Goals, hopes, wishes - what's the difference?

One of the things that I wish I can teach my children to have is SELF-DISCIPLINE. Though I admit I myself am having an awful hard time making it a virtue of mine But I really want my kids (my students, my biological children) to learn to discipline themselves, because it really does form the basis of one's success.

Here's something I got from my regular emails from SimpleTruths.com:

An excerpt from The Power of Discipline
by Brian Tracy

Your ability to discipline yourself to set clear goals, and then to work toward them everyday, will do more to guarantee your success than any other single factor.

You've heard it said that, "You can't hit a target you can't see."

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there."

Wayne Gretsky said, "You miss every shot you don't take."

It seems that only 3% of adults have written goals and plans, and they earn more than the other 97% put together.

Why is this? The simplest answer is that, if you have a clear goal and a plan to achieve it, your focus is fixed on a set course of action. Instead of becoming sidetracked by distractions and diversions, your time is focused on a straight line from start to finish. This is why people with goals accomplish so much more than people without them.

The tragedy is that everyone thinks they already have goals. But what they really have are hopes and wishes.

A wish has been defined as a "goal with no energy behind it." Hope is not a strategy.

Goals that are not written down and developed into plans are like bullets without powder in the cartridge. People with unwritten goals go through life shooting blanks. Because they think they already have goals, they never engage in the hard, disciplined effort of goal setting, the master skill of success.

USA Today reported on a study a couple of years ago. First, researchers selected people who made New Year's resolutions. Then they divided these people into two categories: those who made New Year's resolutions and wrote them down, and those who made New Year's resolutions, but neglected to write them down.

Twelve months later, they followed up on the respondents in this study. What they found was astonishing! Of the people who made New Year's resolutions but neglected to write them down, only 4% actually followed through on their resolutions.

However, among the group that took a few minutes to record their New Year's resolutions, 44% followed through on them. This difference of more than 1100% proves the simple act of crystallizing resolutions or goals on paper increases likelihood of success.

In my experience of working with several million people over the past twenty-five years, the disciplined act of setting goals, making plans for their accomplishments, and then working on them daily, increases the likelihood of achieving your goals by ten times, or 1000%.

This does not mean that goal setting guarantees success, only that it increases the probabilities of success by ten times. These are very good odds to have working in your favor.