How Can Time Spent Reading Success Articles Bring Your Goals Closer?

A single article has the power to make a profound impact upon a person’s outlook. One line of text, whether contained in a lengthy tome or a short article of just a few hundred words, can strike a chord and produce dramatic results. How can this be? Purely and simply, because so many people have only a vague idea of what their exact goal is. They have a broad-brush vision of how they want things to turn out, but haven’t made it specific – until one day they read about someone else’s goal or achievement and realize – “I want that!”.

Despite the advent of radio, television, the internet and all the other modern methods of disseminating ideas, reading remains the number one source of inspiration for most successful people. The old adage “readers are leaders” still holds true. I think this is because reading is usually a solitary activity – we are able to absorb material and see how it might be of value to us without there being an immediate discussion and exchange of ideas such as might happen with a television program or a movie.

Of course, we can’t read everything – and we should discipline ourselves to look upon time available for reading as a precious and limited resource – and not squander it on the gossip papers. As Orison Swett Marden said: “If we read inferior books …our own standards will suffer from the contagion”.

So, we need to be aware of our reasons for choosing to read any particular material – is it for education (work-related or otherwise), for information or for entertainment? Or is the real reason for reading at this time simply to avoid doing something else? Perhaps we need to acknowledge when we just need to relax for ten minutes and read something to distract us, and not confuse this with other, more productive reading.

Although we need to keep up with a “general knowledge” of the world around us, this can be managed by taking just one weekly international news magazine such as Time or Newsweek.

Otherwise, we need a bit of narrow focus. For instance, learning about new developments in our particular specialism, whether that’s work-related or a hobby. As Andrew Carnegie said “the men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it”.

And so, back to the purpose of this success article – which is to simply and concisely give you four essential steps to goal achievement:

1. Define your “success article” – whether that’s an amount of money, something that you want to own, the exact amount you would like to weigh, an athletic record or an exercise you aim to perform – whatever it is, you must first define it very specifically.

Write it down as a clear statement describing the number one thing that you most desire to have, be or do.

2. Write down the outline plan of action describing how you will achieve this goal – including the main intermediate steps along the way. This stage in the process will give you a feel for what achieving this goal will cost you – and now is the time to state how much effort / time / money you are prepared to devote to it.

3. Set a deadline. Not just for the accomplishment of the final goal, but for each of the principal intermediate stages outlined in your plan of action. And once the deadlines are set – make sure you keep to them.

4. Commit to memory the goal, the outline plan and the deadline – and repeat them (out loud if possible) when you wake up each morning, at least once during the day and then again just before falling asleep.

Success will follow if you write down your principal definite aim, form a workable action plan and then and resolve to complete this meticulously, on time.
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If you want to know more about Orison Swett Marden and how his works inspired Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone, Norman Vincent Peale, Anthony Robbins, and many others then visit http://www.MardensKeysToSuccess.com where you can also gain FREE access to Brendan McKeogh's mini-course on Marden plus a FREE copy of the first chapter of "Marden's Keys To Success."
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