Have you ever tried to achieve goals in the past and failed? If you have then I am betting you have fallen into one or both of the pitfalls that I am going to show you how to avoid!

There is one simple personal development technique that can keep you motivated and ensure that you will keep moving forward toward you goal. Let me share it with you.

Do you recall when you were a child and had all the wonderment that only a child has? Do you remember any of your replies when adults asked you, as a child, what you wanted to be when you grew up? If you were like most people your answers would have changed from week to week depending on what interested you at that particular time. Never once did it enter your head that you could not be what you wanted. You held the strong conviction that anything was possible. You had the belief that you could be, do or have anything you wanted.

When you grew from childhood to adulthood these positive beliefs were replaced by limiting beliefs as you listened to other people around you. You have allowed your mind to become conditioned with negative beliefs. You have been brain-washed into believing that you cannot achieve your dreams because it is just not possible to do it. This mindset leads to the biggest pitfalls of setting and achieving goals – procrastination and giving-up!

When you were a child you were not afraid to dream big dreams. You gave no thought to how you were going to be an astronaut or how you could possibly learn to fly a multi-million dollar fighter jet – you just knew you could do it and knew it was going to happen! You were not afraid to think big. As you grew older and the world grew smaller for you, your view of your position in life and what was possible for you grew smaller also. Your dreams and aspirations became subdued to practicalities and what you believed was possible for you.

Now that you have reached adulthood you have bought into all the negative programming offered by others, the media and the education system and also formed some damaging negative views of your own based on some negative life experiences that you now think are common place. You have forgotten that you have the capability of thinking big.

Back in ancient times when Rome and Carthage were the two strongest powers in the world a Carthaginian leader called Hannibal told his generals he wanted to take his army and 80 elephants across the Alps to fight the Romans in their own terrority. His generals told him there was no way this could be done as in many places along the route even a solitary man would find it difficult to pass. Hannibal responded confidently, “We will find a way or we will make one!”. Hannibal’s response was swift and to the point, “We will find a way, or we will make one!”

Hannibal had a big dream. He wanted to defeat Rome and make his city of Carthage the strongest and only super-power of the ancient world. He had a big goal and a big dream. He wasn’t about to let some mountains stop him!

In order to achieve your goals you must re-learn to think big!

Having a big dream that offers big rewards and life changing results when it is achieved is the only way to stay motivated enough to tackle any challenge or obstacle that stands in your way. When you have a big dream that offers you big pay-offs you will be much less likely to allow fear to get in your way and thus you will develop persistence.

There is no such things as failure only giving-up. All you can gain is experience. When he was asked what it felt like to fail 9,999 times when trying to invent the electric light-bulb Edison replied,” I haven’t failed 9,999 times. I have just found 9,999 ways that don’t work!”

Stop setting your goals based on practicality or what you think is expected of you. Dream big! With a big dream you will take big action and you will experience big results!

Embarking on a personal development or self improvement program can be exciting and rewarding. However, many people try many different personal growth methods in an attempt to improve their life and although they gain much from their efforts they fail to reach their life goals. Self improvement and personal development can create disillusioned seekers or self improvement junkies (seeking that one program that will do it all) because they fail to deliver fully on their promises.

Have you recieved the results that you were promised from the personal development tool syou used.? Did you get the full benefit of the self improvement programs you diligently followed? If not take heart for I am going to share with you the reasons why and the solutions!

The great majority of personal development programs, CDs, techniques, books and seminars teach very valuable and life changing information. The methods they promote do work. It is unfortunate though that they are missing a very vital and essential truth. It is this missing information that is the key to achieving unparalleled success with these programs. This key is not only the launching pad for success and a guaranteed method which will allow you to gain anything you desire if it is put into practise but it is also the reason behind your failure because you have not known nor applied it before now!

Have you ever noticed that there are certain things in your life that seem to be on auto-repeat? You keep getting jobs that are unsatisfactory; have bad bosses; irritating co-workers; financial problems; painful relationships, etc?

Have you tried hard to change certain situations in your life just to have the same outcome every time no matter what actions you take?

The reason behind this phenomenon lies in your mind.

Anyone who has studied self improvement or personal development and even those of you who have merely touched on the subject will know that everything begins in the mind. Without the right mental attitude you can achieve nothing worthwhile in life. Nothing of major importance has ever been achieved without the achiever having had a clear mental image of the outcome already in mind before success ever came. This is where many people go wrong. They think that if they create a positive mental picture of what they want and then take actions to get it, everything will fall into place easily – they are missing the key!

The only reason people fail to achieve their goals is because of negative mental beliefs. Most times these beliefs are hidden deep in the subconscious mind. In order to achieve the success you desire it is necessary to evaluate your belief system; resurface these beliefs and then eliminate them!

By holding a strong image in your mind of what you want and backing that image with clear and purposeful action you begin to set in motion some very powerful universal forces that work to aid you in making that mental image solid in the real world. However, many times these mental images are hindered by the negative beliefs that you hold which are contrary to what you actually want. These beliefs are always active and running like computer programs in your subconscious mind ‘ sending out the opposite mental images to that of your desire.

It is imperative to your success to find and eliminate these negative programs. This is the whole point of personal development.

There are many great methods for eliminating negative programming. However, I have found that the hardest thing to do is not removing these negative beliefs but finding them in the first place. So this should be your first goal ‘ to seek out your negative programming. Before beginning this bare in mind that it doesn’t matter how you got these beliefs, or who gave them to you. All you want to do is find them and remove them. Leave blame out of it!

Begin by creating a goal. Write it down as though it has already happened. Read this statement aloud and then close your eyes. Create as much positive emotion around this mental picture as you can. Now just enjoy this imaginary scene until you begin to have doubts that it is real. Take a blank piece of paper and on it begin to scribble down all the negative thoughts that enter your head. Don’t judge them, suppress them or get annoyed at them, just let them flow.

Now once you have a list of all the negative thoughts connected to your goal you can begin to remove them.

Look over your list and analyse all the statements you produced. Really think about them. Are they true? Is there any basis for them? Evaluate each one in turn and think of ways to overcome each belief. There are hundreds of great self improvement tools designed to help you do this but here is a simple one to get you started.

Take one negative statement and think about what that means to you. Identify the underlying belief behind that thought. Is it a lack of self-worth, low self-confidence, insecurity, feeling not-good-enough or just a lame belief you picked-up from someone else that you have never given any real thought to?

Challenge the belief. Ask yourself questions every time you recall that belief. Question the authenticity of the belief. Identify the emotion that you feel when you think about that belief. Allow that feeling to fully surface. When you allow this to happen you will find that the negative emotions you are feeling get very strong just before they leave. When you allow the negative emotion, which is driving the negative belief, to fully express itself and dissipate you will find yourself much more positive and without the negative thoughts you had previously.

So everyday speak aloud your goal statement in the morning and visualize it as being reality. Evoke strong positive emotion around this image. Then, at night, repeat this procedure but use a blank piece of paper and write down all the negative thoughts that surface. Then take each one in turn and give it some real thought. Feel the negative emotions related to it and allow them to surface fully ‘ do not try to suppress them. Then allow them to fully express themselves in your mind and body and they will dissipate. This can be hard to do as we have been taught to suppress our emotions and have probably been doing it for many years. When you begin to feel the emotions getting stronger you will have a strong urge to suppress them but don’t! When the negative emotions behind your beliefs are allowed to fully surface and express themselves they naturally dissipate. As they dissipate so do the thoughts and beliefs behind them.

You will find that you become much more positive in a very short time and find it much easier to achieve your goals.