Page 75 - Hard Goals

66 HARD Goals

tial to helping us remember and process information. If you
want a goal indelibly seared into your brain, so vibrantly alive in
the forefront of your mind that you can’t possibly push it aside
or forget about it, you need to animate it. Wherever possible,
take advantage of the power of pictures.
By the way, it’s not an either/or situation. We’re not all of
a sudden going to drop using words and numbers and start
drawing stick fi gures (abandoning language and reverting to
cave drawings is not exactly an evolutionary step forward).
Words and pictures aren’t enemies of one another. Rather, they
are great friends that work together to give our thoughts and
experiences, and especially our goals, deeper meaning. Together
they help us believe in our goals and charge us to take action.
“Visual processing is the primary sense our brain uses to inter-
pret the meaning of language,” says Nanci Bell, one of the top
minds in language expression and comprehension. “Our visual
sense, in the formal of visual imagery, integrates with language
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more easily and effi ciently than the other four senses.”
Sometimes it’s not possible to show an actual visual. Going
back to our earlier example where we were trying to convince
the world of the colorlessness problem, you might not always
be able to channel your inner Ross Perot and whip out some
poster board charts. If you’re giving a speech to thousands of

employees on the factory floor, or standing and holding a drink
at a cocktail party, drawing a picture might be awkward. But
you can certainly use your words to control the imagery and
generate a great mental visual.
Great politicians are masters of speaking visually. In 1961,
President Kennedy gave a speech to a joint session of Congress to
discuss his plans for putting a man on the moon. You’re doubtless
familiar with the line, “I believe that this nation should commit