The document provides a comprehensive manual on achieving success through defining goals, formulating objectives, visualizing outcomes, and overcoming limiting thoughts and emotions. It emphasizes the importance of clarity in what one wants, utilizing the SMART criteria for setting objectives, and the significance of visual representation to enhance motivation and focus. Additionally, it discusses the necessity of recognizing and letting go of negative emotions that may hinder progress towards one's goals.

1. Effortless Success
A manual
Eric De Pooter

3. 1
Part 1 – Defining our goal.................................................3
Exercise – Defining our priorities................................12
Success for me is: ......................................................13
Part 2 – Formulating our objectives successfully ...........15
Relevant .....................................................................17
Specific.......................................................................19
Time-limited................................................................21
Measurable.................................................................23
Achievable..................................................................25
Exercise: define your SMART objective .....................28
Part 3 – Visualising your objective .................................31
Visualisation exercise.................................................36
Part 4 – Letting go of limiting thoughts and emotions ....39
Step 1: Recognising ...................................................43
Step 2: Recognising or accepting...............................45
Step 3: Letting go .......................................................47
Exercise......................................................................54
Part 5 – Awareness and gratefulness ......................57
Afterword ........................................................................61

4. 2
You are what your deepest wish is
What you wish, is what you want to be
What you want to be, is what you will do
What you do, will be your fate

5. 3
Part 1 – Defining our goal
We start here with the question:
What does success mean for me?
or
How do I see success?
You can ask this question about lots of different
facets of your life relating to your profession (your
job and career), your family, finances (money),
free time and health.
It is important to ask this question consciously.
Today, more than ever before, we live in an era
where we are inundated with choices, we are
bombarded by immense numbers of products,
services, and possibilities.
If you go to buy a new mobile phone you find
yourself completely lost in the number of different
brands and models.

6. 4
People complain about not having
enough time when in fact what they are
missing is
a goal.

7. 5
Advertising and different slogans are constantly
telling us that we need things or must do things in
order to belong, to be happy. We are constantly
bombarded by a blizzard of these types of
messages.
Trying to decide for your self what you really find
important in the midst of this chaos is a real
challenge. It is an art and it’s no easy feat.
One of the reasons that people experience stress
in their lives is the excessive number of choices
that cause them to doubt, to lose their focus.
In short, know what you want, what you really
want and your life will become simpler, more
relaxed. If you know what you really want the
chance of your getting it will increase
exponentially.
This is why it is necessary to ask the question in
the purest sense, in the most personal way: how
do you see success (and happiness)?

8. 6
“If you want to lead a happy life, set
yourself a goal and don’t let your
happiness depend on other people or
things.”
Albert Einstein

9. 7
And the two words, happiness and success are
not synonyms by the way.
Another marketing trick of course is to persuade
us that we can buy happiness. If we buy this car
or this cream, we will be happy, “Because we
deserve it, we belong, we are back in fashion”.
You know that you cannot buy happiness. So
remember this when defining your criteria for
success. Most of the things you achieve, will
hopefully give you a good feeling, perhaps even a
feeling of triumph.
But don’t let your happiness depend on what you
own or achieve in life.
Scientific studies reveal that more than 10% of
your happiness is defined by material things such
as money.
50% of your happiness boils down to your genes,
the other 40% could be put down to doing certain
things effectively including setting goals in your
life.

10. 8
“Most people are disappointed when
their worries become reality.
Speaking strictly logically it is a bit
strange to be disappointed. You have
worried about something and it has
become reality. So, actually you have
succeeded and the creative process
has worked.”
Marinus Knoope

11. 9
If we look back at the question of what success
means for you, then we notice that most people
are very aware of what they don’t want in life.
The question you should now ask is, do you know
what you do want?
Formulate your criteria, your expectations
positively not negatively. In other words: what
you want more of, what you want to be better, not
what you don’t want or what you want less of.
Our minds are not so good at dealing with
negations and so actually the things they
remember are exactly these negations.
Example
Imagine that you are working very hard and you
want more time for yourself. Formulate your goal,
what you want to achieve not as “to work less”,
but as “to have more free time”. A positive
statement therefore rather than a negative one.

12. 10
“Nothing helps calm the spirit more
than a well-defined goal, a point
towards which the soul can focus its
intellectual eye.”
Mary Wollstonecraft

13. 11
With each of the expectations of what success
should look like for us, you should ask yourself
the question: why?
Why do I want to achieve this? Why is this
important for me?
This question will help you to clarify an
expectation by bringing the underlying driving
force behind the objective to the surface.
If we look at the answer, we may also see that
what we want to achieve, what we have written
down is not really what we want. It is perhaps
what is expected of our entourage and so does
not come from our heart.
In short, we may discover that we are not really
motivated ourselves to achieve this objective; that
we are not really interested in it.

14. 12
Exercise – Defining our priorities
Take some time now to write down what you want
from one or more aspects of your life.
Formulate your expectations positively and
provide an honest answer to the question”why?”.
Take enough time for this question because this
list forms the basis for the rest of our work.
You can also write down things and come back to
them later on.

15. 13
Success for me is:
What I would like to achieve is:
In terms of:
Family:
Why?
Profession:
Why?
Finances:
Why?
Leisure time:
Why?
Health:
Why?

16. 14
“If you have built castles in the air, you
have not wasted your time. Because
this is where everything begins.
Now you need to just create the
foundations.”
François de La Rochefoucauld

17. 15
Part 2 – Formulating our
objectives successfully
You probably now have a full list of things you
want to achieve – things you’d like to change -
more or less.
Now it’s time for the next step:
The formula we are going to use to gain more
focus about these goals is the so-called SMART
method. It’s also used a lot in the business world.
SMART is an abbreviation of
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-limited
Now take for this exercise your most important
expectation.

18. 16
“Our thoughts create our reality.
The point that we focus on is also the
direction we are heading in.”
Peter Mc Williams

19. 17
Focus is also the word that is appropriate here. If
we target too many things at once, we will
probably achieve nothing.
So if you want to achieve your expectations, you
are best prioritising your goals.
When you have named your most important
expectation, we can start working on our SMART
principle. Just check whether you have worded it
positively before we get down to work.
Let’s muddle up the order of the SMART principle
and start with:
Relevant
Rank how important or relevant is achieving this
expectation for you by placing it on a scale of 0 to
10, where 0 is totally unimportant and 10 is very
important.
If you allocate a score for importance of 7 or fewer
than 7 on the 0 to 10 scale, you may want to ask
yourself whether you really want to spend time on
this goal, if it is important enough, relevant
enough.

20. 18
“Someone who wants to do something
will always find a way;
Someone who doesn’t want to do
something will always find an excuse.”
Constance Baker Motley

21. 19
Time is a priority. The time that you spend on this
is time you cannot spend on something else and
perhaps it is simply not (yet) sufficiently important
at the moment. There are perhaps things on your
list that you might want to place higher up on your
list of priorities at this point in time.
Let’s say your objective is to have more free time
and the ranking for importance of this objective is
8.5, then this is important enough for you to start
working on.
The next step
Specific
Make your expectation more specific.
Very often, people write down very general things.
Experience teaches us that by making things
more specific you obtain a better image of it, it
also helps you to clarify the objective for yourself.
If you want to have more free time, you might
want to complement this with what you would do
with this free time.

22. 20
“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”
Leo. B Helzel

23. 21
Do you want to spend more time with your family,
or just more time by yourself. Do you want time to
do sports or to travel? How much more time do
you want? In short, imagine what the new
situation looks like in practical terms.
Time-limited
By what date would you like to have achieved
this? Be realistic and generous.
If you set a deadline that is too close, you will
become demotivated when you notice that the
deadline is upon you and you have not yet
reached your goal.
If you make the deadline too far in the future, you
may find yourself procrastinating, lacking
motivation at this point. There may also be a
great chance that you lose sight of your goal
because it is so far off in the future.
In our example, it may be that you want half a day
a week more to do things with your partner and
children before the end of next year.

24. 22
“We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a
habit.”
Aristotle

25. 23
Measurable
A simple question:
How can you prove to yourself and others that
you have achieved your goal?
How can you demonstrate that you have
succeeded in your mission? What are your criteria
in this?
This involves both qualitative and purely
quantitative criteria.
An example for us would be: If the members of
your family indeed do say and feel that you are
spending more time with them, then that would be
proof that you have achieved your objective. To
demonstrate this quantitatively, there would have
to be an example of how much more time you
have spent with them. In this example there is no
mention about the quality of the time that you
have spent with them.

26. 24
“Rather the perpetrator of my future
than the victim of my past."
Karin Bloemen

27. 25
And the last point in the SMART model:
Achievable
After all the things that you have now written
down, you can ask yourself how achievable this
goal is for you. It is sufficiently important (7 or
more on the scale), you have made it specific,
and you have allocated a deadline and looked at
how you would make it clear that you have
achieved it.
How achievable is this objective for you now?
Give it a ranking on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0
stands for not at all achievable and 10 for very
achievable.
If you also score 7 or less here, that means that
there are a number of obstacles standing in the
way of you achieving this objective.
It may be that you simply do not believe in it. So
let’s imagine that you still want to go through with
it. It’s a good idea to stop and think for a moment
about all the things that in your opinion would
make it difficult to achieve the objective. What are
the obstacles and what can you do about them?
When you have your list with the obstacles, you
should draw up an action plan to see what you
can do about each of these obstacles. Then ask
yourself again: how achievable your objective is
now (0 to10)?

28. 26
The secret of getting ahead is
getting started.
The secret of getting started is
breaking your complex
overwhelming tasks into small
manageable tasks...
and then starting on the first one.”
Mark Twain

29. 27
Under normal circumstances, your allocated
ranking is now higher than 7 out of 10.
Congratulations. You have worded your objective
well. You believe in it and you want to give it your
all. This is your point of focus. One single thing
that you believe in and that is important for you.

30. 28
Exercise: define your SMART objective
My objective: (worded positively)
Relevant: (0 – 7 - 10)
Specific:
Time-limited:
Measurable:
Achievable: (0 – 7 - 10)

31. 29
Possible obstacles:
What I need to do in order to overcome these
obstacles:

32. 30
“The soul never thinks without an
image.”
Aristotle

33. 31
Part 3 – Visualising your objective
You now have a well worded objective that you
believe in, that you find sufficiently important to
put some effort into, an objective that is clear and
that is also delineated in terms of time.
Studies show that writing out an objective
increases the chances of succeeding enormously.
My experience has taught me that visualising the
objective increases the chances of success even
further.
And visualising is fun and simple to do. You do it
by finding images, photos, drawings that
represent the desired result of your goal as you
see it by making drawings or collages.
By putting it into pictures, you turn your objective
into something tangible.
Make sure that the images really appeal to you,
that you like them and that they don’t create
resistance, that they really represent exactly what
you want to achieve.

34. 32
“The great thing about the future is that
it starts right here.”
Marie Louise von Franz

35. 33
One of the reasons why footballers succeed in
scoring goals is because the players know exactly
where the goalposts are. Even though they may
not look at them all the time, the goalposts are
there and the players know where they have to
get to with their ball.
Any skiing or parachuting teachers will tell you
tales about pupils that manage to end up in the
only tree around, just because they were fixated
on it and they forgot to look at the kilometres of
open space around the obstacle.
Use this typical human characteristic to your
advantage.
Don’t take your eye or your attention off your
objective from now on.
In the beginning we observed that people today
are overwhelmed by choices and information. The
temptation to forget our objective, to let go of it or
to change it is immense.

36. 34
One picture says more
than a thousand words.

37. 35
In short, put your objectives in a place where you
will see them regularly: create a ritual that you
carry out regularly and that you work on regularly
involving your objectives.
Perhaps you will notice after a while that the
objective is no longer so important for you, or that
this was not really your objective.
Yet again. That’s great too. But you should
realise that your life is heading in the direction you
are looking towards and so by keeping your goal
consciously in front of your eyes, effortless
success will be much easier to achieve.

38. 36
Visualisation exercise

39. 37
My objective
Image(s) / photo(s) / drawings

40. 38
“It is a sign of wisdom and maturity to
note that we can be neutral spectators
of our emotions, thoughts and
memories without being ruled by
them.”
Nathalie Branden

41. 39
Part 4 – Letting go of limiting
thoughts and emotions
People often set objectives and do not achieve
them.
One of the most important reasons for this is that
they often have an unconscious resistance to
achieving their own objective.
Each of us seeks three things to a greater or
lesser degree: control, security and recognition.
In instances of change – and achieving an
objective is also about change – we often have a
subconscious notion that we will lose one of these
three things.
We experience this as a lack or a need and that is
precisely the ideal breeding ground for limiting
emotions such as sorrow, fear, anger and even
apathy. These are limiting because they can
stand in the way of us achieving effortless
success.

42. 40
“The desire to possess is also
a form of fear.”
J. Gresshof

43. 41
In short, if we feel that we do not have enough
control, security and/or recognition, or fear that we
are going to lose them, we will occasionally feel
sorry, anger, fear or apathy.
We are going to remove these resistances.
Without resistance the road to effortless success
will become smooth. Without these restrictions we
can get to where we want to go.
Letting go of limiting thoughts and emotions
always involves three different steps:
Step 1 Recognising the limiting thoughts
and/or emotions
Step 2 Recognising or accepting the
emotions
Step 3 Letting them go

44. 42
“I am not my emotions and thoughts,
I just have them.”
Lester Levenson

45. 43
If we apply this technique to our objective, that
means first looking or feeling what our limiting
thoughts and/or emotions are in relation to
achieving our objective.
Step 1: Recognising
Read your objective, visualise it and think about
the thoughts and emotions (fear, sorrow, anger,
apathy) that come up. Ask yourself whether there
is a need for control, recognition and/or security
underlying each of these emotions.
Write them down, make a list of them.

46. 44
“How can people learn without feeling
fear?
By first learning to live with fear.”
Francis Lucille

47. 45
Step 2: Recognising or accepting
Don’t fight against your thoughts or emotions. Be
aware of them and accept them.
This step is crucial. Most of us are trained to
suppress negative emotions or thoughts, or to
replace them immediately with a positive
equivalent.
Just accepting them will result in your being able
to let them go.
Technique:
Just ask yourself the question:
Can I allow/accept this emotion/thought?
The answer, yes or no, is in itself irrelevant.
Asking the question is actually answering it. By
talking about it, becoming conscious of it, you are
already starting to accept it.
You never have to accept a situation. I
recommend however accepting the emotions that
emerge around the situation.

48. 46
Beneath the waves of emotion,
is the tranquillity of being.

49. 47
Step 3: Letting go
Simple. 3 questions:
- Can I let go of this emotion?
- Do I want to let it go?
- When will I let it go?
In other words: first ask yourself whether you can
let go of these emotions or thoughts.
Ask rather than commanding. Don’t say “I let
these emotions go’”, or “I must let these emotions
go”. But say, “Can I let these emotions go?”
Giving you orders usually has the opposite effect.
Our minds do not like being told what to do. If
they are put under pressure, they often tend to do
just the opposite.
But by asking yourself questions like:
“Can I let it go?”
“Do I want to let it go?”
“When will I let it go? “
Repeat these questions a number of times if you
like. You will notice that the emotions and
thoughts diminish and finally you will find that they
disappear completely.

50. 48
“Resistance is a sign of an unfree
mind”
Krishnamurti

51. 49
If you would like to go one step further, then you
can carry out the same process with regards to
the need for control / recognition / security that
you have found for yourself underlying these
thoughts and/or emotions.
Here again, you can ask yourself the questions
several times over.
If you like you can measure the strength of your
emotions or thoughts before you start letting go,
by ranking them on a scale of 0 to 10. And then
measure them again after you have done a few
rounds of asking questions.
When you do this, it will become clear for you just
how much they diminish or soften.
I recommend that you go into considerable depth
when you do this exercise.
I worked on a number of resistances myself for
several days, but the results were phenomenal.
You can also do this exercise for the different
activities that you need to do in order to achieve
your objectives.
This is how you reduce resistance and ensure
that things run speedily and smoothly. Without
effort in fact.

52. 50
Suffering comes about when
you do not accept what ‘is’.

53. 51
There is yet another advantage to letting go: after
a while you might not care whether you achieve
that objective or not. This indifference will merely
work as reinforcement. Indifference to achieving
your objective is the best attitude to have if you
want to achieve it.
Two other techniques that could help:
Sometimes it helps simply if you repeat to yourself
a few times the emotion / thought that you have
had. Repeating something is the same as
accepting it and accepting it is letting it go.
There’s nothing more to it than that.
(The sorrow that I feel, the anger that I have in
me)
It sometimes helps to have a discussion with the
emotion or thought. They sometimes have
something important to tell us. That is also about
accepting and can lead to letting go.

54. 52
“Emotions: Just by sitting quietly and
looking at our emotional state with
detachment, we will become calm.”
Tarthang Tulku

55. 53
To summarise briefly: Every form or method that
you use to help you accept your emotions or
thoughts more, or bring them more to the surface
will help you over time to let go of them.
And it is precisely here that you will find the key to
achieving your objective without effort.
The work that you do here will give you emotional
tranquillity and freedom that will spill over into
other aspects of your life.
In short, the time you spend on this now will
translate into an increase in your awareness, your
inner tranquillity and your freedom.

56. 54
Exercise
Letting go of emotions and thoughts
My goal:
Which emotions / thoughts does this bring up
for me?

57. 55
Can I allow them completely?
Can I let them go?
Do I want to let them go?
When will I let them go?
What is the underlying need beneath this emotion
or thought?
(control, security, recognition)
(take the one that takes a prominent place
in the foreground first)
Can I accept this need?
Can I let it go?
Do I want to let it go?
When will I let it go?

58. 56
“It is not happiness that makes us
grateful, but gratefulness that makes us
happy.”
Steindl

59. 57
Part 5 – Awareness and gratefulness
Gratefulness. A word in these days of abundance
and always wanting more, that we barely know
any more.
In English we say. ‘Count your blessings’. Be
grateful for what you have.
One of the habits that being happy encourages is
taking a moment from time to time and being
thankful for what we have. This, in fact, is
scientifically proven as well.
And we have a lot to be thankful for. Each and
every one of us. We can be thankful for what we
have to eat, for the car that drives us around, for
the people around us, etc.
In order to achieve our objective this means being
attentive to possible positive changes that start to
manifest themselves. And that we are thankful for
that.
It is also the awareness of and the gratitude for
this that gives us and the universe the energy to
allow change and to move ahead.

60. 58
“If you concentrate on what you have in
your life, you’ll find there is always
enough.
If you concentrate on what you don’t
have in your life, there will always be
too little.”
Oprah Winfrey

61. 59
A good habit for seeing whether we are aware of
the changes taking place is to carry out a sort of
status check once a day. Perhaps in the evening
when you are in bed, just before going to sleep.
To do this you just ask yourself a number of
questions to which you just answer with a ‘yes’ or
‘no‘ or you give it a score from 0 to 10.
This is not about being judgmental about the
answer, no matter what it is; you don’t have to
take on any feeling of guilt and you don’t have to
let others do that to you either. This is just about
creating a status report of your awareness.
A few examples:
Have I been consciously working towards my
objective today?
Have I done things today in order to achieve my
objective?
How hard have I been working today on achieving
my objective? (0-10)

62. 60
“This is my secret.
I don’t mind about what happens.”
Krishnamurti

63. 61
Afterword
Here you are. You have a clear objective, your
priority and you believe in it.
You know what you need to do in order to achieve
it.
You know how to identify your unconscious
blockages and to remove them. You are aware of
the importance of working consciously on your
objective and not losing sight of it.
And you have reached the highest stage of your
success: a point at which you are going full speed
ahead to achieve your objective and you are
currently indifferent as to whether you achieve it
or not.
In a way ,you are effortlessly successful.
Eric De Pooter

64. Eric De Pooter
Senior Consultant
GSM +32 (0)476 42 20 78
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?ericdepooter