Jacqueline Elliott explains why vague goals don't work: you need a specific, vivid mental image instead. She uses buying a house as an example, walking through picturing your wife on the couch, the car in the driveway, the lifestyle. Link your daily sacrifices to that concrete vision.
Chapters
Most of the time, our goals are very vague. You're like, oh, we just want to get ahead. We want to make some money, want to put a certain amount of money in the bank. It's never going to work if you do that. If you want to buy a new house for your wife, you're going to have to drive her to the neighborhood and drive to the driveway of the house that you want to buy, and you have to be spooky and peek through the window and say, hey, babe, I foresee you sitting on the couch like that right there and having this house that's going to look like this. And this is how we're going to live. And you're going to drive one of these cars, and we're going to do it together. And then when we make certain sacrifices, like giving up doing your nails or hair or certain things, you know what you're actually shooting for? You're shooting for something that's a bigger picture.