Visualize your goal

Okay, so you know what your goals are…but do you know what they look like? i.e. can you visualize yourself having achieved them? If not, I urge you to think about it, and answer these questions:

How do you see yourself in the “picture of your success”?

Where are you?

What are you doing?

Who are you with? How do you look?

Give yourself a clear picture of the situation. Be specific.

Also, experience your success. How do you feel having achieved your goals? Confident? Happy? Fulfilled?

Put all of this together in a simple statement. For example, “I have achieved X. I am in my large corner office overlooking the river, while wearing a designer suit and Jimmy Choo shoes. I feel the way I did in high school the day I heard I’d made valedictorian!”

“Why all the detail?” I hear you ask. Well, for two reasons. First, if you make yourself visualize your goal, it forces you to focus on what you really want. You might want a nice house (OK, right, who doesn’t?), but what sort of house? Where is it? What does it look like? Doing this exercise can be eye-opening. One young lawyer I mentored was feeling uncertain, so I asked her what her goal was. “To make partner, of course,” she replied. However, when I asked her to do this exercise, she realized that she had never really thought about the details of her goals—or (worse still) about what achieving them would really mean to her. The exercise made her recognize that she did indeed want to achieve partnership—but at a very different type of firm.

Second, visualizing a goal as though it were already reality gives your mind a powerful blueprint (read: weapon!) for what you want to achieve. When you do this, your subconscious inevitably responds, “Fine, if that’s how things look, then what can I do to make the reality match that picture?” And by visualizing yourself acting out your goals, you can create or strengthen the neural network in your brain to support their implementation. Visualizing causes the same neurons in the brain to “fire” as if you were in fact doing whatever you’re imagining, whether it’s showing the prime minister around your law chambers or winning the Masters golf tournament in Augusta! When you then attempt to achieve your goal, the brain is pre-patterned for success and instantly envisages a foundation to support your endeavors.

Another great technique is to draw a picture of your success, or to cut a photo from a magazine that represents its achievement. This makes your vision clear, vivid, and personal, and if you look at the same photo over and again, it “centers” the subconscious. For example: tennis champion Chris Evert is known for espousing visualization techniques. While commentating during a Wimbledon championship, she told a story about Venus Williams that struck me as significant. When Venus was still a young and relatively unknown player, she and her father visited Ms. Evert. During the visit, Mr. Williams asked permission to take a picture of Venus holding Evert’s Wimbledon trophy. Evert agreed. In these photos, Venus held the trophy up as if it were her own—and by implication, I assume that she studied these photos again and again. How prophetic, as the picture was finally played out (so far five times) in reality!

One of my (very successful) friends routinely inspires himself by imagining himself with every image and every trait that he aspires to. His daydream always ends the same way, as his biggest rival comes up and grudgingly congratulates him on winning some “unwinnable” case!

In his best-selling book (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), Stephen Covey suggests that we should all begin with the end in mind (Habit #2), a theory based on the principle that every accomplishment is in fact created twice, first mentally, and then in physical reality. Whether it is building a law practice or a house, the idea has to come first. Sometimes the mental creation is unconscious (perhaps an outcome of other people’s agendas or of things we once heard), and thus the result is unintentional—but nonetheless, the principle of mental creation first is still at play.

So I strongly advocate your taking control of that first, crucial, step: Generate a purposeful mental picture manifesting the goal you want to achieve. All the great achievers today do this, from top businessmen to professional athletes.

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Find your purpose

In my last post, I talked about taking initiative on your 2010 goals. Continuing on with this theme of goal setting...

If you still feel a little uncertain about your 2010 goals, one of the simplest things to do is to interview a few people who have already attained the goal you’re considering. Check out the reality, the bad as well as the good. Believe me, a lot of positions in our profession look glamorous and appealing from the outside, and rather less so from inside... There may also be sacrifices that you’re not prepared to make, for the sake of your family - or you may find that achieving your ambition will routinely require your working more hours than you can cope with! Remember, there are many different ways of being a successful lawyer. Don’t be one of those people who take the line of least resistance and wind up regretting it.

The bottom line is that your goal must be something that gives you purpose, and this purpose matters far more than those extrinsic motivators (like wealth or status) associated with a more traditional definition of success. Without this sense of purpose you’re almost certain to lack enough inner fire to fuel you. Further, there is almost certainly someone among your peers or competitors carrying that same flame, making him (or her) far more likely than you are to achieve and sustain that same goal.

Let me give you an example we’re all familiar with...

Early on in the U.S. 2008 presidential campaign polls showed unparalleled support for Al Gore as the Democratic nominee, even though he wasn’t even running! Now no one can deny that Gore had plenty of backing as the presidential candidate in 2000 (in fact, some would argue that he did in fact win the 2000 presidential election), yet he certainly lacked the passionate following and the wide-ranging clout that he carries today. So what made the difference? My theory is that Al Gore ran his 2000 campaign without a compelling vision. His relentless speechifying about payroll taxes and Social Security benefits just didn’t cut it - either for him or for the voters.

However, the Al Gore of today is miles more impressive, inspiring a significant following as a campaigner against global warming. Many commentators have already noted that if Gore had run for president in 2008 he could have commanded a level of support far superior to that of 2000. The difference? His political raison d’être is now propelled by a compelling and authentic personal vision, which creates both passion for his cause and trust in him as a leader. (This also explains why Gore is probably more effective in his current role as environmental activist than he would be as president - it allows him to focus on what matters most to him.)

The importance of discovering the "right" personal vision is no different for us. When we find the goal that really motivates us, we’re fired with enthusiasm, and this inspires others not only to support us but also to share our dream.

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