The Real Goal

My dad would always talk to my sisters and me about The Goal. I thought he was crazy at the time.

The Goal. The Goal. The Goal.

He didn't mean goals as in "I'm going to increase my business by 20%," he meant that when you go into any situation, you've got to know what is your desired, tangible outcome.

For instance, let's say that you're returning some material you ordered over the Internet. The materials have a 30-day-money-back guarantee and you've returned the item within the 30 days. For some strange reason, the company is giving you problems about returning your money. The goal is that you want your money back. Your goal is not to have the company apologizing or promising you the world. You want your money back. You charged the materials on a charge card. You put the item into dispute with your credit card company. If putting the purchase into dispute takes the charge off your card, then you've reached your goal. What's the purpose of putting your energy into getting angry over the incident? You reached your goal and now you can let it go.

Another situation would be if you go in to complain to anyone about a service or product. If you complain about something, you must know what tangible thing you want them to do to make you happy. People will usually give you what request, but you've got to make a request.

You've got to let them know what they can do for you. These folks want to keep your business. If you've got an experienced person behind the counter, they can usually guess what will make you happy. Some people, however, can't. They're looking for you to let them know so they can get on the phone to their manager and say that this customer wants x. That makes everyone happy.

So the next time you head into a situation, think about what you ultimately want to accomplish and keep focused on that. If you're nervous, visualize yourself achieving your goal. After all, you can get anything you want. You just have to have a goal.