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SPUSANL 2010
GOAL SETTING & VISUALIZATION FOR MAXIMUM ACHIEVEMENT "the Colonel"Carlton Dowdy, US Army, "Ret.)1-866-463-6939 ~ Email: gospusa@yahoo.comWe have all been told that we need to set goals.
But just being told is simply not enough! because of our nature we have to clearly understand why it's important before
we are willing to take any action on it. Just knowing is simply not enough! We have to know deep down in our souls
that if we are to win in the manner that we want to win, we have to understand that without goals it is not possible to win!There has been much research over the years into the subject
of goal setting! Following are some examples of the studies that made the greatest impression on me: In 1954 Yale University conducted a study
using 100 of it's graduating seniors. The study centered around the subject of Goal Setting. YALE researchers
asked the 100 participants to answer a number of questions of which four of the questions were questions that pertained
to GOAL SETTING. Of the 100 graduating students only four students had put anything on paper regarding the four questions
that were pertaining to their goals. In 1984 Yale researchers contacted as many of the remaining students from the class
of 1954 to determine how much of an effect of goal setting had on their lives. The one thing that was most apparent
was the fact that the four graduates who had answered the four questions about their goals had acquired and controlled
more that 96% of all the personal assets that was owned by the total graduating class of 1954. As you may recall, the Russians was awarded
an almost excessive number of awards during the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. As they were scheduled to host the
1980 Olympics they decided that they would they wanted to set up a showpiece for the world. They decide that they would split
their athletes into four unique training groups: Group A, would continue with one hundred percent physical practice,
traditional; Group B, would use a seventy-five percent physical, twenty-five percent mental training program; Group C, would
use a fifty-fifty training program; and Group D would undertake a seventy-five percent mental practice and twenty-five percent
physical training program. All of these athletes were all world-class performers; they all had top-notch skills.
At the end of the 1980 Olympics, trainers counted the number of medals that each group had won. Group D, who was assigned
the seventy-five percent mental, twenty-five percent physical training program, had won the most medals. The results
of this "STUDY" was quite astonishing. The results was 100% inversed. Clearly, the mental aspects of
training is at least as important as the physical, perhaps more so! In 1971 when I graduated from then Virginia State Collage, now Virginia State University,
(VSU), I received a Regular Army Commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army. I was immediately ordered on active
duty. I reported to Fort Hood Texas after a few days of leave. Within weeks, perhaps even days of my arrival I
began to realize that all of my peers, had graduated from some of the best colleges and universities in the country.
The conversations that they held were miles above my head. They were clearly better educated than I. I was very
frighten. Not only were my writing skills a shortcomming, but also my knowledge of the world. Yet, I was determined
to make it. There was no alternative. I decided to try and find one or two areas that I had an edge in.
I had always been very positive and I liked people and I decided that I would work on improving myself in this area as I had
decided that it would take me to long to catch up with these guys in the "academic areas", that I mentioned before.
My writing skills was my weakest area and that was one the skills that was most needed. Make no mistake about it, goal setting for maximum achievement is absolute!
Those who set goals are almost always more successful than those who do not. Goal setting is critical to achievement!
Goal setting is becoming more and more important. Add to your goal setting a burning vision, desire and action and success
is almost assured, - Nepolean Hill.
The goal is something that they see in the future, but they bring it into the present, as if it has happened. Every single
person has this vision, and goal setting is critically important. As a matter of fact there have been a number of studies;
more and more psychologists are beginning to look at the whole issue of goal setting. For example, in a study at Yale, working
with convalescent patients, a psychologist named Judith Rodin separated them into two groups. One group were given a potted
plant; this sounds so mundane.
They were told to take care of the plant. The other group, of course, were told, "Don't worry about it. The nursing staff
will take care of it." After eighteen months they looked at three variables -- social factors, medical factors, and longevity,
because the expectancy in a convalescent home like that is about eighteen months. Well, the group that had no purpose, no
goal, died within the expected period. The other group had actually increased their life expectancy almost twice as long,
which worked out to be about fourteen months longer than what they had been expected to do.In other words, all other factors being equal, simply having a potted plant
to take care of made a big difference in the life of these convalescing patients.Absolutely. Then of course they began adding to that, and seeing with the control group
versus experimental group, the ones who had more to say as to what kind of clothing, planning their meals, their television
program -- in other words, who had a sense of control and power and purpose in their life.You've got to have a goal.That's it.That
seems to be the real message.Versus the
ones that didn't.Many people, it would
seem -- and I suppose these would be non-high-achieving people -- sort of wander about.That's right, that's right. But related to this whole issue, Jeffrey, is a feeling of
empowerment. Once you have a goal, a vision, you feel much more empowered. As a matter of fact there was another classical
study at UCLA called the learned helplessness experiments, where they took an animal, he learned how to get through a maze,
and then they put him into a leather harness and shocked him and shocked him and shocked him. Then they released him from
the leather harness, and even though the animal knew how to get out, it just stood there and received the shocks. It had learned
helplessness. Because he was in the
harness for a while and was unable to move during that time.That's right. But if you were to extrapolate this into the work situation -- for instance, in factories the
people on the line seem to have more psychosomatic disorders, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, because there is this learned
helplessness. Things are happening to them rather than from them.MISHLOVE: They have the feeling that they no longer possess control of the situation.PULOS: That's right, power.MISHLOVE: I suppose as a psychologist you'd have to say that a lot of that is their attitude,
rather than really what's true about them.PULOS:
That's right. It's strictly in the attitude, of having in a sense perceived that you've given your power away to someone else.
I think this is one thing that high-performance people do not do; they are totally in charge of what happens to them. Would you say then that if a person feels as if their
life is out of control, as I have sometimes seen with therapy clients, and you've probably seen -- people give you enormously
elaborate rationales about why they can't control this, why they can't control that -- would it seem to you that these people
are lacking in creativity?PULOS: No, I
think control and blaming others is really related to self-esteem, which is the second quality of high-performance people
-- that they will create situations in which they're always building on their self-esteem, their attitude with themselves,
their reputation with themselves. One of the things that detracts from self-esteem is blaming someone else, giving your power
to someone else -- blaming the weather, blaming this, blaming that, blaming that. High-performance people do not do that.MISHLOVE: In other words, if a person has low self- esteem,
they can avoid having to feel bad about themselves by blaming other people instead.PULOS: That's right.MISHLOVE: And then they're generally unaware of the fact that it's really their own low self-esteem.PULOS: That's right, and they're not aware that when you
blame someone, or even take on a martyr role, which is part of our Judaeo-Christian ethic -- you know, having to work hard
and suffer and struggle; a nothing-comes-easy sort of thing -- again, that really detracts from one's sense of potency or
empowerment and self-esteem. So there is no blaming, and there is no martyrhood or struggle. These people view life as something
to be lived joyously, impeccably, and to go through it having fun.MISHLOVE: They relish their experiences.PULOS: Yes, rather than struggle, because if you keep sort of programming your unconscious that everything
is going to have to be hard work, then it becomes just that, and success becomes difficult.MISHLOVE: So it's really ironic. It's as if we have certain very basic
assumptions, like, "Life must be difficult," that we wouldn't even question.PULOS: That's right.MISHLOVE: And yet what you're saying is the high-performance individuals that you've known and studied are
people who don't take that attitude.PULOS:
That's right.MISHLOVE: Is it something
that can be trained? Can people learn to change these attitudes?PULOS: Absolutely, and this gets to another factor of high-performance people, and that is they're constantly
monitoring their self talk. Every single person self talks between one hundred fifty and three hundred words a minute.MISHLOVE: A constant stream.PULOS: Constant. It works out to forty-five, fifty thousand thoughts a
day.MISHLOVE: Isn't that amazing?PULOS: Now, if you think about it --MISHLOVE: It would be a good book a day for everybody.PULOS: Absolutely. Now, most of it is innocuous, like, "I
wonder what I'm going to wear tonight?" or, "How is it going to go? Where are we going to go for dinner?" But
a lot of it, of course, especially with people with low esteem, is, "I'm so stupid. Nothing works for me. I can't lose
weight," and so on.MISHLOVE: It's
negative.PULOS: And it's over and over
and over.MISHLOVE: Like hypnotic suggestions.PULOS: Absolutely.MISHLOVE: In other words, what you seem to be saying, if I hear you right, is it's as
if this level of great competence and high performance would be a natural state for virtually everybody if we didn't program
ourselves somehow into having low self-esteem.PULOS:
Yes, because our self talk is one of the things that keeps reinforcing information in our subconscious, our reputation with
ourselves. So high-performance people are very conscious of that, and they'll stop it right away and change it to something
else. You never hear them saying things about themselves that are deprecatory like that. And yet, when you look at the origin
of it -- again, there was a rather interesting study at Iowa. They went into the homes of typical Iowan community members
with little people, with children, and the psychology grad students took a count of the number of positive or negative utterances
that a parent would make in the course of the day. They averaged it out over a three-week period. In the course of one day
there were four hundred and thirty-two negative utterances made to a child.MISHLOVE: What would be an example of a negative utterance?PULOS: "Oh, you stupid child. There you go again, you've done it again.
You're such a mess."MISHLOVE: I mean,
it's not simply saying, "No, don't do that."PULOS:
No, no, no. It's, "Darn it, you've done it again."MISHLOVE: Something that would lower the self-esteem of a child.PULOS: Precisely. That happened an average of four hundred and thirty-two times a day,
versus thirty-one positive statements a day.MISHLOVE:
And that's in your typical Iowa household.PULOS:
Middle America.MISHLOVE: Middle America.PULOS: So that's another aspect of it all -- that they very,
very, very carefully watch their self talk. As a matter of fact, they're constantly programming positive self talk.MISHLOVE: So it almost sounds like, if we were to take that
as a generality, that maybe for every four hundred and thirty-two people with low self-esteem, you've got about thirty-two
with high self-esteem.PULOS: Possibly.
There is a general factor to self- esteem, but there also are certain areas in your life in which you can have low and high
self-esteem, but if you put them all together you get sort of a general factor involved. Of course there are all kinds of
studies that are emerging, that people with low self-esteem are more subject to psycho-physiological stress disorders, and
so on. So it affects us on all levels, Jeffrey, very much so.MISHLOVE: Do you find, in looking at high-performing individuals, that they've gone through periods of low
self- esteem and then come out of that? For example, in business you hear cases like Walt Disney, who went bankrupt seven
times before he was a success. Do people actually transform themselves in the process of becoming a high performer?PULOS: Well, I think a lot of people will take models. A
lot of high-performance people read biographies of people in their field, and they find out what these people think like,
what they feel, what they do, and they begin emulating, and they have a kind of role model, and begin incorporating, introjecting,
some of their qualities and characteristics.MISHLOVE:
This must involve a good deal of visualization abilities.PULOS: Well, visualization is another one of the qualities, mental rehearsal. In their mind's eye they're
constantly running a mental movie of what it is that they wish to achieve -- constantly. Much of my work with athletes, for
instance -- I worked with a couple of Canadian swimmers, where they would visualize every single stroke of the race, and the
feeling of the water, the sound of the crowd as they're going up and doing their flips, everything. As a matter of fact, they
would take turns timing each other, and they would be within one second of the splits in the various laps. That's how close
their visualization matched the actual performance. Of course I think everyone is aware of the sorts of things that have been
done in cancer counseling using mental imagery.MISHLOVE:
Why don't we review that for a moment?PULOS:
Well, this is based on the work of Carl Simonton, a radiological oncologist, who used relaxation techniques and mental imagery
to augment the chemotherapy, radiation, the regular medical treatment that people were receiving. A typical example of some
of the imagery, for instance -- one woman with lung cancer would imagine herself going into her lung with a vacuum cleaner
and vacuuming away the diseased tissue, and then coming in with a medicated spray. A fourteen-year-old boy with terminal leukemia
went into his bloodstream dressed like the Lone Ranger, all in white, and every time he saw a leukocyte he'd pull out his
six shooters and kill the leukocyte and haul away the dead leukocytes.MISHLOVE: And these people were then successful in overcoming a disease like cancer.PULOS: Well, with terminal patients, after five years, twenty-six
percent of his population were still alive.MISHLOVE:
People who otherwise would have been --PULOS:
Would not be alive. There was an increase in the quality and quantity and longevity of life. Of course there have been a number
of other studies on mental rehearsal, particularly in the sports field and in business.MISHLOVE: Well, I suppose since the East Germans, I think it was in the Montreal Olympics,
began winning all the medals, the news came out that they were working with visualization.PULOS: MISHLOVE:
Seventy-five percent mental, twenty-five percent physical. That was the most optimal way to prepare.PULOS: Yes, absolutely. When I first started working with athletes
in 1967, with the Canadian national volleyball team, I was the only sports psychologist, to my knowledge, in Canada; there
may have been three or four in the United States. Today every single team in Canada has a sports psychologist, and their primary
function is teaching them how to mentally rehearse, make mental movies, mentally preparing themselves, building up self-esteem,
and so on. It's critical. And goals, again -- there's another example I wanted to give with respect to goal setting. A very
good friend of mine, when he took over as chairman of the board, CEO, of a large corporation, sat down with the vice presidents
and wondered what their goals or vision was for the company, and it was somewhat disjointed. So he thought, what can I do?
He went out and purchased a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, and he removed the top, put the pieces all on the floor, and he
said to them, "Look, this is an exercise in communication and team building. I'd like to see you work together as a team
and put the pieces together." They said, "Oh, great." After about fifteen minutes, with a little bit of jostling,
that sort of thing, he could see that things were getting a little testy.MISHLOVE: So they didn't have the picture.PULOS: No picture. Then he said, "Look, I've got the picture in the next room, but I'm going to take
you in there one at a time and show you the picture, since this is an experiment in team building, in communication. The trick
of the experiment was he showed them nine different box tops, so they had nine different pictures. And when they came out,
of course it was absolute chaos. He finally said, "Stop. I cannot stand this," and he showed them the picture, and
of course they put it together in a matter of ten or fifteen minutes. Question: how many of us are in a relationship, in a
company, in a corporation, in a team, that has no idea what the big picture is?MISHLOVE: Or have different goals.PULOS: Different goals, different expectations.MISHLOVE: So the key to a really successful, high-performance team is where everybody is working towards the
same goal, and they all understand that goal.PULOS:
That's right, that's right. And of course looking for ways to build up self-esteem within both the corporation, the team,
and individually. High-performance people are always going out of their way to build up self- esteem in their people.MISHLOVE: Well, how do you overcome years and years of programming
since childhood, if you grew up in Iowa or someplace like that, where you've been inundated with negative remarks?PULOS: You change it the same way you learned it. You begin
substituting the negative self talk, the negative images, the negative expectations, with positive ones. It's exactly the
same way you learned in the first place.MISHLOVE:
And how do you do that?PULOS: Well, you
begin being aware of the kinds of things you say to yourself.MISHLOVE: You have to monitor your thoughts.PULOS: You know, you're affirming things to yourself, negatively or positively, all the time. Let's say if
I were to try to lose weight: "I can't lose weight. It runs in the family. Diets never work for me." I would change
that to: "Every day in every way I'm finding it easier and easier to meet my goal of weighing one hundred and sixty-five
pounds, or whatever it may be. I'm finding it easy to lose weight. I feel good about myself as I'm looking healthier and feeling
better," and so on.MISHLOVE: What
you seem to be saying -- and I hope I'm not pushing your point too far -- is that really we're all hypnotizing ourselves all
the time.PULOS: Constantly.MISHLOVE: And hypnosis is a powerful force that we all need
to learn how to use in a positive manner.PULOS:
Precisely.MISHLOVE: There's no avoiding
hypnosis, in a sense.PULOS: Well, first
of all is de-hypnotizing yourself from your old suggestions, because if you have forty-five to fifty thousand thoughts a day,
that's an awful lot of subliminal kinds of input that you're putting into yourself, and that you're not aware of. We know
from the research, of course, that subliminal programming is very powerful and very effective. So we're doing it to ourself.
You're not aware of forty-five or fifty thousand thoughts a day, are you?MISHLOVE: I haven't counted.PULOS:
No; it just goes, it happens, and so on. So as you begin becoming aware of them and stopping them, that's critically important.
The other thing, of course, related to companies, is that there are high-self-esteem companies that really foster and build
the sense of self in people, and low-self-esteem companies. A low-self-esteem company, my image for that is the pyramid, where
there's power at the top, control, and the employee is there to be of service to the employer. The high-self-esteem company,
the image I think of is a circle, and there instead of power they're looking for ways of empowering their employees -- sending
them to seminars, increasing their training, and so on; and instead of control, influence. Have you ever tried to control
and influence a child at the same time? You can't. Influence is a much more powerful motivating factor than control. And thirdly,
instead of having the employee be of service to the employer, high-self-esteem companies have it just the other way around
-- how can we, the company, be of service to you, the employer, to make you a better person?MISHLOVE: It seems in today's work environment, more and more of the labor
force are demanding high-self-esteem companies, because people are coming more and more to realize that they want self-actualization
out of their work. It's not enough to just take a paycheck home.PULOS: That's right. And there are other factors too. High-self-esteem people are aware, in effect, that we
learn and process information in different ways -- you know, the old right-brain/left-brain hypothesis. Even though it's a
metaphor, it's a useful metaphor. There was a recent article in the Harvard Business Review on left-brain planners, right-brain
managers.MISHLOVE: Left-brain being very
linear --PULOS: Linear, logical, analytical.MISHLOVE: And right-brain being artistic --PULOS: Being intuitive; simultaneous processing of all kinds
of information. They found that the left-brain planner prefers long written memos, versus the right-brain manager who prefers
this kind of contact -- looking at body language, facial expression, voice tonality, and so on. The right-brain manager is
a networker; they're connected to all kinds of things going on in the community. The doors are always open. You can come in
and go; the phones are ringing. Simultaneity of activity, versus the pipe-smoking, sitting-up-in-a-lofty-office type of right-brain
planner, and so on and so on. So I think high-performance people realize that it's important to oscillate back and forth between
two modes of consciousness depending on the task, and not look at the world through gun-barrel vision.MISHLOVE: So they try and really live balanced lives.PULOS: Yes. And again, finding ways of being more creative,
which again is right-brain.MISHLOVE: But
what about the sense that we often have of a high-performance individual almost being compulsively neurotic, like putting
in fifteen, sixteen hours a day training, or at the office? Is that not true?PULOS: Well, that's more like a workaholic who's always looking for a ten, who's demanding
perfection, when a nine is good enough. You know, excellence is OK. And that's the difference, that you're hooked into the
work rather than --MISHLOVE: You mean you
don't need to be compulsive to be a high performer?PULOS:
No, not at all. As a matter of fact, a lot of compulsive workaholics always have the "better than" attitude -- in
other words, how can I be better than someone else? Whereas the high-performance person is looking at the issue, "How
can I be more than what I am now?" It's a subtle distinction, but an important one.MISHLOVE: So they're really competing against themselves, rather than competing against
other people.PULOS: Precisely.MISHLOVE: They're not driven in the same sense.PULOS: No.MISHLOVE: But they must have a lot of drive.PULOS: They do. You know, there are a number of factors involved. One is the desire, Jeffrey.
You've got to have that fire in your belly, the desire to want to do what you are going to do. Secondly, the expectation --
absolutely, the expectation that what you're going to do is going to work, no question about it. And thirdly, the imagination,
using some of the things we talked about -- the mental rehearsal, self talk, and so on.MISHLOVE: If you don't have that drive, what if you're basically, like many people --
and like I've been at periods in my life -- just kind of lazy, and yet you want to make something more of your life, what
would you do -- set a goal to have more drive?PULOS:
Yes, absolutely. There have been times when I have found that my desire, my sort of fire in the belly, has kind of waned.
So my self talk, my visualization, has been to ignite that fire, to ignite that desire. And even though it doesn't happen
right away, all of a sudden, gradually, I notice things start happening, and boom! I get into it.MISHLOVE: You know, with Tom Peters talking so much these days about a
passion for excellence, in his new book, there seems to be a sense growing in the business community -- and he speaks to so
many people -- that having a passion for your work is essential.PULOS: Absolutely. But there are other factors too, Jeffrey. We keep talking about the intrapsychic kinds
of factors with individuals -- you know, you can change what goes on in here. But for high-performance people it's also very
important, the context in which they work, because we are in context. For example, five years ago I went to the Philippines.
I've been gathering data on traditional healing methods all over the world, and I was fortunate; there were two groups of
Americans seeing the same healer who happened to have a physician as an assistant, and they gave me permission to attend their
meetings, observe the healings, and so on.MISHLOVE:
You're talking about the famous psychic surgeons of the Philippines.PULOS: Well, the energy healers of the Philippines. They were evenly matched groups, and they saw the same
healer -- let's say Group A, Group B. No one in Group A at the end of the two weeks got healed. Everyone in Group B had various
degrees of healing.MISHLOVE: Isn't that
interesting?PULOS: I thought, how can this
be? They're seeing the same healer. And so I went back and reviewed my notes and listened to my tape recordings. There were
two people in Group A, who every time someone would get off the table, they would say, "Oh, I don't know; you don't look
any better to me. I don't think this stuff works. Do you think they're faking it? I don't believe in it." I called that
group my psychic bleeders. Every time someone got up on the table in Group B, someone would be touching them. The moment they
got off the table, they'd embrace them and say, "I love you. You look great. You're doing terrific. You're looking better
than you ever looked." I call them my psychic fountains. Question: how many of us are in a context with psychic bleeders
because it bleeds off the energy, bleeds off the enthusiasm, and depotentiates a lot of things from happening?MISHLOVE: A certain cynicism.PULOS: In a way. And again, high-performance people avoid bleeders, and
they look for nourishing rather than toxic kinds of people.MISHLOVE: And I suppose it's because they have enough self-esteem, where they say, "I deserve better
than this."PULOS: Precisely, precisely,
and they attract high-self-esteem people. I guess some people say, "Well, what do you mean by high self-esteem? How does
that work in a relationship, let's say?"MISHLOVE:
Right.PULOS: I'll never forget, I was practicing
one time, and I was treating this man for alcoholism, and he gave up drinking after several months. Immediately his wife divorced
him and promptly married another alcoholic, because her self-esteem was such to be in fact in the role of a Red Cross nurse,
and so on. And he immediately saw; once his self-esteem went up, he attracted someone of like self- esteem. That happens,
I think, in corporations, individually, teams, and so on.MISHLOVE: Well, I think the exciting thing about what you're saying, Lee, is that people can, by studying
the characteristics of high-performing individuals, actually learn to change their lives, to move more in that direction.PULOS: Absolutely. I think that's critical -- to have a model,
hero, ego idea, whatever you want to call it.MISHLOVE:
And one of the key elements that you've mentioned -- I know we've covered a few; there have been goal setting, and visualization,
and having a drive.PULOS: Well, goal setting,
mental rehearsal, watching your self talk, being able to use both sides of the brain.MISHLOVE: Learning how to work with affirmations.PULOS: Affirmations, and so on. Also they're very health conscious, and very careful of
the sources of stress in their life. We know, of course, there are physical sources of stress or nutritional sources of stress,
and psychological. And they're very careful in the way that they allow those to impinge on their everyday life.MISHLOVE: Well, Dr. Lee Pulos, it's been a real pleasure
having you with me today. I think you exemplify in your own life the qualities of a high-performance individual.PULOS: Thank you very much, Jeffrey.MISHLOVE: Thank you very much for being with me.
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