Goals!: How to Get Everything You Want Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible

Brian Tracy is a self-help author, professional speaker, and business consultant who has addressed audiences in more than 80 countries. In the third edition of this bestselling guide, first published in 2003 and expanded with a new chapter on helping others set goals, he presents a comprehensive system for setting and achieving goals in every area of life. Tracy draws on personal experience, psychological research, and historical examples to argue that a disciplined approach to goal setting is the single most important determinant of success.

Tracy opens with a personal narrative. He dropped out of high school, worked laboring jobs including dishwashing, construction, and logging, and eventually took a commission sales position where he barely earned enough for a rooming house each night. His turning point came when he wrote down a specific goal: to earn $1,000 per month in sales. Within 30 days, he discovered a new closing technique and was offered exactly that salary to lead a sales force. This experience, he argues, illustrates the book's central principle: Writing down goals, making plans, and working on those plans daily produces results faster than any other practice. He cites a Harvard MBA study, reported by author Mark McCormack, in which the 3 percent of graduates who had written clear goals in 1979 were earning 10 times as much as the other 97 percent combined a decade later.

Tracy builds his system on several philosophical foundations. He contends that people become what they think about most of the time and that humans possess an innate goal-seeking mechanism: Once a person becomes absolutely clear about a goal, they begin moving toward it. He identifies four reasons most people fail to set goals: They do not realize goals are important, they do not know how, they fear failure, and they fear rejection. The next foundational step is accepting complete personal responsibility. Tracy identifies negative emotions as the greatest enemies of success and traces them to justification, rationalization, overconcern with others' opinions, and blaming. The antidote is the affirmation "I am responsible," which he claims short-circuits negative emotions. Drawing on the Locus of Control Theory from psychology, he explains that people with an internal locus of control feel self-directed, while those with an external locus feel controlled by outside circumstances. Accepting more responsibility strengthens one's internal locus and produces what Tracy calls a "Golden Triangle" of responsibility, control, and happiness.

Tracy then introduces the superconscious mind, connecting it to Ralph Waldo Emerson's "oversoul," Carl Jung's "collective unconscious," and Napoleon Hill's "Infinite Intelligence." He states the Law of Superconscious Activity: Any thought, plan, or goal held continuously in the conscious mind must inevitably be brought into reality. He recommends two activation methods: intense concentration on a goal and complete relaxation with the mind occupied elsewhere.

With these foundations in place, Tracy turns to values clarification, presenting a concentric-ring model of personality with values at the center, surrounded by beliefs, expectations, attitude, and actions. He argues that goals must align with one's deepest values for lasting happiness and identifies integrity as the value that guarantees all others. He then addresses self-limiting beliefs, stating the Law of Belief: Whatever a person believes with conviction becomes their reality. Since beliefs are learned, he argues, they can be changed. He references psychologist Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences to suggest that people may possess abilities in areas never measured by traditional schooling.

Tracy instructs readers to create a detailed vision of their ideal future. He cites Edward Banfield of Harvard University, who concluded that long-time perspective, the ability to think years ahead while making present decisions, was the most important determinant of success. Tracy directs readers to envision their perfect career, finances, family life, health, and community involvement five years out, writing answers in a Goals Journal.

The book's central methodology is a 12-step goal-setting process. Tracy outlines seven keys: Goals must be clear and specific, measurable, time-bound, challenging, congruent with values, balanced across life areas, and organized around a single primary goal. His 12 steps are: (1) desire the goal intensely, (2) believe it is achievable, (3) write it down, (4) analyze the starting point, (5) list all reasons for wanting it, (6) set a deadline, (7) identify obstacles, (8) determine required knowledge and skills, (9) identify people whose help is needed, (10) make a detailed plan, (11) visualize the goal as already achieved, and (12) resolve never to give up. He introduces the major definite purpose as one's single most important goal and explains that the reticular activating system, a filtering mechanism in the brain, heightens awareness of information and opportunities related to whatever goal has been programmed into it. He cautions that unrealistic goals demotivate rather than inspire.

The remaining chapters apply this methodology to specific domains. For financial goals, Tracy introduces the concept of calculating one's "number," the amount needed for comfortable retirement, and stresses that 80 percent of financial constraints are internal. For career excellence, he identifies key result areas, the five to seven core tasks that determine success in a given job, and argues that one's weakest key skill sets the ceiling on income. He presents a "three-plus-one formula" for skill mastery: daily reading, educational audio programs, seminars, and immediate practice. For relationships, he recommends writing a detailed description of one's ideal partner and presents a four-part exercise: asking family members what they want you to do more of, less of, start doing, or stop doing. For health, he connects self-discipline to self-esteem, arguing that each exercise of discipline strengthens further discipline in an upward spiral.

Tracy devotes chapters to measuring progress and removing obstacles. He identifies three keys to peak performance: commitment, completion, and closure, and introduces the balanced scorecard concept, in which individuals track key performance measures daily and weekly to drive improvement. He addresses obstacles through Eliyahu Goldratt's theory of constraints from The Goal, which holds that every goal has a bottleneck determining the speed of achievement. He identifies fear and self-doubt as the two major internal obstacles and discusses psychologist Martin Seligman's research on learned helplessness, the tendency to respond with "I can't" to new opportunities, prescribing small goals and successive achievements to build confidence.

On planning, Tracy argues that the process matters more than the finished plan, citing an Inc. magazine study of 50 start-ups and General Dwight Eisenhower's remark that "plans are worthless, but planning is everything." For time management, he distinguishes urgent tasks from important ones, applies the 80/20 Rule (20 percent of activities account for 80 percent of value), and advocates single handling: working on the most important task with undivided concentration until complete.

Tracy presents daily goal review as his most powerful technique. Each morning, readers write their 10 to 15 most important goals from memory using the Three P Formula: present tense, positive, and personal. After about 30 days, the same goals crystallize with stable definitions, and Tracy claims that progress accelerates rapidly. A new chapter addresses teaching goal setting to others through a seven-part coaching exercise, invoking Newton's first law of motion as the momentum principle: Starting is hard, but once momentum builds, progress accelerates.

His chapter on visualization argues that vividly imagining goals draws matching people, resources, and opportunities toward the goal setter, and that inner images produce corresponding outer results. He identifies four elements of effective visualization: frequency, duration, vividness, and intensity, with intensity being the most powerful.

The final chapter argues that persistence, rooted in courage and self-discipline, guarantees success. Tracy cites Robert Ronstadt of Babson College and the Corridor Principle: Among entrepreneurship graduates, only those who actually launched businesses discovered the opportunities that led to success. He draws on Winston Churchill, Calvin Coolidge, and Thomas Edison as exemplars of persistence. Tracy concludes by restating all 21 principles and affirming that the habit of taking action on goals is the most important quality for lifelong success.