When you earnestly pursue your goals, reasons to do some things and to avoid other things appear in your life. A young man from a tough neighborhood has never been involved with drugs or in trouble with the law. Do you marvel at his good fortune and strength of character? When he was ten years old, he had set the goal of becoming an astronaut. At last report, he graduated from the U. S. Air Force Academy with a degree in astronautical engineering. He is so focused on his goal that he avoids doing anything to hurt his chances of success.

An Easy Mark

It is easy to spot a person who has a clear set of goals. That person is the one who exudes a sense of purpose and determination. He or she has abundant energy and is willing to put more time and effort into any given task. Being goal oriented can even help you to become more positive, optimistic, and assertive!

People who continually set, pursue, and monitor their career goals, for example, are more productive than people who simply “work at a job.” In contrast, the uninspired worker goes home at the end of the day, having gained nothing more than a few dollars and a lot of aggravation.

When you set goals in all the major areas of your life, the right roads appear in front of you like mirages in the desert. Yet, rather than mirages, they are real! Choices become infinitely easier to make and you have taken a giant step toward living a balanced life.

People who have a clear set of goals in life exude a sense of purpose and determination, are taken seriously by others and are respected by their peers. In contrast, those who have no goals exist feeling emotionally, socially, spiritually, physically, and professionally unbalanced, causing anxiety.

The Right Outlook

In the past two decades there has been much criticism levied at positive thinking, probably because it has been exploited and over-commercialized. However, if you are serious about succeeding in your chosen field, you’ll need to cultivate positive thinking as an everyday habit.

Negative assumptions, which set up internal obstacles that can automatically defeat you, usually become self-fulfilling prophecies. You assume you cannot do something and then act in ways that guarantee our failure which, in turn, reinforces our original assumption. Our negative assumptions, therefore, must be replaced by positive assumptions–positive thinking–that can, in turn, generate positive results.

Self-confidence goes hand-in-hand with positive thinking. It is the food that feeds our personal growth. It is an absolutely indispensable part of achievement. Self-confidence works best when based on your own knowledge and self-respect, rather than on comparisons of yourself with others. Don’t compare yourself to other people because you’re likely to feel either pompous or bitter… and neither is desirable. So, your self-confidence needs to exist in a vacuum, which it can.

A Skewed Self-concept?

Armed with positive thinking and self-confidence, something called a self-concept may yet be a stumbling block for you. Your self-concept is the image you hold of yourself. It is the evaluation you justly or unjustly make based on everything you know, or think you know, about yourself.

Most people harbor an inaccurate self-concept and are negative thinkers by habit. This limited self-concept acts as a filter to limit the amount of new things that they feel they are capable of doing.

Hence, when a new thought or feeling comes into our awareness, if it is consistent with your self-concept, then the new idea is accepted as valid. If the idea is not consistent with your self-concept, however, it is rejected.

Maintaining a positive self-concept is one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself, especially when it comes to considering and establishing new types of goals that may be somewhat outside the bounds of what you’ve previously considered or attempted.