A 7th century Arabian genius once said, “Success is the result of foresight and resolution, foresight depends upon deep thinking and planning, and the most important factor of planning is to keep your secrets to yourself”. The name of this genius was Ali Ibn Abi Thalib, one of the most illustrious, noblest and brilliant leaders of the continent-sweeping Islamic civilisation that was left behind by the Prophet Muhammad.

However, it is not the object of this article to discuss a religious figure or the history of a civilisation. The quote provided above is to set the impetus for the rest of this article.

“Success is the result of foresight and resolution, foresight depends upon deep thinking and planning, and the most important factor of planning is to keep your secrets to yourself”.

It is impossible and illogical by definition and reality to achieve any measure of success without any thought, planning or goal setting put into it. Any attainment that is borne out of randomness and chance is not to be regarded a success at all, just as a momentous lottery winning should not be called an achievement.

The achievement of a goal, by definition, requires that there be an element of conscious planning and subsequent effort put into it, because a goal is a purpose that any person, entity or enterprise is working consciously towards. No matter how vague or clear the goal is, some degree of planning, implementation, tracking and refinement is definitely involved.

If you are to observe the life stories of achievers either in your lifetime or in history, you would realise that the truth about their success can be attributed to a number of very common, universal, timeless and unchanging factors – or principles.

These undying principles are universally applicable to almost every area or field of endeavour, from industry to academia, from the ivory towers of the corporate world to the warmth, comfort and safety of a nursery. Changes and challenges that are developing in the world neither add to nor subtract from the validity of these principles, they only serve to create permutations and evolutions in the application of them and not the essence.

Now, what are these principles exactly? Here I shall be listing a few of my findings –

1. The greatest achievers are driven by a huge, humongous, all-consuming Vision either for their lives or for the world. They view the world as a perfect playing field to manifest and make concrete their visionary ideas and are often driven by this vision, whether or not they are consciously aware of it from moment to moment.

2. They set targets and objectives that are in alignment with this grand vision of theirs. They also have the discipline to reject and ignore so-called opportunities, developments, innovations and temptations that are not in alignment with their great vision, often creating enemies because of this. Nevertheless, those who stayed faithful to these achievers and their vision prove themselves worthy as true friends and partners in bringing about their visions to reality.

3. They seek out the best possible methods to accomplish what they seek, never settling for mediocrity or lackadaisical efforts. To these achievers, the terms ‘laziness’ or ‘hard work’ are concepts foreign to them. What they are driven by is their vision and the goals they must achieve in order to meet that vision. Whatever it takes to accomplish those targets of theirs, they will accept, and although they are humans too and can feel exhaustion, they do not view the necessary work as something to dread, but something to live with, even enjoy.

4. The great achievers are constantly learning. They learn from their mistakes, from other people’s mistakes, from their observations of the necessary goal-attaining processes in which they are engrossed.

5. They do not stop at simply learning, they also put their learnings into action, dynamically and consistently refining their methods in real-time. Sometimes the growth and improvements they obtain from their gradual evolutions borne out of their learnings can be very minimal, sometimes they may achieve tremendous improvement, even breakthrough.

But in their minds, they do not discriminate between small improvements and big improvements, neither obsessing over making huge improvements nor being content with only small improvements. All sizes and manners of growth are welcomed by them.

If all the goal setting secrets of the greatest achievers could be condensed into a handful of principles, the 5 listed above would suffice. Every other discussion of planning, thinking, programming, intending, organising, managing or controlling are simply corollaries of the above 5 principles.

A useful tool when setting your goals as mentioned in The Secret by John Assaraf is the creation of what is known by three different names: dreamboard, vision board, or treasure map.

Creating a vision board, dreamboard or treasure map could not be simpler if you only know precisely what it is that you really really want and are willing to make the effort.

So once you have a list of goals which you have written down you can start is to create your dreamboard. Let’s say you have 10 goals written down in an appropriate format. One way to create goals is to use the S.M.A.R.T. method. S.M.A.R.T. stands for: specific; measurable; attainable; realistic; time bound. These are rules to stick by when setting your goals, ie make sure the goal you set yourself adheres to those 5 criteria.

It’s now time for you to find pictures, words, affirmations, prayers, photographs, cartoons, maps that represent to you your goals. It is also important that you find photographs of yourself in which you are in positive, optimistic, happy states. You will be sticking these pictures etc. on to your dreamboard, which is like a kind of collage of your goals and aspirations.

It is important that you find these photographs of yourself because you will be placing yourself in the vision board hopefully doing the things that you really want to do, have, be and achieve. There are two ways that you can actually make the board. One way is to have a piece of backing card or backing paper and stick the pictures photographs etc on to that backing paper, or you can use of a software which allows you to find pictures on the Internet or on your computer and creates a board to you to print.

So after you have the photographs of yourself and you found pictures, photographs and some words and affirmations that supports you to achieve your goals, you can put together a sort of collage which shows a visualization not only of your goals, but of you yourself achieving your goals. This can not only be inspiring, it can be fun and exciting, too.

Each time that you look at your vision board or if you want to call it a treasure map or a dreamboard, and you activate your imagination to really see yourself achieving your goals, allow yourself to get into and enjoy the feelings of actually living out your goals in your mind, realistically, as if it is happening now and thinking about and imagining what is kinds of things you will be hearing on the outside , externally as well as the kinds of things you would be saying to yourself: i.e. positive self talk, you will be powerfully programming your subconscious mind to take you effortlessly to the full and complete realization of the goals that you set yourself.

It’s important that you do not allow your dreamboard to sit around gathering dust. Rather, the daily study, the daily practice, the daily discipline of going back to your dreamboard, having it in a place where you will see it at least twice per day, for example, on your dressing table or above or beside your bathroom mirror, will help you to realize your goals much faster, with less effort and in positive, empowering ways. In the author’s own experience whilst you will feel very inspired, empowered, even highly motivated and with a new sense of self belief about what is possible, not pursuing this daily exercise of using your imagination to help you and your unconscious mind to focus on the achievement of your goals is unwise.

In summary, make a list of your goals: make them S.M.A.R.T., go out and find magazine pictures, photographs — including of yourself — and design empowering affirmations, words or prayers that remind you in verbal format of what you are trying to achieve. Put yourself into a collage using what you have found and you have a dreamboard on your hands. The fun part and the part that is most left out of teaching about dreamboards is the vision part or as the author has heard it said by wealth mentor Leslie Fieger, “Imagineering”, because it encompasses not only visual imagining, but tricking the mind into believing that the goal you want to achieve is actually being achieved right now, in this moment. This should be done daily and each time should feel terrific, as you experience yourself actually achieving your goals as a very “real” imaginary experience. So, allow yourself to have fun and enjoy the process of designing new life experiences that will enable you to have your dreams come true.

We all have goals. Some goals are long-term and some are short-term. Some are goals we have shelved for so long they are dusty and covered with cobwebs. Some are freshly minted. However for those of us who are not as successful in life as we would wish we often despair of achieving our goals. Some goals seem out-of-reach and unattainable. This does not have to be what actually happens. We have the power within ourselves to change our lives and the place to begin is when we are setting our goals.

There are simple rules that make it more likely for us to achieve our goals and the first is to follow the K.I.S.S. principle. In other words, keep it simple stupid. The more elaborate and complicated we make our goals then the less likely we will be to follow through with them.

The best way to simplify your goal setting is to only set one goal — the ultimate goal. After that then everything else is just details. What is the ultimate goal? What is your final destination? When you are on your deathbed and you cast a look back over your life then what do you want to see accomplished there? When you look around you what do you want to see? That vision is your ultimate goal.

We all know that having a destination in mind makes traveling easier. Knowledge of that destination helps us plan what to pack and controls our transportation decisions. The same is true when it comes to setting goals and achieving those goals. If we know our destination then we know what to pack (and what to leave behind) and we can make better decisions about how to reach that destination. Simplifying our goals to that one ultimate goal also helps us focus on that one destination rather than constantly detouring and losing our way. It also makes it easier to measure the importance and relevance of so many other decisions that impact our daily life when we have the measuring stick. If we take Path A or Path B which will be more effective in reaching that ultimate destination?

Naming that ultimate goal for ourselves is a tremendously powerful tool for our own success because so often we spend our time and energy focusing on managing the details of our lives. We are simply reacting to whatever is thrown at us by others or simply by daily life. However in order to truly achieve success and achieve our goals then we must take the lead and that means acting. Simply by setting our ultimate goal and focusing our energy and time on that goal means that instead of reacting we are now taking action. That action means we have taken a leadership role in our own success. Simply by taking that action we are taking control of our own life and that is a very powerful step toward success.

If you want to achieve more success in your life then you must set one simple goal — the ultimate goal for your life — and you must get out in front of the goal to take action with your life instead of reacting all your life.