When we talked about ways to increase your intelligence, one of the points we mentioned was the importance of having goals and objectives in life. There is a world of difference between a person with a very clearly defined goal and someone who doesn’t know what they want to do with their life. And for the sceptics out there, let’s take a trip back to 1953.
This point is clearly illustrated by a study carried out with Yale University’s class of 1953.
The researchers asked the graduates whether they had a set of clearly defined goals in life, written down, with a plan for achieving them. Only 3% of the graduates who took part in the study said they did. The rest felt it was still too early, that life takes many turns, or simply that they didn’t think it was very important.
The researchers came back 20 years later, in 1973, and visited the participants from the class of 1953. To their astonishment, they found that the 3% of graduates who had said back then that they had set goals were worth more, in financial terms, than the remaining 97% put together.
In other words, that 3% had accumulated more wealth than the other 97%.
The study only measured financial success. However, the researchers also observed that the 3% had achieved other, less measurable goals, such as happiness or satisfaction with life, as well as feeling more personally fulfilled. That is hardly surprising if we consider that greater financial security and more financial freedom generally bring, without a doubt, more peace of mind, fewer problems and a greater sense of personal fulfilment.
It’s all about focus
To succeed, you have to focus and aim straight at what you want to achieve. No distractions. And to aim at a target, you first need to have one. When the brain has a clearly defined goal, it can focus, and not by magic, but because that is what the mind does. And it is the mind itself that will give us everything we need to head towards that goal. If you have no goals, that energy will be scattered in all directions.
Featured image: DimiTalen, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
