Goal Mapping- What goes in to a good map?

Grant Leboff: Brian, we’re talking about the importance of mapping out your goals, stating your goals, setting them out. What goes into a goal map? If someone is starting to put a goal map together, what are the things that have to go into that?

Brian Mayne There are seven steps that make up the goal map, and the map is always made in two parts, words and imagery. The reason for these two parts is because there are two sides to the brain – there are two thought processes. The left side of the brain is more logical and thinks in words, it is strategic. The right side of the brain is more leadership and creative, the right brain thinks in pictures. By using the combination of words and pictures it helps to activate the whole of the brain. That achieves two things, it gives a level of conscious clarity about what is to be achieved and it also helps to command the subconscious because the subconscious mind responds to imagery.

So the actual seven steps that iterate between this brain function, start with the right brain looking forward; [#1]; What do you want? And then move to the left brain; you may want a whole lot of things, but [#2;] What is the main thing? Then step #3; Map it out. So you see the connections between the different goals and you identify a main goal. Step #4; Why do you want it? Sometimes that will be logical reasons but mostly it’s emotional, even with my big corporate clients; Microsoft, Siemens, Disney, Coca-Cola, their reasons tend to be emotional – collective emotion – team spirit, best place to be, but it’s still emotional reasons. Then step #5; and this is what makes a goal a goal – when? Because without that is just wish. And so you put an achievement date on it and you get a start date, that gives us a timeline. And then the last two steps are; [Step #6;] how? What are the significant actions we need to take? And [Step #7;] who? Who is going to be involved in the process?

Those seven steps are the seven critical aspects of any form of conscious achievement. What the goal mapping system does is that it guides people through those seven steps and it then captures their answers in words and pictures to activate the whole of the brain.

Grant Leboff: Let’s just say that you’ve put together your goal map and you’ve gone through this quite detailed process, how does one commit to the goal? I know that in some ways going through the process probably helps, but I often speak with people who have got a goal, and just the way that they say it, even if it’s written down, you’re not quite sure that they believe it, because I’m not quite sure if believe it. So where does that leap come from? Okay, that is the goal, I suppose that in some ways it’s believing they can be achieved as well…

Brian Mayne: In creating the goal map, which takes about an hour to do, the physical effort of putting pen to paper, the mental concentration of coming up with imagery that represents your written statements or selecting the image in our free online software, all of that helps to keep the person picturing the goal, thinking about the goal which stimulates the brain cell activity that forms the connections that starts to build the belief. That happens over the process of an hour but then, after they’ve got their map, the little ritual that we guide people into is; look at the map at least once every day.

Each time they are looking at the map, they are picturing themselves achieving their goals. That re-stimulates the same brain cell connections and strengthens the belief. Siemens, for instance, will have all of their employees’ goal maps scanned as a screen saver on their PC, to keep it in their consciousness. Microsoft have got them up on plasma screens all around the call centre. BT will take a copy, they use it as a personal development plan and the manager will retain a copy and is brought out in your performance review. The more you look at the map the more it integrates into your consciousness, the more it helps you believe you’re going to achieve the goals.

Grant Leboff: So that’s really important. It’s not just a question of writing them down and having written them once, it’s then revisiting those as well?

Brian Mayne The latest brain scan surveys are suggesting that you would need to rewrite your goals 100 times every day for one month to equal the power of using one picture, because it’s the picture that stimulates the right side of the brain. Actually there’s nothing new here, Confucius said over 2,500 years ago a picture is worth 1000 words, and so it is this combination of words and pictures that makes the goal mapping system so powerful. That’s why it spread, really through word of mouth recommendation, to more than 3 million people over the last 20 years

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