This is a guest post by Mark Harrison.

Mark writes for a number of self-development websites. Check out his new book, Thirty Days to Change Your Life.

Soon we will be into a new year, so it’s a good time to reflect on the past year and take stock of what’s been achieved – and what hasn’t. Did you make any new years’ resolutions in January? How many of them are you still on track with?

We all have goals. And we all set them for ourselves all the time. But usually we don’t know it – we’re not being very conscious. In this article I want to discuss a few ideas which may help you to set goals more consciously and also introduce a practical way to actually get them achieved.

Create specific goals

I don’t think I’ve ever read a self-improvement book or anything on the law of attraction that didn’t emphasize in some way the importance of goal setting. Actually, we all set goals all the time, it’s just that usually we do it unconsciously, and most of the goals people set are pretty odd. ‘I’m going to be exhausted by the end of the week. This meeting is going to be boring, I’m never going to get through all this work …’ and so on. Why would anyone set these goals? Your goals don’t have to be like this so stop doing it!

You need to try to be more conscious about your goals, and to this end it helps to write them down. Goals written down are like a compass that guides you through the chaos of daily life. Written goals send out a powerful message to the universe. It’s the first step in a process that will lead you wherever you want to go.

Start to achieve your goals right NOW!

The law of attraction works in the following way: thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to things. Most people think that events and circumstances are reflected in your thoughts and feelings. In fact, it’s your thoughts and feelings that draw events and circumstances into your life. So you need to start acting as if you already have what you aim to achieve in order to draw it into your life.

We’ve been taught that we ‘all good things come to those who wait’ and that delayed gratification is better than having it all now. In some ways, this is certainly right. The young couple that buys a house that’s too expensive for them and fills it with push furnishings and all mod cons is going to get into desperate trouble with their credit line because they couldn’t wait. The child (or the adult!) who stuffs his face with chocolate instead of waiting for dinner is going to suffer as a result. This kind of delayed gratification is a necessary and healthy thing. But what we’re taking about here is not putting off your goals any more – we’re talking about getting them achieved.

You can have what you want immediately, but not in full – perhaps one might say that you can have the quality but not the quantity. What you have has got to be real, but it just won’t be the whole thing.

An example given by Raymond Aaron in his book Double Your Income Doing What You Love, is making a $1000 deposit into your savings account each month. This is a goal. In order to achieve this goal you need to give the law of attraction something to work with. You need to start acting as if it’s already happening. So, decide on the date each month when you will make the deposit and go right ahead – but you don’t have to deposit $1000: you can make it $25 or even $1 – just get into the habit of doing it, and calling it a ‘$1000 deposit.’ Telling people about it will also help. But the main thing is to do it every month without fail, to build up a habit and to keep thinking of it as a $1000 deposit.

As another example, maybe you want a chauffeur – that’s your goal but you can’t achieve that right now. So start by taking a taxi once a week, or as many times as you can.

Maybe you want an extravagantly expensive new home. So go looking around new places – every month spend an afternoon looking at luxury homes and show flats, imagine that it’s yours. Keep on doing it, keep holding the thought and the universe will move to attract a wonderful new home into your life.

Examples are endless, but the point is to start behaving as if your goal has already been achieved, as far as you can. What will happen is that the real thing – the full, unabridged version – will start to appear in your life. Occasionally you will be able to make that $1000 deposit. Because you have built up certain habits, before you know it, you’ll be living in a different way. This is how the LOA works – you need to give the universe something to work with, so start behaving as if you already have what you want and pretty soon it will be yours.

Small things can make all the difference

When you change your life in a small way and keep on doing things in this different way, after a surprisingly short time, your life will be different. A boat that changes its rudder by one degree will soon enough be headed in the opposite direction. Intentionally changing little things will be the start of a process that will radically change your life. Whether its’ learning a language, writing a book, building a website, having a great marriage, building a career or getting rich, persistently acting in a small way is key – a dripping tap soon fills the bucket!

This isn’t just a mind trick. It is a game, as is all of life (in a sense). So go out there and start playing!

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