The Real Reason Writing Your Goals Makes You More Likely to Achieve Them

It's been said by just about every success coach, and in so many studies of highly successful people, that writing down your goals makes you more likely to achieve them. But the simple act of writing isn't really the thing that makes your goals come to fruition. If it were, you wouldn't have so many people who do write down their goals, make vision boards, journal about their desires and so forth, and still find themselves lacking the results they want. So what is it about writing your goals that really moves the needle on success? And how can you tap into more of it? You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches, and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lifting. And I'm your host, Andrew Donovan. Hey, hey, hey. And welcome to this week's special episode. This is a topic that I've thought long and hard for. For many years. It's said in so many books, so many stages, it's been published in studies. I mean, over and over and over again, we have heard this idea that when you write down your goals, you're way more likely to achieve them. But if you're like most entrepreneurs, you've gone through multiple spells in your growth as a human being, in your growth as a business person where you've taken this advice to heart, you've written down your goals, and you still struggled to get the results that you wanted. So that begs the question, then, what is it that actually makes the goal manifesting happen? Because it's not just writing it down. And to be fair, a lot of the studies have shown us that the people who write down their goals are just significantly more likely to achieve them. No one ever says if you write it down, it will come true, right? But if you're like me, you, you've definitely had gone through those growth pains where you've said, okay, I wrote down my goals. Why is it so hard to get them to come true? And if you know anything about what I teach, you know that the answer is embedded in how I just asked that question. But fear not, my friend, because we are going to pull this apart and get super clear on what actually makes goals happen. And writing goals down can be a great activity. I'm just going to help make sure that you. That you understand why some goal writing, some goal setting is very productive and why some goal setting is completely counterproductive. All goal writing, all goal setting is not equal. Now, what I want to talk about first is this idea about focus. Okay, so basically What I have observed is that when you look at entrepreneurs, when you look at successful individuals, influencers, anybody who seems to be achieving a lot of something that you want, a lot of something that they want, and I don't care what it is. If you could be observing an actor who gets cast in all the important roles, you could be observing an investor who invests in all the right stocks at all the right times, all the right saves or all the right puts and whatever else, and they just happen to be the investor who get the best results. Okay, you could be talking to the marketer who sees seems to be launching all the right ad campaigns, doesn't matter, the inventor who creates the right products at just the right time. The real focus here needs to be on their focus. That's really what's going well for them. You think that it's that this actor brushes shoulders with all the right directors and that director just favors them and tells all their friends about him and that's why they get put in the right part. You think that it's this investor who knows all the secrets and that's why they're so lucky and that's why their goals, their financial goals happen. But what's really going on under the hood is where these people are focusing. So when you write down a goal, you've learned how to do it. You've read Jack Canfield's Success Secrets book. You've gone to all the seminars that have taught you how to write goals down properly, right? So you've heard that it's best to write your goals in present tense, to write down a timeline or a quote, unquote deadline, a due date, whatever. So you write down it is January 3rd of next year at 4pm in the afternoon. My children have just gotten home from school and I've just opened my bank account and there is $100,000 in cash in my account. I feel so accomplished, so grateful. I am just loving the feeling of forward momentum. I'm just feeling so appreciative of this financial goal coming to fruition. And that was an example of how Jack Canfield suggests you write down goals. You write the date, the time, and you write down the thing that you've observed, the thing that's just come to pass. And you write down how you feel about it. Now, I'm going to tell you an interesting story. I learned this idea of goal writing a long time ago, right at the beginning, in fact, even before I actually became an entrepreneur, back when I was in a sales position with an actually employed Sales position. I started doing this so many, many years ago, and I guess not that many years ago, because I'm still a young spring chicken. Just kidding. So I've been doing this for a while, and I have scores of goal setting journals. I mean, if you go up to my library, you will find a bookshelf that has so many notebooks where I've written down my goals. I've written down pages and pages of positive affirmations. I've written down my feelings in present tense. I've written down my feelings in past tense. I've done every coach's version of goal setting and goal writing you could ever imagine. I mean, I did so much of it, and for years, I found myself struggling to achieve my goals. I would write down things like, it is January 1st of next year and I am not financially free. And then January 1st would come around and I would be in a lot of consumer debt still. Or I would write, it is such and such date and such and such time. And I have achieved this many followers on social media, and I'm feeling so excited and so happy with my movement, and I'm loving my audience. And then the date would come around and I would not be in that space that I had written down. And I would go way beyond writing my goals down, my friend. I would do positive affirmations out loud in front of the mirror because all the coaches said to do that too, right? I would do tapping. So I would do the tapping technique where you're tapping the special points on your collarbone and your rib cage and your forehead. And I would do that in front of the mirror. I would do the tapping while saying the positive affirmations out loud and while imagining my goals. I would make vision boards. I would make this thing that I came up with called audio vision boards. I actually have a little mini course on it. And. And that actually was one of the most effective things I've done. But I would frequently meet the date that I had written down and be frustrated with myself for not having achieved the goal. And that gets old pretty quickly, doesn't it? It gets really discouraging really fast to hear the success coach say, write down your goal. You're nine times more likely to achieve it. And so you do it, and then you're not there when the due date comes. And so this is what I've discovered because I had a pivot. I had a really, really big pivot where all of a sudden my goals started becoming really attainable and with a lot less effort. Are you curious to see what the pivot was. What I discovered is that the writing isn't what actually makes it happen. The affirming it out loud in front of the mirror doesn't make it happen. The visualizing doesn't make it happen. The looking at your vision board doesn't make it happen. What I discovered is something that I hope you've heard me say before, and that is that it's your energetic alignment with what you want that makes it happen. And so what I learned after years of doing this is that I could write my goals down all day, every day. I could write down my positive affirmations, I could write down my gratitude list. But if the energy that I was being in those moments was one of lack, I would just create more lack. And so here's what I mean by that. Because you might be thinking, wait a second, how are you writing down how thankful and grateful you are about having achieved your goal and being the feeling of lack? I'm gonna tell you right now, it's easy and it's common. And what it looks like is this. You look at your life, you look at your business, you look at your relationships and you see room for improvement. Because that's just what life brings us, right? Life is always ripe for the opportunity to improve. And so you say, I've got some goals now. I want to have a better sex life with my marriage. I want to have more money in my bank account, I want to have more followers on social media, I want to get to my first 5,000 followers on Facebook, whatever, okay? I want to achieve a special achievement in my business, in my company, or with the platforms that I use. I want to get the special recognition, whatever it is, you look at life, you come up with some areas where you'd like to improve. Those are your goals. Ding, ding, ding. So you write them down. But as you're writing them down, as you're thinking about them, as you're looking at the picture of them on your vision board, as you're affirming them in the mirror, your awareness is not on the having of the things you want, it's on the lack of the things you want. And how does that feel? Tune into your heart space right now when you're focused on the lack of them, when you're writing down, it's January 1st and I have just achieved my first six figure sales year. I've closed out the year and I'm so grateful that it happened. But if even as you're writing that, it's totally possible to have Your awareness beyond the fact that it's not real yet, the fact that it hasn't happened yet. And if you're tuned into. At an energetic level, if you're tuned into the absence of it, well, you're just calibrating to less of it. You're just calibrating to its absence. And you can't be calibrated to its absence and create it at the same time. That's an energetic. That's an energetic irony. It's an energetic contradiction. It doesn't work. And that's why you could go up to Andrew Donovan's library and find these scores of journals where I had done every freaking exercise that any success coach has ever told me, because I'm a very obedient student. Okay, if the success coach says, write it down in this format, I'm like, ooh, I'll do it. I'm sure it'll work. And then, you know, we get to the beginning of this episode where I'm wondering, what. Why are my goals so hard to achieve? And when I realized this important distinction, everything shifted for me. So now I write down my goals, but I don't write my goals down hoping that they'll come true, because listen to that language that I just used. And a lot of people do this. They write down their goals, and they hope that if they write it down, then maybe this time it will happen. But what's the energy here? It's this doubt. It's this belief that maybe it might not happen. It's this energetic void. And that void sucks the life out of you. That void sucks your dreams into it, doesn't it? And so the difference between that and writing down your goals from a space of having it, of genuinely feeling the essence of it, genuinely feeling the becoming of it, the expanding into it, it's night and day. And that's the difference between writing down your goals in a way that produces the lack of your goals versus writing down your goals in a way that produces the unfolding, the manifesting of your goals. Really, really interesting, isn't it? And so exciting when you are aware of where you are and what you've been doing. Because once you're aware, then you can make a different choice. So, as I've coached thousands of entrepreneurs in so many countries, most of the time when people talk to me about their goals, it's from the lack of it. I will say, what's your goal? And they'll say, ooh, you know, I really want to get to where I'm making $5,000 a month through my business. But, you know, I'm just. I'm only making $400 a month right now. So it's just a long way to go. And I'm like, stop right there. You've just exposed to me that you're not calibrated to the becoming of your goals at all. You're calibrated to the lack of your goals. Listen again to my example. Cause I've heard this so many times. What I really want is I want to make $5,000 a month for my business, but I'm not there yet. I'm only making so many dollars. Or what I really want is I want to make $5,000 a month, but I'm not there yet because I don't have my website up. But I'm not there yet because. And then fill in. They give their reason, their excuse, if you would, for not having what they have. And so I don't care what your goal setting exercise is. I don't care if it's writing it down, if it's making a vision board, if it's talking to yourself in front of the mirror, if it's getting on the phone with your mentor, your accountability partner, and discussing your goals. You can do any goal exercise from the lack of your goal or from the having and becoming and unfolding into your goal. And that's whichever version you're doing is what you're going to get. So be aware of how you're doing this, okay? And understand that the writing, it doesn't. This is another common mistake that people make. People think that if they write it down or if they say it out loud, that will make the universe listen more to you. It will make the universe or God take it more seriously. My friend, the universe already knew, way before you were even conscious of it what your goal was. Okay? You don't have to tell God, please help me be safe. Please keep my children safe. In order for that prayer, that desire to be accounted for, okay, you don't have to say, please, please, please help me get out of debt and help me make $100,000 this year in order for the universe to take it seriously. Your goal, your desire, your desire was already accounted for in the equation of the wiser mind of the universe long before you even were able to articulate it into a goal. Forming into a goal is just a fun focus exercise. And I know there's probably coaches that heard that sentence just now from me and would think, no, no, no, no, no. You have to make it a goal or it's not real. That's bullshit, okay? It's real because the desire was real. The moment you have the desire is the moment that it is answered vibrationally by the loving universe. That's why every world scriptural text has some version of ask and it is given. You ask by living, you ask by desiring, you ask by thinking, you ask by lacking and needing. When you have a lack, you have a need. The vibrational counterpart simultaneously exists. Okay? The goal setting is just a fun focus exercise, and that's why you want to write your goals down. You don't need to write them down because God's not going to listen to it if you don't write it down. You don't need to write it down because the universe is going to think, oh, she's not really serious about it because she didn't write it down. That's not how it works, okay? The writing part is just a focus exercise. That's all. And that's why I've spent this entire episode helping you understand the difference between focusing on the lack of it versus the focus on the having of it. Okay? So when you go to your gratitude journal, when you go to your bathroom mirror, when you go to your goal sheet, wherever you write your goals down, make sure that you're doing the focus exercise from the space of focusing on the having of it, because that's really the only kind of focus that's really productive. Okay? It's not wrong to do it the other way. It's just not productive to do it the other way. And that's why I had so many years of goal writing that didn't produce much. But once I started doing my goal focusing exercises from an energy of being my goal, the energy of having my goal from. From the feelings that I knew would come from the having of my goals, well, that's when my goals started piecing themselves together in just the most serendipitous and miraculous ways in the ways that you want more of. So if you were to say, okay, I have this goal that I want, and let's just make it an easy one, I want $100,000. Okay? I have this goal. What are the feelings that you want in response to your goal? So if the, you know, let's say it's a year from now, the hundred thousand dollars is there, or you earned the $100,000, you may have lived off of some of it at this point, but the hundred thousand dollars happened. Okay? What are the feelings that you want from it? And in Jack Canfield to His credit, he says, write down the feelings. I'm so thankful and grateful because this hundred thousand dollars means so much to me. But the secret, though, that so many people miss is you actually have to feel it. It's only useful, this writing exercise, this goal articulating exercise. It's only useful if you actually ease into the beingness, ease into the feelings of having had your goals come to pass. And that, my friend, is when this becomes very, very productive and so exciting and. And so fun. And these studies that you've heard of where they say the people who write down their goals, I'm going to tell you right now, if you're the kind of person who writes down your goals, first of all, you're different from most of the world. One, you have goals. Two, you take the time to think about them, to articulate them. And the reason why some people who write down their goals achieve them, and some people write down their goals and don't achieve them is simply some people are aligned with their goals and some people are aligned with the absence of their goals. So start working on shifting your focus. Don't punish yourself for those moments when you're not aligned with your goals. Don't punish yourself when you notice that your goals aren't there yet, okay? Because that just helps you calibrate more and more to the lack of it. And if anything, you've got to learn to be a little easier as you learn to pivot, to shift into the having of your goals. All right? And when you hear people say you need to look at your vision board every day, you need to look at your goal written down on a card in your pocket every day, don't take that too seriously, okay? What they're saying is this. If you can identify what you want and you can focus in the direction of it, you can focus in the direction of becoming it, of leaning into it, of unfolding into it. If you can know what you want and you can ease into the vibrational alignment of that thing, of what it feels like, of the excitement, the satisfaction, the relief, the elation of the thing itself, of having had it, of the becoming process of it. And if you can spend more time every day in that mental space, in that feeling space, well, that is one of the funnest and most exciting and most productive ways to become an energetic match, to actually move in the direction of that goal. That's what they're saying, okay? It's not that if you don't pull the little card out of your pocket and read your goal out loud every day. It's not gonna come to pass. That's not how it works. All right, so, my friend, I hope that this has shown some light on your goal setting processes, and I hope that you're feeling really excited about the opportunity to put this into practice. Now, if you got something valuable out of this episode, do me a little favor. We thrive off of reviews and ratings. So if you're on Apple podcasts, just scroll down, take 30 seconds and just share in a review what you gleaned from this episode and leave a star rating, if you don't mind. That is so helpful for us. And if you know somebody who would really benefit from this, I mean, you don't have to be an entrepreneur to benefit from an improved goal setting process. So do me a favor, hit that share button and you can DM this. You can text it to somebody who needs it. And I really appreciate you taking the time to help us move this message along because, boy, if we had more human beings achieving their goals, well, what kind of. I mean, how much more fun is that when we get to celebrate that with our friends, with our family members, with our colleagues and the people that we care about? So, my friend, I wish you an incredible experience as you tap into more of what the becoming of your goals really is. And yeah, go ahead and write them down and see what happens as you write them while being in the beingness of your goals. All right, much love to you and I'll see you on the next episode. Sam.