Research shows that performance is linked with goals that are set. Your goals are your targets or what you intend to achieve and everything indicates that those with clearly thought-out goals achieve much more than those without clear goals.

Another research project was carried out in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder (the creators of NLP). They found that successful therapists were able to get their patients to define precisely what it would be like to be well. This definition is called a well-formed outcome. Other research found that people who have achieved success in many different walks of life had well-formed outcomes or precisely written goals.

Of course, having such goals does not guarantee a successful outcome – however, it does lead to:

Later in the course, you’ll learn how goals become part of the beliefs/thoughts/performance model. For the time being, read through the goal-setting guidelines on page 6 and take a look at your next exercise.