You’re preparing to begin Acquisition! Acquisition! is the process of attaining the goals you set and experiencing in real life what you have only dreamed about at night.

And someone is out to get you?!

No way. Not your friends and family. No. No. No. No.

Yes…

Here’s how it is going to happen, how you’ve experienced it, and how to know who your real friends are…

If you “succeed”, your friends will have a place to borrow money from. They’ll have a place to hole up when things are tough for them. Who knows, if you do quite well, you might be able to hire them away from the living hell they call a Hamster Wheel. Why would they want you to fail?!

Why would they want to even quietly persuade you to fail at your goals? Don’t they support you because they love you?

For the sake of discussion, give me the premise. I’ll show you the evidence shortly, but I need you to work with the proposal first. Then let’s see what the case is and what the proof turns out to be. Fair enough?

Good deal. But do remain skeptical.

Hypothesis: A lot of your friends want you to fail…and fail miserably.

And again, just imagine it’s true.

What are these persuasive weapons of sabotage they are they using?

Are there any friends who are “on your side?”

How can you tell the difference….or even spot the influence in the first place?

Assuming the point is proven, a more important question comes about:

Can you influence your own outcomes for the results you want over detractors?

Could you be seen as kind, polite and a solid human being yet be disliked instantly?

Sometimes you’re sitting next to a friend or listening to them talk on the phone, and they tell you they want to lose weight, or perhaps finally start their own Coffee Table Business at home. (about time…)

You hear them, and with some people, you immediately feel this sense of requirement to take up their cause, and influence them to “make it happen.” You may even want to help them.

That’s what we’d all want to expect we’d do…but the vast majority of people don’t. The vast majority of people non-consciously sabotage some of the most important goals you have.

KEY POINT: The large majority of your friends non-consciously sabotage you and your goals.

But WHY?! What is the Problem with Your Goals?

Although this is a critical discussion for you in Acquisition: The Comprehensive Goal Attainment System I want to give you a few important points here.

SOME GOALS you have are definitely acceptable in the minds of some friends.

Many goals and dreams you have are not acceptable in the minds of friends and family.

For some goals, your friend(s) take the polar opposite “point of view”, and they not only wish you ill on your new endeavor, they actually take some kind of action to make it difficult for you to move in the direction of your outcome.

Perhaps they offer a piece of candy to the future you…minutes after you have stated that you want to be The Next Thinner Person….

But why?

Why would one friend not want to see another friend succeed? Why would YOUR FRIEND take up a (sometimes subtle) cause, AGAINST your Future Achievement?!

Three facts surface from research into this growing field of, What Influences The Goals of Others:

1. When you want to achieve something, there are a lot of people in your life with a vested interest in you maintaining your Status Quo. 
2. Often, what you want to achieve runs counter to what their own goals…either for you or themselves…and half the time they aren’t even consciously aware of this fact. 
3. Random Triggers in other peoples environments can cause them to do and say amazingly foolish things to thwart your goal efforts. 

After all, if you find out how easy it really is to start your own Coffee Table Biz or drop 10 pounds, you just made a lot more money and lost a lot more weight than your anti-cheerleader friend or relative!

Sometimes, your friend is aware of their intention to sabotage your success and future achievement.

Sometimes they aren’t aware at all. It literally can all happen reactively in the non-conscious part of the brain.

Fasten your proverbial seat belt…this is a scary ride…

Are your friends Agents of Sabotage?…

Agents of Sabotage

It appears that most people are hardwired to sabotage their own success as well.

Recent research showed that people would rather make $75,000 per year and live on that income in a community where most people earn that same amount than earn $150,000 and live in a community where everyone else earns twice that.

Now that is crazy.

And crazy is normal.

People would rather feel their status is the same as most others in the environment vs. having TWICE as much money almost guaranteeing a secure (and fun) future.

This is a lifetime lesson for you and me. If you EVER FEEL yourself thinking along those lines, stop yourself before you screw up your life. Make it your goal to live in a neighborhood where you earn twice what you do now and that is only half of what everyone else in the community earns.

Fighting the Competition Demon within yourself is hard enough! Dealing with other people’s negative influence is blisteringly difficult, especially when the relationship matters to you.

The Competition Demon is a bizarre “feeling” that happens inside most people. It is simply more pronounced in some people than others. It doesn’t make immediate sense until you consider that most people don’t want to just earn more money, they want to NOT be making LESS than most other people.

And if you go and start earning more money….well you just became the potential lightning rod of overt or covert sabotage.

It’s important to note that not all people will react this way to your earning more money or losing weight or having a beautiful girlfriend or great looking hubby.

And that is why it’s important to make tough choices in your life in ADVANCE.

Internally, when I’m coaching Inner Circle Members and they say, “I just had my best year ever,” I feel fired up. That happened on over half of the calls I had with our group this year. You would expect zero based on the economy…but personal performance is not simply economy bound.

A few people told me they had been successfully losing weight. Again, excitement.

It makes you feel good inside. Or it does me.

SOME people want you to earn more money, lose weight, look better, feel better, live longer, be happier and on and on.

But that attitude is NOT the norm in human nature.

Imagine that you are walking down the street with a friend who is much more attractive to the gender that you would LIKE to be more attractive to.

It stings a bit. It has to happen. It’s a simple math problem. How you navigate those FEELINGS is what will determine your FUTURE in most aspects of life.

That stinging will either cause you to help bring others down to one level or push you to move UP toward that level.

The Competition Demon inside of your friend or relative…that piece of them that wants to be equal or superior to those around them…can trigger off other “parts”, conscious or nonconscious, to be better themselves or negatively influence you away from your goal, your dream, your desired outcome.

Pick Your Friends Wisely

Now you know one reason it is very important to pick the RIGHT people to hang out with.

You want to select people who work harder, smarter, make more money, work at looking better and psychologically push you to be better in as many ways as possible.

Begin to train yourself to think, “I want to be more like him in that way!” (In a way he succeeds, or excels that you have not matched yet.)

I know I “grow” the most when I get to hang out with people who I feel are out of my league in some significant respect.

When that happens, you take advantage of the time and tap their brain or take advantage of an inadequacy and become determined to work on that.

OK, you see the problem, it’s now crystal. The question is how do you know when others are sabotaging you – because it is TYPICALLY NOT EVIDENT.

How Do You Know They are Sabotaging You?…

How Do You Recognize When They Are Sabotaging You?

People’s sabotaging efforts usually take the form of irrational and often hostile criticism OR support that encourages no personal growth.

“I’d rather be happy than have money.”

That is one of the most common themes you’ll hear from the saboteur. You’ll also pick up on this one:

“Media has a sick obsession with thin. It’s terrible how they promote people to wear size 6 jeans. No one wears size 6 jeans.”

But, the fact is that it is a good goal. In America, the average pair of women’s jeans is now 10. It’s picked up a few points since I became aware of sizes…

Remember that people are going to rationalize their weaknesses in any way they can. That is human nature. It is biological in basis.

I promise you happiness and wealth have little to do with each other other than making good dinner companions.

You will see friends whose Competition Demon wants you to have …almost…as much as they do…and then it doesn’t want you to have ANY more…

There is a bunch of research that shows if your friend earns $X per hour, they want you to earn approximately $X – 1 per hour.

Another common saboteur of health and vitality is this theme:

“People are constantly too worried about how they look to others….”

A myriad of nonsensical mumbo jumbo follows, but the fact is that your appearance matters a LOT. IN FACT, little matters more as to how you will fare in society if you are a woman. As a man, it matters a great deal but not to the degree as it does with women.

You want your friend to encourage you to go walk with them, not go to dinner and have the big dinner with the bigger desert. Think about it…

People intuitively know the value of physical appearance whether in body weight, proportion, facial structure, hair, etc. They feel it and see the value assigned every single day.

Height for men, weight for women and even whether you have hair on your head (for men) factor into your income in absolutely unreasonable ways.

You’ll choose to deal with it or not; but beware of others around you.

Are they encouraging you to lose weight or sending messages to “stay just like you are, you are fine.”

Those messages are really telegraphing you to stay just as THEY are.

There will be other friends who will tell you that it all doesn’t matter; that you are great “just as you are” in other ways, as well. Think really carefully when you hear those themes. Do you CHOOSE to stay as you are? If so, you have the right friend in your presence. If not….change.

How Else Will They Sabotage Me?

Other people undermine your upcoming achievements in a different way.

In many cases, they simply come out and tell you that you don’t have what it takes, that you are wasting your time, that you don’t have the right education, that you aren’t good enough and so on and so forth.

These people have already given up on themselves, or they think themselves superior to you. Either way, their attempts at negative influence need a healthy dose of you leaving their presence and then taking a Focused Self Influence.

What Can I Proactively Do?

Get the new program Acquisition! The Comprehensive Goal Attainment System where you will learn ALL the aspects of problems like these.

There are some core reasons that make it a no-brainer, but a game-changing factor is that you are learning how to attain the goals YOU CHOOSE in spite of everyone else around you.

You can be as smart as you want and work as hard as you want but you MUST make good decisions about your environment, your brain fuel, the contexts you place yourself in, the people you allow near you.

Some people are so noxious and toxic to your success they can’t be detected, as they often appear to subtly “support” your dreams and yet they constantly undercut who you want to be.

A true friend, fan and supporter will encourage you to be more, better, be more secure financially, help you look and feel better and poke you toward your dreams.

I was thinking about a cool and fairly recent study today.

Just having a businessman’s briefcase on a table in a room caused people to keep more money in The Ultimatum Game! Same thing is true with people who view subliminally flashed images of guns and weapons on a computer screen.

Unfortunately, keeping more money in The Ultimatum Game is not always a good strategy, as cooperative ventures are far and away the most successful 2012.

You and I are influenced by the littlest, most unlikely things in our environment…and your destiny often dwells in the objects you come into contact with and the friends you talk about goals and dreams with.

OK, the question we’ve been trying to avoid. Ready?

Do you need to get rid of some of your friends? Really?

Do I Need to Get Rid Of All My Friends?…

Do I Have to Get Rid of All My Friends?

Of course not….Not all of your friends need to be excised. Some of them are possibly a very good influence.

Both you and your friends need to select what OBJECTS and IMAGES are in your environment. The “stuff” all around you are triggers and some of those triggers trigger you to be less successful by nonconscious goal deactivation.

You and I have talked about how geniuses like Stephen Hawking use triggers for goal activation to spark creativity and motivation. You will definitely be surprised at what you find out will drive you to success or failure. The fact is that people’s current behavior is shaped, not just by their genes and their living situation, but by the “stuff” that is around them in the living room and the office!

These triggers then come “into contact” with YOU when you are with the individual, or in their environment.

This is why you feel differently in your living room vs. your den. It’s why you feel differently at your home vs. the home of someone else. What matters most is of course where you are driven to perform at your best. What are the triggers in the environment? Which people are around? Who is notably not around when you are most creative or productive?

KEYPOINT: The contents of another persons home or office could be shooting down your dreams…and you may need to point it out to them….or not go to their home or office!

Of course, not everyone is going to be driven by the same stimuli to aggressively pursue their dreams. What causes one person’s activation of a driver toward a goal can trigger a hostile reaction in another person.

Hostile reactions are NOT bad if they are productive in nature. You must test triggers that fire off negative feelings as well as positive feelings. Remember too MUCH positive is going to lead to addiction. That’s fine as long as the addiction is causing the productivity. But when it begins to steal your productivity and creativity, you must excise the stimulus.

It’s impossible to overstate the environment, objects and people you come into contact with in your question to reach your goals. The new program Acquisition: The Comprehensive Goal Attainment System delves deeply into your mind to help you isolate all of the things that are going to be helpful for you to avoid sabotage and acquire your goals.

Imagine someone is a recently diagnosed diabetic and you set out a beautiful chocolate cake for everyone at the table. The diabetic may not be thrilled to pieces….they might be hurt.

The same stimuli that can be a peace offering or indulgence for one can be a message to have a coma for another…

This doesn’t mean that you are responsible for everyone’s feelings at all times, because the fact is that LOTS of things influence, and it is very, very hard to see all the major influences on you or another person in a single environment without great attention and study.

Simply get the Key Concept that your chocolate cake seems like it should be the supreme gift to mankind; but to some it will be the generator of hostility.

Make sense?

Aggression Nonconsciously Activated?

In their truly brilliant paper Goals and Nonconscious Aggression; Nonconscious Battles of Will: Implicit Reactions Against the Goals and Motives of Others, Dr. N. Pontus Leander and Dr. Tanya L. Chartrand (2010) note that:

“…nonconsciously activated goals and chronic motives tinge and distort individuals’ perceptions of others in ways that lead them to ‘see’ others in more hostile ways….

…others’ goals seem to inherently pressure individuals to respond in kind, sometimes leading them to emulate the aggressive pursuits of those around them and at other times leading them to react against others and their goals…(and finally)

….how goals may, on their own, often nonconsciously facilitate behavioral aggression over the natural course of their pursuit.”

There you have the problems of sabotage in a nutshell. NOW what do you do?

Now what do you have to do?…

What To Do?

Observe how all of this works and where you see some good news and some bad news…about the people you hang out with.

Imagine you are making dinner. You have a plan to make your partner all happy. It will be a nice dinner that will put a smile on his face for the rest of the evening.

Imagine that dinner is scheduled to be served right at the beginning of Monday Night Football.

On the flip side of the coin, imagine that the other person doesn’t really care about dinner THAT much and Monday Night Football is definitely where his focus is. (That would be me…)

Nonconsciously, he is resistant to your task of making dinner, almost “feeling put out.” He isn’t “thinking” about it in any sense, he simply feels as if you are in the way of his goal of watching the football game.

Important: None of this likely bridges into conscious awareness.

But, he may become irritable and may even make a snack, grab a drink and some chips during the pre-game show.

Obviously, you sit there and observe this generally good person’s (outright all around good guy to be sure) crazy behavior, wondering just what he could be thinking…

And, of course, he isn’t consciously “thinking” anything, though he might find himself wondering why he feels a bit hostile to you even though you are making a nice dinner!

That’s how Your Activated Goals can trigger negative reactions in someone else.

Now just imagine that your next goal is about that Coffee Table Business.

Don’t be surprised if you begin to see a LOT of negative reactions.

You’d think you’d have support when beginning a project to start extra income coming in right?

No way.

What Helps?

The good news is that lots of communication can help deactivate their anger and hostility. But until you do, realize that it’s mighty easy to experience fights and arguments about pretty much anything while you (or they) have an Activated Goal “working.”

It’s worth noting that a terse “response” to the Monday Night F’ers hostility toward you such as…”so you don’t want a nice dinner and don’t appreciate all the work I go to…” is not going to connect in their mind.

Better, “Getting ready for the game? How ’bout we have dinner in the living room and we can watch the game?”

Their Activated Goal is now facilitated by your behavior making you a worthy partner for the evening.

Seem like too much work for a relationship? Just come and eat the dinner? Don’t worry the relationship will be over shortly.

Do They Even Know….They Have A Goal?

Importantly, the majority of goals people drive for are nonconscious. They aren’t even aware that they have a goal and are pursuing it and they aren’t aware of how they respond to other people when they are pursuing even the simplest of goals.

But wait!

How could that be? Are people on such auto-pilot that they aren’t aware of how they even feel about other people?

That’s exactly correct.

Quite often BECAUSE OF your positive, polite, or kind behavior, you could be seen as one big negative in the minds of a group of people.

So DO THIS….

In one study, Bargh, Green, & Fitzsimons, told subjects they were going to evaluate an interviewee’s behavior on videotape.

Two of four groups of subjects were told the interviewee was trying to get a job as a newspaper reporter. Expected behaviors included rudeness and assertiveness.

The other job to be filled watched by two separate groups? A waiter. Those groups were told to look for politeness.

In the midst of each interview, a “colleague” of the interviewer enters into the picture and either:

a) rudely interrupts the interview

or

b) politely interrupts the interview.

How did the subjects in each group respond to the either rude or polite colleague-interrupter?

Watching for politeness in the waiter interview, the groups of people liked the polite interrupter and disliked the rude interrupter.

Watching for assertiveness and rudeness in the reporter interviewer, the subjects liked the rude colleague and disliked the polite colleague.

 

Take home?

In each of the groups, the people were tasked to look for a specific kind of behavior. The seemingly random interrupting person displaying the opposite behavior of what they were tasked to watch for in the interviewee was immediately DISLIKED…or liked “less,” than the other.

So just imagine when someone who is assertive, a go-getter salesperson, for example walks into ANY group of people that was just talking about the upside of polite, kind, respectful, calming customer service strategy.

Immediately, the salesperson will be perceived negatively or less positively than another who would come in displaying traits similar to what was being validated as calming, respectful, etc.

Beware of this happening with YOU! And, of course, this same evaluation process happens in relationships, on the dating scene, everywhere….when your behavior doesn’t match the discussion at that table…you become…mis-matched!

Now you understand yet another reason why “scripts” to “pick up” women (or men), make a sale, hypnotize someone, you name it, …simply cannot work because you are meeting different PRESET circumstances entering into any conversation or setting. These preset circumstances and all the way down to the stuff in the environment make your preset “presentation” something that will only sell/persuade a small “percentage.”

What’s The Antidote?

The alternative for solving this ONE unseen set of factors?

Be aware of the tone and mood of the environment. Find out what goals and expectations they have, and move into that field of expectation.

But hold on, going back to the beginning…

How are you going to deal with the actual person who doesn’t want you to be thinner, more attractive and wealthier? In other words, your saboteur?

Next time we’ll look at that and other subtle ways that the smallest of triggers can cause the biggest disasters in life…and how to fix them with influence, in advance.

All the other goal setting programs you’ve ever tried haven’t worked. Why? Find out now…and discover the goal attainment system that really works…

“What Would Happen if you really Acquired all of the GOALS You Set this Year?”

Be one of the first to own…

Acquisition!

The Comprehensive
Goal Attainment System
That Gives You Everything You Really Want in Life

Get Your Copy of Acquisition! Now!

You’ll Never “Try” to Achieve a Goal Again…Now They Predictably Happen

You want a car that will get there every day.
You want a spouse who will be there for you. Period.
You want to look good and feel good. Always.

You want a goal attainment system that is actually going to accomplish what it sets out to do:

You do 1,2,3,4,5 and you get X, Y, Z.

Simple enough.

Until today, you found out what everyone else found out…goal setting systems to date…didn’t work.

Why?

They all attempt to teach “setting a goal…”

No goal system until today is designed to actually acquire your goals.

It’s like buying an iPhone and then looking at it all day, every day and TURNING IT ON and OFF and ON and OFF and On and OFF…

This is square one.

Perhaps you write down, “I want to lose 20 pounds,” and stick it on the fridge.

You don’t need a system for that. You need a fridge, a pen and a paper.

But for a dozen reasons, that simple idea won’t work either, even if you had a system attached to it.

Acquisition! is designed specifically with you in mind.

You would say something like,

“If I could have anyone design a goal setting system for me, I’d want it to be Kevin Hogan and then I would be certain that it would actually work.”

A Goal Setting System that actually worked would be worth $100,000. Perhaps more.

One of the many, many problems in all goal setting systems I’ve encountered to date is the language of goals.

Be Careful What You Say to Yourself

• Reach
• Aspire
• Inspire
• Optimistic
• Hope 

What do all those words “say?”

The language of 20th Century Goal Setting comes down to one word: maybe.

I hate *maybe.*

I’d rather hear “no.”

When it comes to your goals…

Maybe = Failure

Evidence?

Go back into your goal setting program from last year and see if you acquired more than say 25% of the goals you set for everything that was set for greater than one week into the future.

Survey says?

Didn’t happen.

Here’s what’s unsettling…

A lot of people were religious about setting goals and they STILL didn’t happen. You could have done everything from A to Z and wouldn’t have made any difference. You might as well have been hanging out on Facebook.

Whose fault?

This time around it IS the developer’s blunder.

Why?

They didn’t do their homework and sold you something that CAN’T produce for you. It doesn’t work. It can’t work. It won’t work. It looks pretty. Toss it now.

A…Little Better… Language of Goal Setting

Now, go up to the middle level language of goals which has been the language of the last 15 years.

• Peak
• Reach
• Meet
• Top
• Arrive
• Achieve 

Well…it IS a little better.

You are directed toward hitting a target with this language.

Seriously, it’s a better group of words that create better imagery in the brain.

The message is that you stood in front of the guru and got to shake hands.

He probably has nice hands.

That’s pretty darned good. You made your $10,000 bonus last year. Very nice. You lost 20 pounds though you did gain back 10 of it. Nevertheless, even after you left, at least you had arrived. You hit the top of the hill regardless of what happened next.

That is much better than, “Gee maybe I’ll get there. I’ll keep a positive and optimistic attitude, put it on my vision board and believe it.”

You already know how that story ends…

Translation: Slicker looking goal setting systems with slightly improved language aren’t causing success to connect with other successes anywhere except in people’s dreams.

What is the language of Acquisition? that opens the door to the possibility of success?

• You don’t “set” goals per se. You sequence them. 
• You don’t “hope” for anything. They happen. 
• You don’t “work on your goals.” You complete projects. 

• You don’t hope to arrive at the grocery store. You go shopping. 
• You don’t hope your child goes to school. She goes to school. 
• You don’t hope you get exercise today. You get down and do 20. 
• You don’t hope people see you as credible. You are credible. 
• You don’t hope to be believable. You are the picture next to the word in the dictionary. 

Completion and achievement are nice things.

But they are really pretty rudimentary.

Did you seriously impress by going shopping?

Of course not.

Everyone knows you just go shopping!

There is no “wonder” or “uncertainty.” The plan is in place.

You put the cake in the oven.

“I hope to have a cake in one hour. I really believe in myself and I know I can have a cake in an hour if I work hard enough at it.”

or

“We’re having cake in an hour. Be here.”

End of story.

Goal acquisition can be a fact as soon as you learn HOW to make acquisition a fact.

“I hope to use the restroom in one hour. I really believe in myself and I know I can have a successful restroom visit if I work hard enough at it.”

or

“Where is the restroom? I’ll be back in a minute.”

Language can represent what is in the mind or language can create new images for the mind.

There is no hoping, wondering, optimism or pessimism. There is no “negative” or “positive” attitude. There is no aspiration.

You do it.

Yes, of course you can “achieve” some of your goals.

What I really want for you…is to HAVE what you want in life because YOU CHOOSE it and you ARE in control of your life to the point where when you want something, something is what you get.

There’s nothing to “reach for.”

You are going to literally learn to DO and then DO and I promise no one has ever shown you how.

1. You learn the requirements for specific goal acquisition.
2. You prepare for and then meet those requirements.
3. You create the possibility and context.
4. You mold the possibility in the context into “sequences.”
5. You begin. 

And then you acquire what you said you wanted.

It sounds super simple and difficult all at the same time. Five years from now you will have used the system and you won’t even think about it any more. When you want something you simply “go to the grocery store.”

This is the stuff no one has ever taught you. None of the gurus. No one at University.

Before you set a goal, you have to create a sequence for it to be all but certain it will happen. Then the language is “real.” The language then represents, “I’m going to the store. Back in an hour.”

If you had no access to a car, fuel, had a broken leg with no crutches and no one to help you get there, you can say anything you want but you are going to watch TV. This has nothing to do with “pretend things.”

You’ve either set the table for dinner or you are eating with your fingers. You can use any words you want but if you aren’t prepared, nothing happens. Takes 3 minutes to set the table.

Most people never set the table of life.

When you create the setting, the opportunity, the possibility…, by having a car and fuel, healed legs or crutches, or someone to help you, now you can say, “…back in an hour.”

And it happens.

No one is surprised when you come back with a bag of stuff from the store. You SAID you’d be back in an hour. Why would anyone be surprised?

You sequenced it years ago.

It happens.

You do it without even being conscious.

The language changes matter because the new language represents using very different means and different ends.

And then it happens.

Language matters because it generates shifts in emotion, priority, drive…and with goals?

Language Precludes Acquisition.

You acquire.

You capture.

You have.

You own.

You are.

You possess.

You are in control.

You do.

It’s done.

You Learn to Use the Tool of Environmental Triggering to Spark Outcomes You Want When you Want Them

So all you have to do is change your language and you achieve your goals?

No.

Of course not. Language only opens the front door to the building of acquisition. Becoming the President of the company in the building takes a few more puzzle pieces set in place.

If the language doesn’t represent using an actual Maserati instead of an old junker, it isn’t processed as real and you won’t get what you want.

You have to make some important adjustments “deep inside” first.

These adjustments are setting the table. And it takes a bit more effort to be able to get pretty much all the things you really want than it does to set the table. But once you have it…you have made the adjustments and you have tested them, you don’t have to make them again.

Five years from now this goal acquisition system will be burned into your Passive Goal Guidance System and you will never set a goal quite the same way ever again.

You won’t need to because goal acquisition will be a default track written in your brain and not something worked on by your mind.

Once you have the formula burned into the neurology of the brain and use it regularly…you have it forever.

You’ll never think of anything in terms of goals or dreams beginning in 2017.

You will simply write it down and every single person says about you, “he’s going to X.”

… and they are right.

They seriously think it is “easy for you.”

They miss the fact that you use effort and sweat when you cut the lawn. The illusion for everyone else is so intense that they believe you are a magician that makes stuff appear out of thin air.

Like the Acquisition program itself.

Make It So

I told a few people in the Inner Circle that Acquisition will be out on April 10. That was right around 5 months ago. It’s scheduled to come in two days LATE! (Gasp!)

“Kevin’s going to finally do that goals program I’ve wanted…”

It was over dinner months ago.

They assume it is done before I’ve laid out the Sequences.

They assume it is done before I set up the recording time.

They assume it is done even though I’m under doctors orders to only speak a couple of hours each day because of bowed vocal cords!

They assume it is done before the cover is created, the copy is written, before the research has been completed and in some cases started.

And on and on…

They heard me say, “it will be out.”

And then… it is done.

The group was right.

BUT:

Let me say this: THERE WAS A LOT OF RESEARCH AND IT TOOK A LOT OF WORK collecting all of the data, honing new strategies and approaches to controversial requirements for goal acquisition to happen.

It did just happen…but a great deal of energy was expended in getting it to you!

And so it will be when YOU say, “I’m going out with her.”

Your friend says, “She doesn’t even know who you ARE?”

“She will.”

It is the highest form of certainty. It is 100% fact based and it happens.

“I’m going to the store. I’ll be back in an hour.”

You say, it’s “not that easy.”

Correct.

It requires being absolutely prepared, sequencing and effort.

Then it happens.

I hope you don’t mind if I take out some words from your vocabulary and add a few new words so you are able to acquire what you will have.

Goals As “Dreams”?

Until now setting a significant goal like adding $100,000 to your income, losing weight and keeping it off, wanting a secure retirement, making more sales, getting a better job, becoming involved with someone you find attractive, or even raising successful kids was all a “dream.”

Some of it was ethereal. Some of those things happened only to people who got lucky.

The metaphor of the dream, of course, is a disaster movie in and of itself. “Living your dreams,” is a common phrase in the American way of speaking. But what most people “dream” about only ends up happening when they sleep. Rarely do the dreams manifest in real life.

The dreams almost certainly won’t happen in real life because the brain capably and predictably reacts to the fact that what you dream about ends when you wake up. The brain will protect you from your dreams. Count on it.

One of the most important cognitions you’ll ever get is that brains don’t think. They react and act on a few basic types of programming, which are all very predictable.

You’ll learn precisely how to harness all of this for the acquisition of your desires and goals in Acquisition.

A Goal Seeking Device?

One old timer suggested that the “brain is a goal seeking device.”

Dr. Maxwell Maltz was 100% correct and he was 100% incorrect.

The brain is a goal seeking and acquiring device for all things related to survival and then it shuts off.

Brains rarely seek goals that have anything to do with anything other than minimum survival.

Here’s what really happens in your brain:

The brain is the control center where genetic code which generates impulses to self replicate is interpreted and acted upon. Genes meet up against decades of behavioral conditioning and interconnecting neuronal networks that are stimulated by external stimuli. This interaction is what causes your brain to either shut off, achieve survival goals or to carry on with “acquisition goals.”

I didn’t say it would sound simple, but it’s what happens.

With proper preparation it will acquire the latter. Without it, there is almost zero chance of goal acquisition.

Maltz thought you could program the brain to get you a new car. That thought was like the belief in 1700 that you could get a man to the moon. You can. But you can’t do it with conventional horse and buggies.

He was ahead of his time in one sense. He observed people surviving in the most difficult of times.

And more importantly, he observed the life changes that plastic surgery did to people. Their lives changed dramatically. It was something that could only have happened in the 20th century going forward. What was missing? He simply didn’t have the technology to cause people to do more than survive.

He understood the role of the reticular formation. The rudimentary pieces were starting to come together. A very resilient and persistent individual could painfully bump along and achieve some goals. But the tech wasn’t quite there.

Survival is Essential and Soon Your Goals Will Be As Well!

Don’t get me wrong, survival is *really* important.

Your genes have literally been self-replicating for 2,000,000 years. It is really hard for you to screw up your survival chances prior to the age of reproduction.

Half of men never reproduced 2,000 years ago!

Today you are walking proof of the success of genetic code “doing its job.”

Genes copying themselves. Simple and powerful survival.

But survival is generally not goal acquisition.

While your brain takes you away from what it interprets as real danger and causes you to eat ’til you are more than full and then causes you to procrastinate…well…those are all survival behaviors.

The brain interprets opening doors that have unfamiliar settings behind them as dangerous. The brain wants you to rest, eat, sleep, attempt to reproduce, rest, get out of pain, rest some more and stay safe until those offspring can reproduce themselves.

The brain spends its time on those activities. If someone is comfortable within those parameters, the code goes as far as to drive the individual to belong to a group, to help others survive, to learn.

Your Brain is Flat Out Amazing

Your brain is remarkable. It recognizes the folly of one’s past failures at anything and does everything in its power to discourage the individual from doing anything similar again. It doesn’t think. It acts upon recognition.

The brain causes survival and it screws up the majority of people from doing anything more than being comfortable in a familiar environment…because it needs you to survive. It is very, very good at the jobs it performs!

Fortunately you and I have a mind which is not the brain.

I’ll keep this really short and sweet. It is important.

Most People are “Sleep Walking Living”

For most people, the mind (consciousness), is shut off most of the time. How often are people “awake” while they are ..awake…?

Many people walk through their life with minutes of conscious activity each day. The majority might be interacting with the world in conscious interaction an hour or two per day.

But there are some people who begin to emerge at a higher level of conscious awareness. They are “awake” a lot more often.

They know they want to achieve, accomplish, acquire and attain because it is sensible and desirable.

What causes them to be special is their mind thinks into the future beyond tomorrow.

Most people are uncomfortable thinking too far into the future and they shut off and return to resting, eating, sleeping.

Your outcome is to be as awake as you can be and take advantage of the brains powerful survival drive and use that potential energy to acquire what you desire.

Write this down: The time is coming after you complete Acquisition!, your goals will no longer be goals. They will be obvious results. You simply will have them. Do remind people that it required effort because it LOOKS LIKE MAGIC.

Every single day the brain makes absolutely certain you:

• Eat
• Sleep
• Rest
• Use the restroom 

It doesn’t make any mistakes. You *do* these things and the brain doesn’t let you not accomplish them. Period. When the body for some reason doesn’t experience one of those things it goes into Great Danger mode and does everything it can to direct you to comfort.

The brain almost always gets what it is programmed to get.

Don’t think this means because you want a Maserati you will get it. That thought vaporizes in the neurology of the brain right after you read it.

There is plenty of new wiring and plenty of rewiring you’ve never seen or done before that has to happen to get that Maserati.

If you tell the brain to add:

• $100,000 more in 2013 than in 2012.
• Lose 35 pounds in 2012.
• Get the right girl in 2012.
• Have a happy home in 2012. 

The brain with standard wiring will get you none of it.

And if you got lucky, the brain would almost certainly do what it could to get rid of the money, put back on the weight, get the girl out of your life and return your home to misery as soon as possible.

That’s what brains do…they follow specific deeply entrenched programs that are very difficult to uproot and change.

The brain got you to this point with no significant change in 2,000,000 years.

Makes sense: The genes in the brain have were copied from genes an ancestor of yours had 2,000,000 years ago.

That…is power.

The System Causes the Brain to Be an Ally!

Fortunately there is now, yes, a system to take advantage of that wiring and reroute it to goal acquisition.

Today you can start a process using the brain as an ally not only for survival but for goal acquisition that will indeed predictably cause you to add:

$100,000 more income in 2013 than in 2012.
Lose 35 pounds in 2012.
Get the right girl in 2012.
Have a happy home in 2012.

…and not have the brain go back and erase it all.

And best of all is it SUPER EASY and INSTANTANEOUS?

Heck no.

“Reprogramming” takes a bit of time. Not as much as you might think, but it is NOT instant.

Brains hate doing anything that takes time. It’s not comfortable at first. Then when it becomes familiar, it becomes very comfortable.

The fact is you can have pretty much anything you want in life.

You can have your brain as your ally.

And if you have stumbled upon some degree of success to this point in life, you have a bonus opportunity of exponential growth.

But let’s not get carried away.

Acquisition! is replicable. It will work for virtually anyone.

If you can add 17 and 5 in your head and come up with the correct answer, Acquisition! will work for you. If you can’t…it won’t.

I imagine you’ve used a goal setting system of some kind in the past. If that’s the case, forgive the developer. It’s over. It’s past.

It was destined to fail because they didn’t know how to make it so it would work.

That’s the nature of life.

If you tried to work within that old method, you certainly worked hard at your goals and while you probably hit some of the smaller and shorter term goals, most of the bigger 1 – 3 year goals almost never happened.

You are a walking testimonial for how that gurus goal setting system doesn’t work.

But you don’t need or want to “give” that anti-testimonial.

You really simply want what you want in life and want a real way to attain it.

When I set out on my own after having to quit college at 3 years because I ran out of money, I picked up some books and set tons of goals. I failed at just about all of them for the first 5 or 6 years of setting goals.

It made no sense to me.

I felt like an idiot.

Typical Goal Setting Systems Don’t Work

I worked very hard still ended up working at a restaurant as an Assistant Manager vs. the goals I had set which were far more desirable than that.

Ultimately, I learned a great deal from being an Assistant Manager for a year. I could have read the book and done what I really wanted to do in life instead. But I was using a “system” that wasn’t going to work except by luck.

It was a cool looking system with a lot of beautifully crafted pieces to the system.

But all the cute in the world didn’t mean it worked. When I left the restaurant business, I went back into sales and fundraising. Other salespeople used it. They made no more money. Their lives weren’t better. These were people who were dedicated. These weren’t the kind of people who buy something and set it aside. They USED the thing! No difference.

The creator of the system was quite a successful man, someone we all looked up to. I don’t know about them, but I figured it had to be me.

I followed the instructions to the letter for years. I was religious. I still have everything and just looking at it still makes me feel embarrassed even though I know that if I would have continued doing that, I would never have hit any level of success.

It just didn’t work, and frankly it depressed me.

I always abhorred working *really* hard and getting no result.

Eventually I set aside the goal setting systems I tried out. Either they were a disaster or I was.

Finally: A New Approach

I developed a very new and rudimentary approach to goals.

It was far from a system. It was an approach.

Coincidentally, within two years I had tripled my income and then some. I can’t prove the clunky approach in those early days made the difference. Being a bit of a nerdy scientist, I knew that my results were just that. And they certainly didn’t mean much in anyone else’s real world.

But I fine tuned it over time and pretty soon it wasn’t a clunky system anymore. Pretty soon I had attained almost every goal or it’s twin sister. If I set it…there was a good chance it would come to fruition.

Example: One goal was in 2005 when I wrote I wanted my next book with Penguin. It turned out to be placed with Wiley. I counted that as a goal accomplished. It was huge. Millions of people would read that first book that was published with Wiley.

Had I known about one more piece of the goal puzzle, Penguin would have taken the book and saved me a few weeks.

Again, all of this was my result of using a clunky approach to getting what I wanted in life.

Over the next few years I did a great deal of research into achievement motivation, researching “individual differences,” the influence of controversial findings about depression, anxiety, etc. on human accomplishment.

I devoured hundreds and hundreds of scientific papers on what caused specific behaviors within people. What drove people. What people’s default drives were, when those drives engaged and disengaged. Crucial secondary research was into mirror neurons.

That triggered two great aha’s that when applied in my life, that had predictable results. No one was studying entrepreneurs, salespeople, people wanting the best person in their life possible, artists, creative people, therapists, people who lived much less structured lives than those who went to an institution every single day (a corporate office, a government office, a university).

The research that WAS being done was always transpiring in structured locations. This revelation brought one of the final pieces together as you’ll see when you begin to use Acquisition!

I was FINALLY able to tweak the clunky approach into a very specific laser and my world changed.

More importantly, I was able to observe the impact of various degrees of integrating certain pieces of this new methodology into other people’s lives. I watched companies integrate a very few specific strategies to cause executives who were terrified to bring in new business…to bring in new business.

It…was working.

Over the last 7 years, I’ve directly observed people I work with typically have their best years as far as income and/or relationship and/or life satisfaction or both having their best years in their careers. All of this happening in a time period when a lot of people were struggling to keep a job.

I also have discovered a few surprising factors about what causes accomplishment when people who are attaining diverse and unrelated goals come together.

What I was doing bore only a small resemblance to anything else others were teaching. It was not the easiest approach. It was not a complete goal setting system. Today, however, it is just that.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not stopping the research just because something works.

Acquisition! is here for you today. 10 years from now there will be another factor discovered. The system will come out in 2.0. Another decade? 3.0

For now, people deserve to have a life they earn.

Why is it that every goal setting system you have used has failed?

How is it possible that such smart people with so many great books and programs thought they had a great system only to find customers and clients left without results from that specific program?

How would you recognize a system that worked if you saw it?

What might lead you to believe that Acquisition: The Comprehensive Goal Attainment System is really different and will actually work for you?

And really, couldn’t you just synthesize four or five other programs out there and pick and choose what seems to make sense and then put your own system together?

Acquisition! is the product of researching real people in the real world.

Most of the time the academics “get the science right” and “discover and report.”

Unfortunately, the academics tend to study college students and goal performance for things related to studying and exams.

That’s extremely useful information in its context!

And, unfortunately, that experience doesn’t map over to you unless you are also a student in a structured setting. In THAT CASE it DOES map over.

But most people aren’t in that position.

Goal achievement research at university for years showed a big disconnect from the real world. There IS some research FINALLY being generated now but it is slow coming and still based on achievement in structured settings like a corporate office, a management team and again, University.

Do understand, I am not, not, not, knocking this work. I respect the work being done. For people in those settings that material is priceless. So why doesn’t it explain and predict (work) in real life out here?”

Because the salesman lives in a completely unstructured environment. The salesman drives their car, goes on appointments and in most cases their income is dependent on one thing only: performance. Researchers almost never study unstructured careers or entrepreneurs because access to these people in “controlled settings” is not only not possible, it’s counterproductive.

Entrepreneurs, salespeople, therapists, entertainers, artists, creative people, people who are in charge of their own destiny in some way haven’t been studied in their natural environment to the end of discovering what causes “success” and “failure” as far as income, relationship success, accomplishment of tasks outside of structured situations.

It’s that simple.

The Observer Effect

Metaphor: When you want to study fish, you can’t go to the ocean, go fishing, take the fish out of the water, bring the fish into the classroom and observe their behavior. You can only study fish to the end of understanding them by looking down into the ocean without actually entering the ocean and messing up the research.

In science this is called “The Observer Effect.”

In 90% of research into everything else in the world, “observer effect” can be controlled.

Not here.

The point is that what seems to be “right” or “common sense” is rarely right in general but in particular this is true with goal motivation, achievement drives and acquisition of desired outcomes.

And that is the case because scientists aren’t in charge of their own destiny. They aren’t salespeople, entrepreneurs. They view the world in very, very different ways from each other. Scientists are paid by Universities and other institutions and then they go do their research without the pressure of having to acquire new business to earn their paycheck. They work…and they get their paycheck. That is their life experience. It is not the life experience that salespeople, entertainers, entreprenuers or those who have a life experience which has no “safety net.”

I could elaborate further, but my goal isn’t to be unkind to the researchers whose work in almost all areas of life is so important to my life and yours.

Meanwhile most of the popular goal setting programs and books aren’t written by academics. They’re written by people most typically in the field of selling.

You would *think* that salespeople writing a goals setting course would excel at being able to address the crucial aspects of goal acquisition. They seemingly do it themselves, how could they not be considered “the expert” for such a program or book?

The answer is the flip side of the academic.

In this case you have someone creating a program based on what has worked for that person.

“How did you do it?!”

Accumulation of History

Writing the process of acquiring your goals into your brain comes right after learning what few tracks you should avoid.

Some people want to go to the moon, themselves, when they have no rocket ship…

The answer to that is that it is not “impossible.” Not much is “impossible.” But you can mess up a life chasing some strange dream that isn’t going to happen. I’m inclined to say, “it just doesn’t work, it can’t work.” But I know that is unsatisfying; so simply consider this:

Le Bron James takes off work from his job as a basketball player…He’s going to show me how to be a pro basketball player. He budgets the entire YEAR. Every day, 14 hours per day. He’s the best. To not only learn from the best but to do precisely what he does will easily make me CLOSE to the best basketball player of the century…won’t it?

Let’s say it goes further than that. Let’s say LeBron gets the ENTIRE Miami basketball team to take off and work with me as well. Now we have a context. We are playing 5 on 5 every single day. All day.

Let’s also put it out there that every single one of the guys is focused on making me the best basketball player in history.

WOW!

They whip me into shape. We work out. We practice, drill, drill, drill, drill. We get 3,000 hours of work in as no one takes any hours off except to sleep this year.

Surely I must be a Professional Basketball Player in 2014….

But obviously not.

I’m not 27. I don’t have 20 years of dribbling, shooting, reading offenses, reading defenses, the agility to move in a way that is instinctive and as much as I will be one heck of a ball player one year from now, I wouldn’t be able to play professionally. I’d get run over. Oh, I’d be healthy, stronger than ever and I’d be pretty amazing for my complete lack of experience and age.

The fact is I will gain two years of amazing experience in one year which is huge, but these guys all have 20 years of experience. They breathe better when they dribble, they think better when they dribble. Yet 10 professionals can’t get you to be able to be a pro just because you drill, practice and are amazing. HISTORY matters in the equation. How much, what kind. Trying to go pro in any sport after age 30 is almost impossible. (After 25 is almost impossible.) It has happened.

The reality is that Olympians are made at age 8, 9, 10, 11.

Modeling is a lot more than simply replicating what someone is doing.

The good news is that you don’t want to play in the NFL or MLB.

For that, you began at age 8 or you didn’t get to the NFL.

Ah. I can show you how I invest money.

That would be pretty valuable for almost anyone, but that knowledge, while helpful, won’t get you the same results unless you are