Goal Setting

Are your work, team and personal goals set for 2010?  Harvard University research shows that writing goals down and committing to them in your mind is a common trait in successful people.  The clearer the vision the more likely you are to achieve.  Some scientists and neurologists believe the Reticular Activating System (RAS) within your brain is a vital part of your ability to achieve goals.

What is RAS?

Imagine that you're walking through a busy airport terminal. Think of all the noise - hundreds of people talking, music, announcements, and luggage carriers. How much of this noise is brought to your attention? Not a lot. You can hear a general background noise, but not many of us bother to listen to each individual sound.

But then a new announcement comes over the public address system - saying your name or maybe your flight, suddenly, you are completely alert. It is your RAS the automatic mechanism inside your brain that brings relevant information to your attention.

Your RAS is like a filter between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind. It takes instructions from your conscious mind and passes them on to your subconscious. For example, the instruction could be, "listen out for anyone saying my name". It's a common phenomenon. 


Have you ever purchased a new car and chosen a model and colour that you thought was somewhat unique?  Then suddenly you start noticing your beautifully unique car on every street corner - they are everywhere!  Why hadn't you noticed that before?  Your filtering system is at work - you didn't notice them before because it wasn't important to you.

This goes to show how important your filtering system is.  If your goals and objectives are not crystal clear; your filtering system may not alert you when an opportunity presents itself.  Your not alone here - the same principle applies to every member of your team.  The clearer the vision, goals and objectives are the more opportunities will present themselves to you!  Get your team on high alert - make sure they know the exact goals and objectives they are chasing. 

As Napoleon Hill (an American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature, his most famous work, Think and Grow Rich) said, that we can achieve any realistic goal if we keep on thinking about that goal, and stop thinking any negative thoughts about it. Of course, if we keep thinking that we can't achieve a goal; our subconscious will help us to not achieve it.

In his classic self-help book Psychocybernetics, Dr Maxwell Maltz discusses the advantages of our automatic goal seeking 'servo-mechanism'. He doesn't use the words Reticular Activating System (RAS), but it is the same process.

What we need to do is create a very specific picture of our goal in our conscious mind. Our RAS will then pass this on to our subconscious - which will then help us achieve the goal. The RAS does this by bringing to our attention all the relevant information which otherwise might have remained as 'background noise'. In basic terms the Reticular Activation System is how the Law of Attraction works.  We get what we focus on; we create what we think about and the RAS system of our brains just helps this process along.

The Law of Attraction is not a new concept.  It has been with us since ancient times, which only makes sense if it is a Universal Law.  It is even mentioned in the Bible,

Buddha taught about the Law of Attraction.  "All that we are is the result of what we have thought.  The mind is everything.  What we think we become"  Buddha 562-483 B.C.

So make those goals clear and let us know if there is any way we can assist!

Back to top