The Zig Ziglar Goal Setting Formula

Once you have a better sense of self, and are setting goals that are true to you, how can you actually achieve them?  This newsletter is based on Zig Ziglar's Goal Setting Formula.  

A World War II veteran, Zig Ziglar is often known as a motivational speaker, trainer and leader in sales.

He’s inspired millions of people around the world with his lessons on success. One of the most crucial being the importance of having goals.

In fact, he’s helped millions of people not only set, but also achieve, their goals, through what is often referred to as “The Zig Ziglar Goal Setting Formula”.  I love listening to his southern drawl, his humour and his pregnant pauses, delivered to perfection.  Here are direct quotes from an audio recording of a live event at which he spoke.  If you can, get an audio recording too, even if just to experience a master presenter at work.

Here he describes using his goal setting formula to lose over 30 pounds when he weighed well over 200 pounds.  

"I want to talk a little bit about goals,
On the line of how do you lose thirty-seven pounds and write a book.

I’m just gonna kind of give you that as an example.

For twenty-four years of my adult life,
By choice,
I weighed well over two hundred pounds.

I say by choice,
Because you see,
I have never accidentally eaten anything.

I mean it’s always been deliberate.

And when I choose to eat too much today,
I have chosen to weigh too much tomorrow.

You can choose to set goals,
And realise your potential.

Or you can choose not to set them." 

It’s the same formula he used to become a best-selling author.

"For ten or fifteen years
I was “going to” write a book.

You know anybody who’s “gonna” do just a whole lot of things folks?
I was going to write a book.

But it wasn’t until I got busy,
Writing the book,
And writing the plans first,
Before the book ever materialised."

Drawing on his personal experiences, as well as entertaining and insightful anecdotes, Ziglar makes one thing clear:

Having goals is important.
But equally important is knowing how to achieve them.

"Now if you choose not to set them,
You’ve got to understand
That the consequences are not going to be good down the road.

For twenty-four years
I was “going to lose that weight.”

As a matter of fact,
In twenty-four years
I lost several thousand pounds of weight.

How many of you already know
Exactly what I’m talking about?

But it wasn’t until I

1) Wrote it down,
2) Put a date on it,
3) Listed the obstacles I had to overcome,
4) Identified the people, the groups, the organisations I needed to work with,
5) Spelled out a plan of action,
6) Set that time limit in there,
7) And identified all of the benefits to me

It was only when I did that,
That the goal became a reality,
And I lost the weight."

Why use formulas?  Why leave achieving what's most important to chance? 

"Now that’s the formula
That I have just given you pure and simple.

Now if I were to ask you
What 3 x 3 was,
There isn’t a person here,
Who could not instantly answer it.

But if I were to ask you
What is 5,128 x 2,165,
Odds are enormous,
That very few of you could pop out the answer that quickly.

But if I were to say to you,
“Get your pencil and paper out, figure it out,”
Then all of you could figure it out.

Why?
You know the formula.

Now you see,
If you know the formula,
It really doesn’t make any difference,
Ladies and gentlemen,
What the goal really is."

I think we can all relate to putting things off, and we can all think of situations where (once we committed to it), we achieve results with surprising speed.  This is the mission set for the L.E.A.D. Online Mastermind participants in Month 2 of the ALIGNMENT module.  What's your big, audacious goal? 

Download the Confident YOU! Report here