and increase your feelings of autonomy, which are essential ingredients to self-actualization.

On the other hand, if you cling to the idea that your goals are ultimately at the mercy of the winds of life, then you’ve lost. When the day-to-day things “get in the way” you have given up your autonomous self, the part of you that needs to feel control over the future. Life is a journey across a vast ocean, stray a little from your course and you will miss your desired destination completely. Give in to the chaotic winds and you lose the autonomous self, making you nothing more than an empty vessel cast meaninglessly to and fro.

One ship sails East,

And another West,

By the self-same winds that blow, Tis the set of the sails

And not the gales,

That tells the way we go.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox

However, a search for achievement, guided by your own desires for self-actualization, can leave a legacy behind for others to marvel at. When you aim for something bigger than the daily drudge or the mundane, you can change history. You can even, quite literally, change the face of the world.

Take the famous explorer Prince Henry of Portugal, whose name acquired a suffix that echoed his achievements. Prince Henry sought out new lands and new knowledge of the seas in a way that had never been done before. His thirst for knowledge about the waterways of the world pushed him to take great risks in order to succeed. The Portuguese chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara gave Prince Henry a glowing review:

The noble spirit of this Prince, was ever urging him both to begin and to carry out very great deeds…he had also a wish to know the land that lay beyond the isles of Canary and that Cape called Bojador, for that up to this time, neither by writings, nor by the memory of man, was known with any certainty the nature of the land beyond that Cape…it seemed to him that if he or some other lord did not endeavour to gain that knowledge, no mariners or merchants would ever dare to attempt it, for it is clear that none of them ever trouble themselves to sail to a place where there is not a sure and certain hope for profit.

Henry sought knowledge and accomplishment by setting his sights on new unexplored territory. He wanted to explore all the southern waterways and oceans to find new routes to distant places. Uncertainty abounded in his goals, they did not lead to familiar places, and within them he had no “certain hope for profit.”

With all his energy and resources aimed at this lofty goal he most certainly had doubts and faced fears. Indeed, even the greatest navigators of his day feared any new ocean waterways south of Cape Bojador on the northwestern coast of Africa. Zurara claimed it a no-man’s land; devoid of life with dangerous uncharted waters teaming with currents so terrible no ships that ever passed it returned in safety.

Anyone with normal intentions would be turned away by the sheer risk involved. However, Prince Henry sought something greater than the normal endeavor: he wanted to make a real change in the world by discovering those places that others dared not go.

Year after year he chartered new voyages into the unknown; inch by inch he made progress on his dream. As those voyages progressed south of Cape Bojador, the Portuguese found the most unique people, and with them, new trading partners. The world was larger and more colorful than previously thought, and he was leading the way. Henry was happily content with his goals of exploration in full motion. However, when he discovered, contrary to European belief, that a sea route to India did exist by traveling south of Africa, he was ecstatic.

Today, his name is not remembered because of his mansion by the sea, the number of people he managed, or for the money he left to his heirs. Instead, his name is most remembered in conjunction with his dream, and you probably know him best by the title “Prince Henry the Navigator.”

Prince Henry chased his dreams. He ventured out to satisfy his hunger for the unknown world, and by doing so, he left behind a legacy in exploration. Because of his desire to explore without an immediate concern for profit, he was able to explore in the way he saw fit. He had no rules to conform to, nor any map telling him where he should go (on the contrary, his maps suggested not going the places he went). Instead, each small gain in exploration gave new satisfaction and encouraged him to reach farther. Henry made one of the greatest impacts on exploration, so much so that he was eventually credited as the founder of continuous discovery.*

* The term “continuous discovery” is a rather interesting reference to Prince Henry given as early as 1901 by Sir Clements Robert Markham; however, it also has a meaning in modern software development. In software, continuous discovery describes the process of combining the planning, developing, and feedback stages of a new project so that each step forward does a little planning, a little developing, and lets everyone offer feedback. In traditional development methodologies, users may wait through months of planning and developing before ever getting to see a product for which they can offer feedback. Continuous development brings in feedback sooner, which can help improve the step immediately following. Since all participants see results faster, it encourages them to move forward continually. The feedback cycle is important to goal achievement as well, and will be discussed more in section three.

His determination and focus on a life goal brought historical fame and unexpected success. However, his goals didn’t only open the door for his own accomplishment. Because of Prince Henry the Navigator’s work, another famous discoverer was given an opportunity to mark his name in the history books, Vasco da Gama.

On July 8, 1497, Vasco da Gama set sail from Lisbon, Portugal on course for India. His goal was to be the first European to sail around the southern tip of Africa and successfully setup a system of trade with the rulers of India. By November 4, 1497, he made landfall on the South African coast. For over three months, his ships had sailed more than 6,000 miles in open ocean. This feat was considered the longest journey out of sight of land at that time and was a worthy achievement in itself.

After he sailed around the tip of Africa from Portugal, on his way to India, he spent most of his days seemingly making little progress. He was unfamiliar with the East African coast and the wind patterns, but he was confident that India could be reached by inching along the shoreline and relying on any information from the locals. As testament to his persistence, six months later, Vasco da Gama indeed found himself on the shores of his goal at Kappad, India.

Although his trip to India was a remarkable feat at that time, it was his return trip that was even more incredible. After three months of negotiating with the local authorities, Gama left India on his return journey to Portugal. He was in great haste to return home to report his findings, but unfortunately, he met strong headwinds from the monsoon weather that traveled from west to east.

These strong winds could have easily blown his ships off course, or persuaded him back to India, but he was resolved not to give up. Although the original trip from the North-East African coast across the ocean to India only took 23 days, the return trip from India to East Africa took Gama 132 days (over four months at sea!) giving new meaning to the Latin proverb Festina lente—”Make haste slowly.”

Can you imagine chasing a goal that takes six times longer to reach than you previously estimated?

Vasco da Gama’s determination helped him return home after completing the longest ocean voyage at that time. He stayed focused on his objective even when forces all around him seemed to pull him in other directions. He journeyed into the unknown, venturing far from the shores of safety and mediocrity, away from “a sure and certain hope for profit,” to reach a goal others thought improbable. He broke through the fear and doubt that plagued thousands of mariners before him, and for this, his name is affixed permanently in the pages of history.

Both Prince Henry and Vasco da Gama had life changing goals that they successfully chased. Prince Henry chased the dreams of exploration from his early childhood, while Vasco da Gama seized upon a goal that he felt challenged his skills and gave him an opportunity to reach his potential at seamanship. Since both of these explorers had goals to shoot for, they were not lost even when maps were unavailable or winds demanded they go in the other direction.

Every person has worries, distractions, and difficulties no different than every ship on the sea has winds and currents to face. However, those common winds of life do not fatefully determine where either ends up. Having reachable goals gives you bearings on the oceans of life; all you then have to do is set sail. If you want to discover something meaningful, the best place to start is exactly where you are now, but with a goal in mind. What distant dreams do you want to chase, what goals have you set course for? Do you know what things are most important to you this year, next year, five years, or even 20 years from now?

If not, take a moment to inventory your thoughts and dreams. Note, I mention dreams there too, so don’t hold back from those things that don’t conform to your everyday career and life goals. You need to make a list of all the things you would like to accomplish in the next 20 years of life. That may seem like a long span of time, but it is important to get all your long-long term goals and dreams on paper, regardless whether you will immediately begin working toward them. So go ahead, quickly get something to take some notes on, and begin writing everything down and then return here when you finish.

Finished already? If not, get back to it and when you are done, start with the next paragraph.

When you look over your sheet of goals, you will probably see a couple items that seem very fanciful, dreamlike, perhaps even a bit over-the-top (you might not believe they are actually going to happen). They might include:

1. Climb Mt Fuji.

2. Learn to fly a plane.

3. Visit all the countries in Africa.

4. Learn to speak a foreign language.

5. Start a rock band and do a concert tour.

6. Charter a ship and go searching for deep-sea treasure. 7. Complete a triathlon.

8. Write a book.

9. Conquer the world.

These goals are the ones that fall within the top two levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (esteem and self-actualization). They focus more on dreams and aspirations, the type of things you would definitely do if you had a million dollars in your bank account and no worries about losing everything you had while you were out challenging yourself.

You will also see some goals that fall into the bottom three levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. These goals deal with income, career advancement, property ownership, loving relationships, and basic feelings of control over your future. You might have written a goal about a particular promotion, or job-title (career advancement), or one about buying a new home (property ownership). In either case, these are the type of goals that you most likely associate with security and achievement.

So are any of these goals more important than the others?

It may seem that the goals that fall into the bottom three levels of the hierarchy are most important; they do deal with security after all. However, I urge you not to forget the real benefits of the goals found at the top of the pyramid. The esteem and self-actualization goals are important for fostering a true independent self, one free from the pressures of conformity. They help you to live to your potential, and the key to finding meaning in life is realizing your potential. Both topics I’ll expand on more throughout this book.

Just as Abraham Maslow pointed out, once people are able to minimally satisfy the bottom levels in his hierarchy of needs (i.e., physiological, security, belonging), then they will get increasingly more pleasure from satisfying the needs at the top of the pyramid. So, for now, just remember that once you have developed a basic financial foundation and some level of social interaction, your most life-enriching goals will be those from the “dreams and aspirations” category, the ones that don’t lead to a “sure and certain hope for profit.”

Principle 3
…
Focus on your goals even if they don’t lead to “a sure and certain hope for profit.”
…

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

Sir Winston Churchill

In the mid 1500s, a new tuber, the potato, was discovered in the New World by Spanish conquistadors. The conquistadors noticed that the Incas heavily relied on what they called chuñu as a reliable food source. This unique food was created by dehydrating a potato and then mashing it into a form that could be stored for up to ten years at room temperature without spoiling. Seeing its utility and resilience to climate, rainfall, and soil, the Spaniards decided to bring potatoes to Europe when space aboard their ships permitted.

By the 1600s, the potato was found in most of Eastern Europe, but it was not given a warm welcome. Most Spanish farmers grew potatoes in small patches only as cheap feed given to their livestock. Most other Europeans considered the tuber unfit for human consumption: they looked at the misshapen dirty vegetable with distaste and suspicion. They often strayed from touching the potatoes since they were brought from a distant heathen civilization, and were even more averse when the potatoes’ shape occasionally resembled nightshade and other plants associated with witches and devils. Only the animals and starving poor in Europe would eat the plant out of necessity.

A century later, in the 1700s, Prussia faced several food shortages and erratic fluctuations in the price of bread, a staple for the people. Frederick the Great of Prussia saw the potato as a potential solution to the disrupting force of famines and food shortages. He decided that the potato’s resilient nature and ease of growing would be a great compliment to the nation’s food supply and it would alleviate pressure on having large grain crops for bread. He confidently speculated that the potato would lower the price of bread and give his rule more stability.

Unfortunately, he faced the daunting challenge of removing the people’s prejudice against the tuber. For over one hundred years, people had built up their mistrust and avoided eating the potato, and it wouldn’t change easily overnight. So when he issued a royal order in 1774 for his subjects to grow potatoes as protection against famine, his subjects mostly complained and ignored it. One town even frankly replied to the king by saying, “The things have neither smell nor taste, not even the dogs will eat them, so what use are they to us?”

Defeated by the populace’s enthusiastic denouncement of his order, King Frederick had to plan his next move carefully.

Being King of Prussia, he had several resources at his disposal for making a more forceful edict. It would have been easy to demand that potatoes be rationed in place of bread, thus, forcing it on the populace, but that wasn’t a route Frederick wanted to take. Instead of removing their prejudice by another more forceful order, he decided to use a bit of reverse psychology so that the peasants might persuade themselves that potatoes were a good idea.

His new indirect approach began when he planted a great number of potato plants in a royal field. After planting the potatoes, he ordered (in a fashion that would make it known to the public) a heavy guard stationed at the field to protect his prize crops from thieves. Every dozen yards or so, a fully armed guard stood alert as instructed, day and night, rain and shine. To draw additional attention, he would occasionally allow the wealthy to visit the field and take some of the plants home to serve at their dinner table.

The nearby peasants became quite interested in their king’s newly guarded treasure. They logically assumed that anything worth guarding was worth stealing, and naturally wanted to get their hands on it. So they acted on secret plans to sneak into the field and snatch the plants for their own gardens. Unbeknownst to them, the guards all had a more important and secret order direct from the king. They were told to let the peasants successfully “steal” the potato. Soon, the potato was a common addition to the average Prussian’s diet (and German potato salad was born) all thanks to a genius play on the king’s part.

Although orders may force change, and arguments may win courtroom battles and panel discussions, they are not always effective means for gathering support from those that do not already share your views. Frederick realized that an order through force might easily backfire, so he changed his strategy and successfully reached his goal. Would history have been different if he hadn’t? Quite possibly. Just imagine what history books would be like if Pyrrhus of Epirus would have only changed his strategy.

Over two thousand years ago, Pyrrhus, king of the Greek nation of Epirus, heeded a call for help from the city of Tarentum in southern Italy. The Greek inhabitants of Tarentum were facing certain subjugation by the growing Roman presence in the north and asked Pyrrhus to become their protectorate. He agreed to come to their aid, but he didn’t do so purely from a noble desire to protect, instead, he also decided this opportunity fit well with his own goal of building an empire by conquering the fledgling Roman Republic and all of Italy.

So, in 280 BC, Pyrrhus arrived on the Italian peninsula with his first wave of 25,000 soldiers and set out to protect Tarentum until his reinforcement troops were assembled and prepared for the upcoming offensive. Shortly after landfall, he caught wind that a Roman army was already marching to attack him, and plundering the countryside along the way. After a bit of thought, he decided it was better to immediately meet them in the field of battle and stop them from gaining momentum. Yet, quite counter to his goal of conquest, he surprisingly sent out a messenger requesting the Roman general to allow them to arbitrate terms of peace between the Greek cities and Rome. When Pyrrhus received the reply that the Romans didn’t want him to act as an arbitrator, nor did they feel threatened by his army, he angrily hastened his first wave of troops to battle.

The two armies met at the river Siris when the Romans were just starting to cross it. Pyrrhus, sensing his infantry were disorganized and believing a quick attack would throw his enemy into greater disarray, personally led his cavalry in a charge while leaving instructions for the generals to get the troops in battle formations. The cavalry charge was, for the most part, not as effective as Pyrrhus had hoped, and the day of battle feverishly continued with at least a half-dozen tipping points where either side could have sworn victory was at hand. However, by the end of the battle, Pyrrhus claimed victory as the Roman army deserted their camp and retreated. Yet, in that one battlefield victory he had suffered the loss of his most trustworthy officers and many among his ranks that he called friends.

After the battle, Pyrrhus again decided to sue for peace instead of continuing with his goal of military conquest, and sent his friend and talented orator, Kineas, to Rome on his behalf. This move ultimately backfired as the Romans assumed Pyrrhus was not as strong as they feared, and the Roman senate responded with a pledge to defeat the Greek army so long as it marched on the Italian peninsula.

Pyrrhus, realizing that his time was running out, posthaste marched his troops to the enemy city of Asculum in hopes of capturing a more decisive victory. In his rush to outmaneuver the Roman army, he again found himself fighting along the unfriendly banks of a river, and much like the battle near the river Siris, he claimed a victory at the end of the day but at the cost of his most irreplaceable generals.*

* The modern term “Pyrrhic Victory” is directly derived from an account of these crippling casualties while defeating the Romans at the battles of Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279. After the latter battle, the Greek historian Plutarch reported:

“The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders;”

At this same time, a Sicilian envoy arrived begging Pyrrhus to bring his army south to protect them from the Carthaginians in return for their allegiance. Having just tasted the same bittersweet victory as before, Pyrrhus reasoned that this new opportunity would make a fair replacement for his original plans. He believed he could easily conquer Sicily and potentially use it as a launching pad to North Africa or other Mediterranean nations. So he promptly abandoned his goal of defeating the Romans, and turned his army south toward Sicily instead.

This new venture soon rewarded him with one military victory after another, driving the Carthaginians into a fast retreat. In no time, the island of Sicily was under his military control. Although elated and amidst the consolidation of his political control of Sicily, his spirit was quickly dampened by bad news. Back in Tarentum, the small defensive force he left behind was under siege by the Romans and was certain defeat was just moments away.

Pyrrhus, feeling obliged to fix this spoiled situation, again changed his immediate goal of consolidating power in Sicily and headed back to fight the Romans in a rematch. Arriving at Tarentum, he learned that the enemy was encamped nearby and awaiting reinforcements. In another posthaste move to gain a presumed tactical advantage, Pyrrhus led his army through dense wooded country by torchlight during the dead of night. When daylight broke, Pyrrhus’ army, although in range to attack, was scattered, disorganized, and thoroughly confused. The Roman general immediately saw his opportunity to route the Greeks and, without much trouble, did so by the end of the day. Thus, Pyrrhus’ defeat on Italian soil was absolute, and the Romans staked their first reputable claim as an important political and military force to be reckoned with.

So what does a story about eating potatoes and managing an army of troops on foreign soil have to do with reaching your goals? Well, if you are in a position of power, perhaps they gave you a few pithy insights to planning military campaigns or working well with others. Chances are you are not in a position of power quite like Pyrrhus or Frederick, but their stories still have a very important underlying point to goal pursuit, which is uncovered in the following question. How many times have you set out to accomplish a goal and then later found yourself no further along than any other previous attempt?

If you have had little success pursuing your goals then you should look at the strategies you are employing. Are you often buying the newest exercise equipment or video workout in hopes of finding the motivation you desperately need to lose weight? Do you start a dozen different projects full of zeal only to find that a month later you are out of gusto? If you follow the same pattern of committing to a goal and then applying the same strategy that has failed over and over again, then by Einstein’s definition, you are insane.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

To find change you need to rethink the problem and tweak your strategy based on previous results and any new knowledge you’ve picked up along the way.

So where is a good starting point for changing your strategy? Going back to Muraven and Baumeister’s research, they determined that goal pursuit was hampered by one of three factors, and then to clarify I expanded those three factors to four specific points. I’m going to repeat them one more time because they lay the foundation for rest of the chapters and any goal-reaching strategy must deal with each of these points:

1. People fail to realize the power of real goals.
2. They continually jeopardize achievement by lack of mental awareness.
3. Most importantly, they fail to leverage their strongest hardwired tool for goal pursuit.
4. Lastly, monitoring progress is important, but should be secondary to recognizing success.

The first place to revisit is your goal. What makes the difference between your everyday goals and a life changing, world-conquering goal? How can you change your goals, or the way you pursue them, to see different results? Should your goals be easy to reach, should they change in response to failure, and are they really even necessary?

We’ll answer those questions soon enough, but the first step in breaking the insanity of goal pursuit is to recognize that changing your strategy (not your goal) is important if previous results weren’t what you expected. Changing your goal is embracing defeat when you do it solely in response to a single failure.

Like the King of Prussia, don’t be afraid to try a new approach, a new strategy, when you initially experience setbacks. Likewise, don’t be like Pyrrhus and keep rushing into battle with the same strategy when it has given undesirable results, and don’t change goals because you see a lack of progress. Be willing to open your mind to a new approach when your old approach hasn’t been so successful, even if the new approach sounds counter-intuitive (guard the potatoes that you want people to steal?). You might be surprised how much easier it is to reach some goals when you simply change your strategy.

Principle 2
…
Don’t change goals, change strategies.
…

The environment you fashion out of your thoughts, your beliefs,your ideals, your philosophy is the only climate you will ever live in. The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.
Stephen R. Covey

What you are reading is a handbook to self-improvement, a guide to achieving self-actualization. This book will give you the only tools you need to set real goals, and to turn those goals from thought into consistent constructive action. If you embrace the simple methods and apply the effective strategies found within these pages, you will quickly see and feel a difference in your daily life. Before moving forward, you need to know this isn’t a get-a-six-pack-of-abs-quick book, a marketing ploy for some particular product or system, or any other hot-air exposé that you might find elsewhere. You won’t learn how to get a chiseled physique in thirty days, nor will you find a secret method for learning a new language faster than before. Instead, this book will teach you how to put your mind over motivation, how to turn thoughts into action, and the way to become more productive through small incremental changes. The best thing is that all you need to get going is an open mind, a desire for reaching your goals, and a clear conceptual understanding of self-actualization.

When Abraham Maslow produced his 1943 paper titled “A Theory of Human Motivation,” he provided an interesting perspective on how human beings achieve and how they pursue different goals based on their hierarchy of needs. Maslow wanted to know more about the driving forces in human nature and what groundwork might lead to living an exemplary life. So naturally, he studied people that by his standards were “exemplary.” Among these people were famous figures from history such as Jane Addams, one of the first women to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass, and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

After completing his study, Maslow wrote about how human motivation was directed differently by varying subconscious needs. In his report, he depicted five different levels of basic needs. A modern representation of Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs is a pyramid with the most primitive needs at the bottom and the more life defining needs at the top.

In his model, the base needs have to be fulfilled at some minimum amount first before the higher needs can be met or even understood. After the first three levels of the hierarchy (physiological, safety, and belonging) come perhaps the two most important levels to our lives today: esteem and self-actualization. Maslow broke these top two levels into a broader aspect by categorizing achievement, competence, confidence, independence, freedom, mastery, respect by and for others, and self-esteem into the former, while the latter contained creativity, morality, problem solving, spontaneity, and success. Success in Maslow’s fifth stage can be defined as the ability to realize one’s own maximum potential, and it is the single strongest driving force or motive behind a person’s efforts and feelings in life.

This hierarchy sparked a sincere interest in my own development or rather my own self-actualization. What I learned through studying other theories on improvement, success, motivation, autonomy, and goals brought a new light to my understanding of why conscious efforts toward self-actualization are so important to living a happy life. And why, for many living in industrialized economies, the pursuit of self-actualization is not only an important part of a happy life, but a necessary conscious component. Most of us strive for some objectives of self-actualization; however, we often fail to realize consciously how important they are. Yet, what is even more discouraging is how often we fail to achieve those goals that we do realize are important.

Take the 1988 study by Norcross and Vangarelli concerning those famous goals set every January first that we know as New Year’s resolutions. In it, they discovered that every January, half of North American adults make New Year’s resolutions. These resolutions range from working more to traveling more, learning a new language to making new friends, writing in a daily journal or simply watching less television. The most common resolutions that they found among working adults was the desire to lose weight, quit smoking, and reduce alcohol consumption.

New Year’s resolutions are easy to get excited about, and generally, people do love to share these goals with each other. Fueling the excitement are the underlying hopes of changing the present state of things in order to achieve a feeling of self-control, autonomy, and personal growth. Additionally, the goals set at the beginning of the year benefit from that near universally celebrated clean slate for making change. Both the shared excitement and the feeling of starting off on new footing, give noteworthy emotional boosts and make these resolutions more important.

In fact, a 2002 study confirmed that New Year’s resolutions are considered more powerful than other personal goals, because they garner more commitment than other efforts, and they represent the things that are most important to the people making them. However, something unfortunate is discovered when you look past the resolution.

Despite the personal significance of the resolutions, studies have discovered that most people that admit to making a commitment to change actually fail to make the change. The study discovered that 40% claimed they had failed their goal within one month or less. Of those that made it past one month, a staggering 81% claimed failure overall. Less than 20% claimed either success, continued efforts, or were unwilling to admit to their own failure when their progress was not measurable.

81% of people fail at New Year’s Resolutions!

Often those that fail don’t want to make their shortcomings known, even anonymously, simply for fear of a negative appearance and a lowered self-esteem. They fail at their resolution and feel the negative effects of not meeting a goal, yet you can see these same people make the same resolutions year after year, why?

Maslow suggested that the strongest underlying motive of every person is a move toward self-actualization. The desire to prove a sense of autonomous control over oneself is at the center of these resolutions. This feeling of autonomy can come from the perception of personal growth and a personal understanding of the things that motivate. Although the typical person will fail multiple times at their resolutions, the same resolution is repeated because they report a heightened level of experience and understanding from their initial failures and they believe these experiences will help them in the next year. So within their failure they find some source of positive reinforcement and use it as the groundwork for the next attempt.

Unfortunately, an early 2000 study of personal choice produced a theory that just the consideration of making a good personal choice in life is sometimes enough to create a positive boost in the sense of accomplishment. In other words, the consideration alone could possibly fill the most basic desire for self-actualization so that a person may never take the much needed action to actually see it through to fruition. People then repeatedly make the same resolutions because the thought of making a change is an easy emotional and subconscious boost to their own feelings of self-actualization. This is a disaster in the works because it only leads to a sense of false achievement, and over time, a greater distance from the goals they originally sought.

The question worth posing then is why do we fail to reach our goals, especially those resolutions that are most in line with what we truly want to accomplish?

This is a question many psychologists and researchers have been analyzing for quite some time. Among them is a self-proclaimed compulsive eater of Little Debbie snacks, Dr. Mark Muraven from the University of Albany, and a Florida State University professor and avid writer, Dr. Roy Baumeister. Together, in their research, they coined the term “ego depletion” which is of great importance to the discussion here.

In their analysis, they determined that the three primary reasons why people fail to reach their goals are:

1. People lack specific attainable goals.
2. Then they fail to monitor their progress toward the goal.
3. Finally, they do not have enough self-regulatory strength to continue pursuing their goals in the face of obstacles and distractions.

Muraven and Baumeister’s primary point is that self-regulatory strength is a finite resource and easily depleted when people try to force their focus on new goals and objectives. Their theory is that as willpower is stretched to provide self-control over personal actions and habits, it inevitably depletes. At some point, ego depletion can cause energy levels to become so low that the mental activity required for self-control becomes impaired.

Imagine, for example, an alcoholic that restrains himself from drinking in an attempt to sober up, but when his willpower is drained, he falls into a cycle of greater binge drinking than before. Using one’s self-control on one task or goal can adversely affect one’s self-control later, and can lead to a greater lack of confidence and frustration with future attempts at self-improvement.

Together, Muraven and Baumeister concluded that failure of self-control is not only central to the many problems that plague modern Western civilization, but that self-control is a root of personal shortfalls. It seems their results have not fallen far from time-tested conventional wisdom; honestly, these concepts have been highlighted as a central underlying theme for centuries in the concepts of virtue taught in various schools of thought.

This conclusion can hardly be a surprise to most of us. In fact, this only helps to name the enemy within us: our own “ego depletion.” So is there any way we can increase our self-control, subvert its necessity, or otherwise overcome this tendency to fail? Is there hope for all of us at creating a true autonomous self that can find success and happiness and reach that fifth level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

Although those are big questions, the answer is a simple yes; however, we need to expand properly on the points that Muraven and Baumeister made in their research, and then find ways to overcome the hurdles present in goal pursuit. They provided three important factors leading to a person’s failure to achieve goals, yet they left some important factors out in their list, which I will address in four particular points.

First, people fail to realize the power of real goals. Too many people don’t know what their goals are or have lost sight of what their goals should be. Are you aware of where goals come from, what goals are most important to life satisfaction and self-actualization, and how goal pursuit fits in with your everyday life? All of these questions need to be answered, and they will be answered in the first part of this book.

The next difficulty during goal pursuit comes from the numerous mental fallacies that catch the unaware. Everyone, from the street sweeper to the President of the United States, is susceptible to several mental traps that stem from dangerous thought patterns. Do you know why every person in the world is important to your personal goals, how you should remodel your goals for action, and who is trying to actively prevent you from reaching those goals? I’ll attempt to answer those questions, and more, in part two.

The third point is directly related to the difficulty in maintaining self-control when you suffer from ego depletion. Muraven and Baumeister correctly asserted that self-regulatory strength is limited, but there is a way to control your actions without relying on self-regulatory strength. Part three will give a clear-cut guide to how any normal person can leverage the most effective hardwired tool in the human mind for automating goal pursuit without fear of ego depletion.

The fourth and final crucial point to successfully pursuing goals is a clarification of Muraven and Baumeister’s second point about monitoring progress. Once you learn to leverage the hardwired tool of the human mind for automating goal pursuit, it is important to track progress, but it is even more important to gauge overall success and personal success. Part four of this book will cover several important keys to realizing happiness, maintaining a balanced strategy, and ensuring success does not become bittersweet.

In summary, the following four hurdles must be crossed when pursuing goals and self-actualization:

1. People fail to realize the power of real goals.
2. They continually jeopardize achievement by lack of mental awareness.
3. Most importantly, they fail to leverage their strongest hardwired tool for goal pursuit.
4. Lastly, people fail to monitor progress and they often cannot recognize real success.

Uncovering the specific psychological explanations for success and failure in goal pursuit is not particularly an easy task. There is a plethora of variables to deal with, exceptions to consider, and the hard to measure human element that all need to be covered. So covering all the facets of goals and self-actualization will require a few different angles. To make this guidebook easier to consume, you need to know exactly how it is constructed, you need to know what to expect.

Each section of this book will rely on a convergence of history, psychology, and personal reflection to make the secrets of goal setting and goal achievement clear. History will be both a source of inspiration and an almanac of recipes for success made famous by those who applied them. Psychology will provide scientific theories and explanations for why certain habits occur and how they can be reproduced or avoided. While personal reflection, coupled with the suggested action items in section three, will allow you to turn formula into substance, concepts into action.

Together, much like Abraham Maslow did, we will look into the past and present lives of other exemplary people to see how they achieved success. Although much can be learned by studying principle lessons from the lives of others, it cannot be replaced by action. For committing these principles to heart, I’ll suggest ways to challenge yourself based on what you have learned. Those challenges begin with the Two-Minute Challenge contained in the introduction, because it embodies many of the principles within and will actively give you an opportunity to witness their effects.

The chapters ahead will prepare you for reaching your potential and will give you the formula for achieving change in your life. It will require considerable effort on your part, but don’t give up. On the other side, there is achievement, happiness, and personal success.

If you are tired of being a part of the 81% of people that fail to make their New Year’s resolutions a reality, start here. If you are done promising yourself and others change, and then failing to deliver, read on. As you do so, keep in mind that everyone starts at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy: your goal is to reach the top.

Principle 1
…
Start at the bottom, shoot for the top.
…

We know that the best predictor of human happiness is human relationships and the amount of time that people spend with family and friends. We know that it’s significantly more important than money and somewhat more important than health. –Daniel Gilbert

The fundamental source of happiness eludes many common presumptions, and the various sources we’ve previously reviewed failed to point out who exactly is happy, yet Daniel Gilbert did give us a pretty good predictor. Is that all we have to go on, a predictor that relationships are the key factor? Luckily, no, as psychological research did not let us down when the modern-day survey came to the rescue.

Surveys could not zero in on happy people by their age, sex, or financial status because happy people are found across every age group and gender and are in every country and at every level of the socio-economic ladder. Instead of the typical demographics, researchers have discovered a group of personal traits that are the common thread between the happy members among us. Dozens of studies have determined that happy people share a few particular traits—the four most important being self-esteem, optimism, extraversion, and autonomy.

According to Angus Campbell’s empirical evidence in The Sense of Well-Being in America, happy people have high self-esteem, are encouraged by their own potential, and genuinely like themselves. Not only do they recognize their own potential and good personal characteristics, but they also believe others see them as well. People with high self-esteem feel that they are more ethical, healthier, smarter, happier, and generally nicer than the average person is, and by subconsciously telling themselves these things, they create an atmosphere that encourages personal growth in all of these areas. Happy people also consciously remove their personal fears by taking action and not letting self-doubt muddle their chances.

Happy people are optimists: they always try to see the glass as half-full. Not only do they think positively when things are going well, but they even stay positive when their situation is considerably worse off than expected. Happy people expect that they will succeed when they undertake new ventures, and that mindset frees them from strong senses of self-doubt and fear. Their optimism removes mental barriers and un-cages their self-esteem allowing it to grow as they focus on the good in the things they do. Instead of excusing what others would claim as failure, they look for the good in every event.

These optimistic people also tend to enjoy the company of others since they highly value their social relationships. Relationships with others allow happy people to share positive thoughts and quickly shed negative or distressing emotions. Not only do happy people like to spread their optimism and attitude, they like to receive support from others too.
Most importantly, happy people feel autonomous on their journey through life. They generally feel a greater degree of control over the things they do. They feel empowered, and that allows them to perform better, cope with stress better, and reach for the things most fulfilling to themselves. People that do not feel autonomous in their lives—the severely impoverished, those that are immobilized and secluded, and people in rigid, highly-restrictive cultures—suffer by giving up on their aspirations and ultimately on their happiness.

Happiness is a matter of mixing the right traits. If you review what you thought were the sources of your happiness, you should see the line between the things that appear to make you happy (perhaps an award or a hobby) and the actual internal source, which is reflected in it (self-esteem or autonomy). If you are suffering depression or unhappiness, perhaps you have a strong deficiency in one or more of those four traits. Monitor your thought patterns and shape them by actively saying and doing positive things. Look for value in the things that you do, see potential in the situations that you face, associate with others that desire to do good things, and embrace your autonomous self by chasing your dreams.

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. -Abraham Lincoln

Although psychological theories extend many centuries back, it was in 1879 that psychology as a science was birthed as an independent realm of study. In Leipzig, the German physician Wilhelm Wundt dedicated the first university laboratory for psychological research and brought credibility to the new field. During its first century, psychology mainly focused on studying those that deviated from social norms. Researchers dedicated themselves to learning about depression, anxiety, and fear: analysis of the miseries of life in hopes of finding cures for the ailments of the human race. Those pioneers came to a new understanding of repressed phobias and sources of childhood unhappiness. Like quicksand, the more they moved toward understanding these ailments, the more quickly everyone seemed to be engulfed by a new world of psychological illnesses. But was everyone really interested in or in need of new cures for newfound problems?

It seems the answer was no, when in the 1980s, the proverbial pendulum of psychological research began to swing toward the brighter side of our psyche. University studies began to focus on the driving forces behind happiness and positive outlooks instead of depression and pessimism. New research attempted to discover how satisfied the average person was with their life and what things brought contentment, happiness, and achievement. Surveys concerned with trending personal outlooks and cultural aspirations were gathered in scores; the driving forces of positivity were finally under the microscope.

Soon after this swing of the pendulum, newspapers and magazines were filling themselves with brightly colored maps and charts depicting the levels of contentment around the globe. Authors compared happiness on scales of one to ten, analysts discussed economic and subjective well-being trends, and everyone thirsted for the formula of eternal bliss. No longer were suicide rates and cases of homicidal depression the only stories making headlines. It seemed that people were clearly interested in the things that made them happy, but was that a new phenomenon?

Looking back, the trend of research that focused on positive psychology was not a major surprise; instead, it was just a matter of time before the fledgling science caught up with centuries of happiness-seekers. Even the Roman philosopher Cicero was prompted to theorize, “There is no fool who is happy, and no wise man who is not.” Cicero was influenced by his culture’s thirst for knowledge since both the Greeks and Romans believed that happiness came from seeking truth, discovering gnosis, and becoming infinitely enlightened. Happiness, to them, came through enlightenment and was their summum bonum, the supreme good and the ultimate goal of their life.

There were many fast-spreading theories on the root of happiness in the centuries between the fall of Rome and the rise of psychology. Buddhism taught enlightenment and restraint as the path to spiritual peace. Purging the mind of unclean thoughts and pent-up emotions was their preferred path. The Gnostics sought knowledge and answers to impossible questions, while some foolishly taught – “ignorance is bliss.” Others eagerly championed righteous servitude to fellow humanity as the road to inner contentment, while many slipped from the streets of civilization to find their happiness in the solitude of the untouched natural world.

For every theory of happiness, there was another of opposite design: a lifetime could easily be spent chasing the different trends covering the times past. By the time of the twentieth century, the world was ready for science’s attempt at discovering the real source of happiness and subjective well-being. First, however, scientists had to find out who the happy people were.

Finding the happy bunch was not so easy, especially when facing over 2000 years of myths and conjecture. So before going further, it makes sense to refute a couple rather popular myths about happiness.

Myth: Our levels of happiness are affected by our age, and women tend to suffer more emotional stress than men.

Several independent studies attempted to define what segment of people were the happy bunch. Some argued that age is a significant predictor of happiness, or rather unhappiness. The hormonal teen years, feared middle 40s, or those in the final decades of their life were considered to be in prime position to suffer a life crisis and fall into spells of unhappiness. Others believed that females are inherently prone to unhappiness due to social changes throughout life.

Do age and sex play major roles in predetermining our happiness?

The World Value Survey that aggregates subjective well-being data from dozens of nations does not agree with these assumptions. In fact, over 150,000 respondents across all age groups and both sexes showed no significant difference in happiness. The old and young alike had similar response rates indicating satisfaction with life. Likewise, men and women had near identical returns. Although a 1991 study reported that women are twice as likely to face depression, it also showed evidence that men are five times as likely to face alcoholism, so it seems the scales are evened when considering multiple factors.

Myth: Wealth leads to leisure, and leisure leads to satisfaction and greater overall happiness in life.

Perhaps the root of happiness is less of an inherited factor and instead is imbued via the extrinsic, such as wealth and physical property? In 1970, less than 40% of Americans declared that financial wealth was “very important,” yet by 1993, this number was nearly double at 75%. Was this trend toward wealth as a critical life goal aligned with happiness? Does money really buy satisfaction?

To find out, scientists sought to determine if wealthy individuals really claim a greater level of happiness. In 1990, the director of World Value Surveys pointed out statistical data that showed Europeans were not happier with more money. Instead, most data showed that only people in developing countries experienced greater levels of happiness when they acquired more money.

Likewise, in the United Sates, an increase of wealth brought on no distinguishable increases in national subjective well-being. On further inspection, it appears that the data agrees with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Food, shelter, and security (the lowest levels of the hierarchy) are required for well-being; however, once those are sufficiently satisfied then additional affluence matters very little on overall happiness. That explains why a 1985 survey of Forbes’s list of wealthiest Americans came back with an overall happiness with no statistical difference from the average working person. The extremely wealthy were not necessarily happier. Although the average citizen of the United States had more than doubled their real income in less than 50 years (1957-2000), they had no net gains on happiness.

To be continued…