At the beginning of the year, there's often an orgy of goal 
setting. People get into a collective frenzy about setting 
personal and professional goals.
 
Traditional goal setting often doesn't work because we are not 
in vibrational harmony with our goals. The feelings we have 
about our goals aren't aligned with our thoughts. So we often 
effort and take too much action before we've properly aligned 
our feelings and beliefs.
 

Successful goal setting depends on 4 key things:
 
1. Know why you want the goal
 
Many of us to becoming specific about our goals way too early. 
We haven't felt the essence of why we want what we want. We 
really need to feel our desire about our goals.
 
What is it we really want; more time to spend with loved ones, 
space, a sense of aliveness, pleasure, joy. If we don't know 
why we want what we want, then all the action in the world 
won't make any difference.
 
You could also call it the Vision Thing. To have a bigger vision 
regarding our lives puts goal setting in context and makes 
them far easier to achieve. If your goal is a "have to" "must" 
"ought", then it aint gonna happen. You joined that gym because 
you "had to" lose weight and how often did you go?
 

2. Gain clarity about your desire
 
Haven't you already done that? Well, partially. You can only set 
personal and professional goals for yourself. If your desire 
isn't there, then it aint happening:.)
 
If your goals aren't crafted with your true desires in mind, 
then they'll go unfulfilled and/or self sabotage is often the 
result. It's important to be excited by the possibilities that 
working towards your goal will bring.
 
Also, cultural and social expectations often shape our goals as 
to what we think we can have as opposed to what we actually want 
- so need to gain clarity about what is truly your desire and 
what belongs to other people.
 
You'll never be able to do enough to satisfy other people, so 
stick to satisfying yourself.
 

3. The Specification
 
Once you've ramped up your desire and feelings about the goal, 
here is where the SMART model (S = Specific, M= Measurable 
A= Action orientated R= Realistic, T= Time based) comes in. 
Write down your specification in rich feeling details and 
then............
 

4. ............. Let Go
 
That's right. Let go of your judgements, your timing of when it 
should happen, your attachment to the outcome looking the way 
you think it ought to look.
 
Letting go means that you stop efforting and yearning and 
waiting. This frees you up so that you are not wedded or 
attached to a specific outcome, but let the Universe deliver.
 
From here you start to use your intuition and take inspired 
action. Inspired action is effortless. You take action from 
a place of feeling good.
 
It opens you up to receiving ideas, opportunities and different 
kinds of assistance. You may find yourself drawn to call someone,
or someone contacts you out of the blue. For some reason you 
take a different route to work and you see something that gives 
you an idea.
 
You do less as more comes to you. You stop "having" to do things 
and end up effortlessly achieving your goals.
 

And if you don't achieve your goal(s)..........................
 
Reframe it - maybe the Universe was telling you that this wasn't 
the right path and was leading you to something better, even 
though you didn't always see it at the the time. Hasn't that 
often happened in your experience?
 

Follow the above process and you'll find yourself achieving your 
goals with much more ease and joy. 

Julie Plenty helps creatively self employed people prosper by 
using the Law of Attraction, because they ARE their business. 
For more self empowerment and Law of Attraction articles, and 
to sign up for her Life Design newsletter, visit: 
http://www.self-empowerment-zone.com