Episode 16 - You've Achieved Your Goal, What Now?

Ce * le * brate Good Times, Come On!

Celebrations are important.  People celebrate when their favorite sports teams win the championship.

Since I moved to San Francisco, the San Francisco Giants have won 3 World Series!

THREE, that's 3, World Series Championships in 5 Years!

San Francisco knows how to Celebrate their victory! I have had the pleasure of attending the second World Series Parade. They come right down Market Street, right next to my office where I work. We are so close, we can look out most of our office windows and watch. This was my first World Series Parade I have been able to attend. I missed the first one by a couple weeks and I was home sick for the last one. I had to watch it on TV.

I'd like to celebrate here now! We received this great review on iTunes:

Clarifies Goal Setting

in iTunes by RPaxman

It’s obvious that Tony has spent a lot of time thinking about goal setting. He has a lot of experience working with large corporations and executives in this area. If you are having trouble coming up with your goals, setting them, and making them happen, Tony can help you. The sound quality of this podcast is great, which is a plus. I look forward to seeing what he does in the future.

Here are some pictures from the 2012 Celebration!

If the Giants and Giants Fans can celebrate their success and the success of their favorite teams, why can't you celebrate yours?

You Can. And You Should.  Now, you probably won't throw a giant parade, but you should celebrate your successes.  Celebrate your achievements.

In my book, 9 Steps To Successful Goal Achievement, I have noted that one of the steps you must have is to Reward Yourself!

Why is this even a step to goal achievement?

Because WE NEED IT!

Humans learn by doing, hearing, and thinking. We want to continue learning when we are rewarded for doing a good job.

Positive reinforcement is used every day to get children to learn to do things.

If you have children, you have probably used positive reinforcement, rewards, on your children. When we want our kids to walk, we show them how to do it by holding their hands and walking behind them.  We do this over and over again. Then, on that one day when they get the nerve to let go of the table or sofa and take that first step or two by themselves, what happens?

We Cheer, We jump up and down! We clap and make a BIG DEAL about it. We probably pick them up and give them a big hug.

We have just used Rewards to celebrate their success. We just Rewarded Them (and yourself) for a goal that was achieved. They succeed in their goal to learn to walk and you achieved your goal of teaching them to walk.

This continues throughout your kids life as they enter school and work towards achieving good grades and graduating from high school and eventually college, perhaps.

If your kids get involved in sports or other extracurricular activities, their teachers, coaches, advisers will use rewards of some sort.

As adults we too, need rewards.  One of the biggest rewards you will likely receive are Bonus' at your job. If you do a good job and meet your company, department or team goals, you may receive a bonus. This is a reward for you achieving these goals.

Rewards Motivate Us

When I started in martial arts training, I studied Bujinkan Ninpo Taijutsu (more commonly referred to as Ninjutsu). When I started training, it was new to the United States. My teacher, Sensei, explained that there were 3 levels of Belts. Martial arts styles / systems use Belt levels to rank the students until they become a teacher.  Everyone that studies martial arts has a goal to earn their Black Belt.

 

 At the start of my training, the 3 levels were:

White Belt

Green Belt

Black Belt

 

It typically takes people about 3 years to earn a Black Belt. This is a long time. It took me 11 months to go from White Belt (which by the way is the belt that comes with your Gi to hold the top together). It isn't something you earn.

After earning your Green Belt, it would take you another 2-4 years to earn your Black Belt.  The training was hard and many students didn't hang around. They often didn't feel like they would ever achieve their Black Belt.

After a while, they opened up the Green Belt ranks to nine levels. 9 is the number of completeness in Ninjustsu. This opened up a new level of Rewards for people to strive for. When you achieve a Green belt level (Kyu), you would be called up to the front and awarded your next level by the Sensei. This helped to motivate you to work harder to achieve the next level. We had a lot more students hang around and the art grew in the United States.

Most martial arts systems use belt rankings to motivate students. Most schools (dojos) have kids classes. We started kids classes and when I was an active instructor for the kids as a senior student and then later when I achieved my 1st Degree Black Belt, and beyond. I went on to earn my 5th Degree Black Belt (Godan) rank. And yes, after I received my promotion from our Grandmaster, my fellow students and I went out and had a big party that night to celebrate!

My Sensei in Atlanta, Bud Malmstron after I earned my 5th Degree Black Belt (Godan).
Bujinkan Grandmaster Hatusmi Sensei and me after I passed the Godan (5th Degree Black Belt) test.

 

Reward Yourself for Achieving Action Steps

When you set up your action plan, you will set up specific steps or tasks that you need to do to reach your goals. These tasks are often goals in themselves. When you set a long-term goal, there will often be several short-term goals that when completed, will see that goal achieved.

In 9 Steps to Successful Goal Achievement, I talk about one the goals I had years ago. I had a goal to own a red Z4. That was a big goal for me. I could have gone out and got a loan for the Z4, but, one of my bigger goals at the time was to be Debt Free. That is probably a goal for many of you. My main financial goal at the time was to pay off all of my credit cart and installment loan debts.  I was starting to follow the Dave Ramsey program to get out of debt.

I made my goal to own a red Z4 based on me paying off all of my debt.  I set my action plan so that each credit card or installment loan was a separate task as I followed Dave Ramsey's Snowball plan.

I needed a way to keep myself motivated and I recommend this to you if this is a type of goal that you have.

As a short term reward for achieving my short-term action goals of paying of a credit card, I agreed, with myself, to go to the BMW Dealership and do a test drive of a Z4.  Have the dealer rep take a photo of you in the Z4 so you can put it on your Vision Board. This way you will be able to keep it in your mind.

Me driving a Z4 around the BMW Performance Center race track in Spartanburg, SC.

Celebrate Your Success! When you achieve a goal, celebrate!

Free Poster

As a Reward for listening to our podcast, I am going to offer you a copy of our 9 Steps to Successful Goal Achievement Poster.

Click on the Poster to download the Poster graphic file.

Thank you for listening to Goal Getting Podcast.  Let us know what you think about the show in the comments section below. We would love to know what GOALS your are working on and how we can help you.

I mentioned my book, 9 Steps to Successful Goal Achievement. It is available on Amazon.com for .99 cents. You can get a free copy of the eBook by clicking on the book cover over on the right sidebar or by clicking the book cover below.

Click here to get your Free Copy of 9 Steps To Successful Goal Achievement eBook.

 

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