How Can Success Articles Bring You Closer to Your Goals?

A single article can make a profound impact upon a person's outlook. One sentence, whether contained in a lengthy tome or in a short article of just a few hundred words, can strike a chord and produce lifechanging results. How can this be? Very simply, it's because many people have only a vague idea of what their exact goal is. They have a broad-brush vision of their hoped-for future, but haven't made it specific - until one day they read about someone else's goal or achievement and realize - "I want that!".

Despite the advent of radio, television, the internet and all the other modern methods of disseminating ideas, reading remains the number one source of inspiration for most successful people. The old adage "readers are leaders" still holds true. I think this is because reading is usually a solitary activity - we are able to absorb material and see how it might be of value to us without there being an immediate discussion and exchange of ideas such as might happen with a television program or a movie.

Of course, we can't read everything - and we should discipline ourselves to look upon time available for reading as a precious and limited resource - and not waste it on the gossip papers. As Orison Swett Marden said: "If we read inferior books ...our own standards will suffer from the contagion".

So, we need to be aware of our reasons for choosing to read any particular material - is it for education (work-related or otherwise), for information or for entertainment? Or is the real reason for reading at this time simply to avoid doing something else? Perhaps we need to acknowledge when we just need to relax for ten minutes and read something to distract us, and not confuse this with other, more productive reading.

Although we need to keep up with a "general knowledge" of the world around us, this can be managed by taking just one weekly international news magazine such as Time or Newsweek.

Otherwise, we need a bit of narrow focus. For instance, learning about new developments in our particular specialism, whether that's work-related or a hobby. As Andrew Carnegie stated: "the men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it".

And so, back to the purpose of this series of success articles - which is to simply and concisely give you four essential steps to goal achievement:

1. Define your "success article" - whether that's an amount of money, something that you want to own, the exact amount you would like to weigh, an athletic record or an exercise you aim to perform - whatever it is, you must first define it very specifically. Put down on paper a clear statement of your number one desire - what you want to have, be or do.

2. Write out an outline plan of action which will achieve this goal - including the significant intermediate goals along the way. At this point you will start to get a feel for what achieving this goal will cost you - so now is the time to state how much effort / time / money you are prepared to devote to it.

3. Set a deadline. Not just for the accomplishment of the final goal, but for each of the principal intermediate steps outlined in your plan of action. And once the deadlines are set - make sure you keep to them.

4. Commit to memory the goal, the outline plan and the deadline - and repeat (out loud if possible) on waking each morning, at least once during the day and again just before falling asleep.

Success will follow if you write down your definite purpose, form a workable action plan and then and resolve to complete this meticulously, on time, using an action-oriented mindset.