The Magic of Yearly Goal Setting

Greetings friends!

I am writing you from a freezingly cold December afternoon in New York City. Christmas is a week away, and I have not bought a single gift yet. Tomorrow, I’ll start shopping, I promise!

With each blog entry I try to describe something of benefit to you, and I try to see a principle operation in my life. And it’s not about me being a teacher at all. It’s more about you the reader and I beholding a piece of “real magic” and hopefully learning and observing together so that you can improve your life as I improve mine.

One thing that was a huge turn off growing up was and teacher, advisor or advice giver who didn’t walk the talk. In between the words and the sentences lies the feeling and vibe of truth, and you know if someone is full of bull or not.

I try to make myself the guinea pig before writing or speaking. Whether it’s a musical principle or a life principle I test and observe. Then I speak or write.

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I am reflecting on this past year 2009 and it’s had ups and downs – but I gotta say, truthfully it has had more ups than anything. I attribute this to weekly “mastermind” / accountability meetings with a friend and bassist extrordanaire Paul Beaudry. (our duo album is coming soon fyi…)

I had an awesome streak of goals that I met – I released the Stevie Wonder Guitar Instructional DVD, the Chameleon CD, the Christmas Guitar Celebration CD, I toured for several months non stop, and appeared 3 times in 3 continents on stage with Tommy Emmanuel.

Whew! (How did he do it all? Read on…)

On a weekly basis (when off the road) Paul and I met over morning coffee and acted as “accountability” partners. Each of us would get an hour for our “stuff”. We would advise eachother, tip eachother off to resources and encourage one another. We’d each leave the meeting committing to action that must be taken the following week.

After accomplishing “things” and seeing principles in action you see that the most powerful thing you can do is visualize. You already do, as a matter of fact. If you are envisioning what groceries you’ll buy and find them in your fridge ours later – you used visualization!

Humankind has known this for centuries, and devoted to the power of prayer and belief since ancient times. Now that us humans are going deeper and deeper into the mysteries of quantum physics, it gets more and more mysterious.

What we see in our minds eye, and what we believe is what we get.

It’s very fashionable to talk about this stuff these days, all the LOA and “The Secret” stuff. But doing it – really doing it – and seeing it, is breathtaking.

Paul and I used a system this year by success mentor Raymond Aaron called “annual backwards goals”. The idea is that you envision yourself at the end of the year, going to a New Year’s Eve party and thanking yourself for the goals you have achieved. That’s right, so on Feb 12, 2009 I wrote myself a letter but dated it December 31, 2009 thanking myself for achieving the goals of 2009 that at that time – had not yet been achieved.

What’s super cool about mapping the year’s goals out is that it adds a new dimension to your monthly goals, then to your weekly goals and of course daily goals.

The result? Well this process sets up a picture in your mind, and every action, discussion, email, phone call and breath end up being directed towards the accomplishing of those goals. No, not in a pushy conscious way but in an automated, sub-conscious way. It is as though the goal was a vortex whose gravitational pull you can’t escape. Your mind functions as as a success seeking mechanism.

This works equally well for anticpating bad events and worrying – so one needs to be strong and envision the good stuff. A mental couch potato has no problem seeing the bad in life or worrying. It takes strength to keep one’s vision positive and productive!

I very much hope to somehow empower musicians and artists (and everyone else) to harness this awesome power. These principles for many years were written off as feel good mumbo-jumbo, but what you start to see is that faith, vision and creativity are far more important than what lies in front of you. What’s in front of you physically is already the past, but your vision and ideas are the future.

Quantum physics is proving that the outcome of experiments changes depending on the “observer”. The observer is co mingled with matter and energy and is part of the experiment. If this is the case, know that your observation and vision manipulates the matter and circumstances around you too.

Happy Holidays! More to come on this fascinating topic….