Since this is the beginning of 2009 I’ve naturally been thinking about my goals for the coming year. I’m working on what I want to accomplish and how I’m going to do it. While I was pondering this question, I read an article by Charlie Cook. He says if you’re setting goals for 2009 you should write them in the past tense, as if you’ve already accomplished them.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this advice, and it’s probably not your first time either. Many experts suggest this. But does the tense really make a difference?
Several years ago, after taking a course based on Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way
, I was writing morning pages. If you haven’t read The Artist’s Way, morning pages are three pages, written long hand, that you write first thing in the morning. They are to help clear your head and improve your creativity.
One morning I awoke and found I was bored of the morning pages. There was too much whining about my day. I was sick of it. On a whim I decided to write my pages as if I was living my ideal life. I wrote three pages about what I had “done” the previous day. I put in everything I wanted my dream life to be, written as if I had already accomplished it.
Fast forward to today; with a few exceptions, I’ve accomplished much of what I wrote that day. I still have some things to achieve, but I’m well on the way to getting there.
So, does this mean writing your goals in the past tense, as if you have already achieved them, work better? I don’t know for sure, but it can’t hurt. If you find that you didn’t achieve many of your goals for 2008, consider setting your goals for 2009 in the past tense.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Another powerful tip for achieving goals is to make them public. Nothing motivates you more than having to make sure you don’t lose face. So feel free to share your personal or business goals here by leaving a comment. Maybe it will be just the motivation you need to really achieve them this time.
