A Simple and Profound Way to Review Your Top 4 Goals Everyday

I was just listening to a call that Jack Canfield did a year ago in January about goal setting. I got many ideas from listening to the call. But one of the simplest and most profound was a way to make sure I reviewed my top 4 goals everyday: get a Dry Erase marker and write out a few words about your goal on your bathroom mirror.

Don’t use post-its or tape them-that’s too messy and it’s more difficult to update them.

You don’t need to write out a complete goals statement (you can do that elsewhere). Just write out a couple of words that will trigger your vision about the goal. For example, “Weigh 180,” “Make 10 sales calls,” “Take Online Class,” “Jack Canfield call.”

Or you can write out your next major action towards a goal.

When you do this, you will be reviewing your goals every time you look into your mirror.

This is just one simple idea that has revolutionized how I personally review my current goals everyday. What ideas will Jack have on tonight’s call?

You can get the details about tonight’s call with Jack Canfield by visiting http://www.poweraffirmations.com/jack-canfield/

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Do I Have to Believe to Start Using Affirmations?

One of the questions that I’m often asked about affirmations is “Do I have to believe the affirmation for it to work for me?”

My answer is, you don’t have to believe to get started. One of the primary purposes of affirmations is to change and increase your belief so that you can achieve what you desire.

This is why the first affirmation in my collection is “My Power Affirmations work, whether I believe in them or not.”

Take for example, one of the greatest self-help teachers of all time, Napoleon Hill. When he was first given his assignment by Andrew Carnegie, he did NOT know how he was going to achieve the goal. And initially, he did NOT have the self-confidence he needed to achieve his goal. If he had waited to use affirmations until he believed, then he never would have even started his great career.

Here is Napoleon Hill’s Story in his own words of the affirmation Andrew Carnegie gave to him, how he used it in the face of self-doubt, and how it eventually created the belief he needed to achieve his goal. I have highlighted the points I think are the most important:

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I was ready to go back to Washington and Mr. Carnegie then did another thing. He said, “If you don’t get anything out of your trip except what I am now about to tell you, it might well change your entire destiny and, through you, the destiny of many other people.”

Mr. Carnegie said, “Well, Napoleon, 20 years is a long time and I have given you a pretty tough assignment, and you have accepted it. I want to warn you now that you’re going to have many temptations along the way, long before you complete your 20 years of research to quit, because that’s the easiest thing that a weakling can do, is quit. I don’t think you’re a weakling. If I had thought so, I would not have given you the opportunity.

But I do know that you need something to bridge over your temptations to quit, if and when they do come. I’m now going to give you a formula that will enable you to condition your mind so thoroughly that nothing in the world can stop you from going ahead and completing the task to which I have assigned you.”

I was taking all this down in shorthand. He said, “I want you to write very slowly and I want you to underscore every word that I speak now. And here’s the message that I want you to repeat to yourself, at least twice a day - once just before you go to bed at night and once just after you get up. Looking at yourself in a mirror…you’re talking to Napoleon Hill now, mind you. And here’s what you say to him:

‘Andrew Carnegie, I’m not only going to equal your achievements in life, but I’m going to challenge you at the post and pass you at the grandstand.’

And I threw my pencil down and I said, “Now, Mr. Carnegie, let’s be realistic. You know very well I’m not going to be able to do that!” At that time, Mr. Carnegie was rated as a billionaire - probably the first and maybe the only billionaire this country has ever created as far as I know.

He said, “Why, of course, I know you’re not going to be able to do that, unless and until you believe it! But if you believe it, you will.” He said, “Let me ask you to do this. Try it out for 30 days. Will you do that?” I said, “Yes, that’s a reasonable request, I certainly will.”

But I had the fingers on both hands crossed. I knew dog-gone well it wouldn’t work. The idea of a youngster, in his early 20′s, promising to equal and outdo the achievements of a man who had reached the stage of a billionaire. Why, it was so ridiculous, it wasn’t even funny. It even scared me. I thought Mr. Carnegie had lost his mind. I came very near to walking out on him. It was just something that was too good to be true.

But I promised, and when I got back to Washington - my brother and I had an apartment - and I went to look over this formula, I didn’t want my brother to know what a big fool I had made of myself, because I had some news to break to him that was not going to be good anyway. I had agreed to pay the expenses of the two of us through school and I was going to have to tell him that I was dropping out and that he would have to earn his own way.

I went into the bathroom and I closed the door real tight, and I got real close up to the glass and almost whispered this formula. As I turned around - in my mind’s eye - I saw the real Napoleon Hill standing there, and I said, “You darn liar, you know very well you’re not going to be able to do that.” Only ‘darn’ was not the word I used. It was a much more definite and stronger word. I felt like a fool, like a thief, going through a thing like that - a farce. And that’s just what it seemed like. But I said, “Well, after all, you promised Mr. Carnegie, go ahead and try it.”

For the first week - just about the first week - I had the attitude or feeling like I was doing something foolish.

Then all of a sudden, about the beginning of the second week, something inside of me said, “Why don’t you change your mental attitude about this? Do you realize that Andrew Carnegie is the richest man in the world; that he is known all over the world as the best picker of men in the world; and if he chose you, to do a job like this, he must have found something in you that you didn’t know was there. Why don’t you change your mental attitude?”

I started to change my mental attitude. If I hadn’t have done so, I wouldn’t be talking to you today, and I wouldn’t be talking to millions of people in this and other countries of the free world through my books, if I hadn’t changed my mental attitude and become positive instead of negative.

I started to repeat this in earnest, and by the end of the month, I not only believed I’d catch up with Mr. Carnegie, but I KNEW that I would excel that man.

And believe you me, when I tell you that I have long since achieved that objective. I’ll tell you why I’ve achieved it. Mr. Carnegie made not over 20 or 25 millionaires at the most. The millionaires that I have had the privilege of making, they’re legion - they’re all over the world.

That’s not the main claim for my having outranked Mr. Carnegie. I have brought men and women together in the spirit of understanding that didn’t exist. I’ve helped men and women to find themselves in all walks of life. I have saved men and women from suicide by helping them to find themselves. I have done for the world, things that Mr. Carnegie never did do.

And not only that, but what I have done has been recorded, it’s been tested, it’s been taken to a free world and it’s going to benefit millions of people who are not yet born.

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If you look at this, there at least four very important points related to affirmations and their role in personal achievement:

1. You have to get started regardless of whether or not you believe in yourself and your ability to achieve your goal. Often, the only confidence you have is the confidence you “borrow” from someone else. In this case, Napoleon Hill “borrowed” the confidence that Andrew Carnegie had in him to get started. Isn’t that the essence of being “inspired?”
2. You have to face your doubt and your unbelief. And with determination, you have to transform that unbelief into rock solid faith and self-confidence. Until you transform your doubt into belief, you will not achieve your goal.
3. The way you use affirmations is to repeat them over and over, with enthusiasm, until you really believe it in the core of your being. The principle of intermittent repetition is the key. It’s like building muscle. You lift weights repeatedly for a period of time, but then rest. Then a few days later, you lift them again-maybe adding a little more. Then rest. Then you repeat the exercises again. Then rest. This is what I mean by intermittent repetition. In the case of affirmations, you don’t rest for days-that’s too much time. You use them every day, but for relatively short periods of time.
4. It will take time to achieve your goal. Some goals take longer than others to achieve. In Napoleon Hill’s case, it took over 20 years of persistent effort just to organize and publish his initial ideas. And probably another 20 years for people to study and prove his ideas by achieving their goals. It didn’t take that long to create faith, but it took that long to fully achieve the goal. You and I have the benefit of studying not only the books that Napoleon Hill wrote, but of studying the successes of people who used his principles to achieve outstanding success. Now, the evidence that Napoleon Hill was right is overwhelming.

So, back to the affirmation: “My Power Affirmations work, whether I believe in them or not.”

Here’s the point: you don’t need to believe in the power of affirmations to get started. You simply need to believe in the principle of affirmations. You need to have just enough faith that maybe it’s possible if you are persistent. Maybe there is enough evidence in the history of human kind that it is possible to overcome self-doubt and unbelief and achieve your goals-even if they are big.

Why don’t you prove it to yourself by starting to consistently use affirmations today-whether you believe in them right now or not. You can start with the general affirmations I’ve written. It’s easy to stay consistent by using the recordings I’ve made. You can also create affirmations for yourself. But whatever path you choose, get started as quickly as possible. Every moment you delay increases the probability that you will never get started.

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