Constantly looking for innovative personal goal setting ideas, a current Google search for "personal development" resulted in 157,000,000 results. Really fascinating.

Plenty of folks are submitting articles and templates to fill out with details about the best way to help us help ourselves. Or, perhaps to "correct" ourselves.

And typically, we are swallowing it, hook, line, and sinker. We believe we deserve better.

We, as a overall group of men and women, are looking for techniques to get better. For what reason?

• Boost self esteem

• Improve our relationships

• Look better

• Feel better

• Get a better job

• Make more revenue

• You can fill in the blank for your own search.

But here's the predicament. The further you (or I) focus upon yourself, the more you will see yourself as coming up short of the level of flawlessness. It's a spiral. Personal goal setting, or personal development typically takes you to more self examination. i.e., turning a focus on ourselves. This, in turn, points to a self-centered focus.

In a recent blog post, John Carlson identified the following:

"Your ego is like a snarling little yap dog. Always pissed off, or looking for reasons to go into a hissy fit.

I'm telling you, after years of seeing all sides of this: Your ego is not doing you any favors.

Your ego...

...is an idiot.

And it's robbing you blind..."

That's pretty graphic. But the part about "your ego... is an idiot" really struck home.

OK, so this is more of a personal observation. But I have perceived many people with the very same self-centered focus.

"How can I produce more... How can I persuade so-and-so... How can I - I - I."

It's time to take a different view on life. Edit your personal goal program and shift your focus so that it is no more looking inward. Instead of being ego-centered, we need to get started with being "others-centered".

This is not something I just fabricated. It occurred to me recently that Zig Ziglar said this quite frequently in his personal goal setting presentations, "If you will just help enough people get what they want, you will have everything you want."

I bought that tape series over 30 years ago when I first tried to set up a personal goal setting plan. Listened to it hundreds of times.

Just this week it finally made sense... duh! What an idiot I am.

But, hey, it could have taken longer, I guess.

Lately (and the reason for the "lightbulb experience") I have been reading "Go-Givers Sell More" by Bob Burg and John David Mann. The entire book is about how ridiculous us self-centered individuals are and why we fail in our efforts to influence others... whatever it is we are trying to attain, especially sales.

"Go-Givers Sell More" is a sequel to "The Go-Giver". You should read them both because it will give you a different viewpoint on how to become more successful, not only with sales, but also with human relationships and anything else related to dealing with people.

Individually, I feel like a massive weight has been removed. The stress of performing so that I look good to others just ain't there right now. It feels real good.

We (I) need to rewrite our personal goal program with a new perspective.

I am a huge fan of personal development and personal goal setting. I just have missed the mark.

Hoping you don't do the same.