If we want to achieve anything in life we need to set goals.That’s what the motivation gurus tell you.

And if you want it enough, they add, any goal is achievable.

But here’s the thing.

They are lying. To you and me both.

Many of us go through life setting goals that we will never achieve.

It is good to have goals in life, but anyone who tell you that any goal is achievable doeasn’t know what they are talking about. Because it is all too easy to set goals that doom you to failure.

My goal is simple. To make a million during 2006. Unrealistic? Maybe. But that’s my goal.

One way to make a million is to win the national lottery. In a bid to achieve my goal I could simply buy lottery tickets every Wednesday and Saturday night and hope that my six numbers came up.

But spending a tenner a week on a 14 million to one shot is not a dream that is likely to come true. And the reason for this is simple. I have no control over the randomly selecting balls that pop out of Guinevere, Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Vyvyan or Galahad - the machines that select the balls each week in the UK lottery draws.

If my only hope of making a million this year was by winning the lottery, I would need either a massive dose of good fortune or to seriously up my weekly stakes.

And that’s because I would be trying to achieve an external goal - one that I have no control over.

You can set yourself internal goals or external goals in life and it’s important to know the difference between the two (are you paying attention at the back?).

Internal goals are totally dependent on you. Whether you achieve them or not is entirely dependent on you.

External ones depend on factors independent of you. Whether you achieve them or not is independent of you.

Winning the lottery is an external goal because it is dependent on six randomly selected numbers matching your selection and you have no way of influencing the numbers that will appear.

Here’s another example of an external goal.

It’s the final of the Olympics 1500m track event for women.

Eight of the world’s best long distance runners are on the starting line and all have set themselves the goal of finishing first to claim gold.

Unless there’s a dead heat at the finishing line, seven of those athletes are going to go home disappointed having failed to achieve their goal of winning the gold medal.

There was never going to be any other outcome.

Each athlete’s dream was external - totally dependent on the performance of the other competitors.

An athlete could have run the race of her life, broken personal, national and even current world records in doing so, but if another athlete crossed the line in front of her she would have failed as far as achieving her goal is concerned.

Of those eight women in that Olympics final, all would have given every ounce of themselves to crossing that winning line first, but only one would ultimately succeed. Are the other seven failures? Of course not.

If you have ever set yourself a goal or target and have failed to achieve it, chances are you now shun away from pursuing goals, believing that to do otherwise would just lead to further disappointment.

The chances are you were chasing external goals.

Internal goals are totally different.

Whether or not you achieve them is down to you.

Nobody else.

As an athlete on that starting line your goal might be to run faster than you have ever done before.

To do so would be a fantastic achievement, a goal worthy of even the finest of athletes.

If you ran the race of your life, running faster than you had ever done before, you would have achieved your goal - irrespective of if you finished first, last or somewhere inbetween.

And you would realise that the difference between success and failure is in the eye of the beholder.

So in pursuit of the million pound prize, I have to set internal goals and avoid scoring own goals of the external variety. My game plan is to build quality websites that will earn enough money within a year to make them collectively worth a million pounds. Maybe I won’t end up with a gold medal for my efforts, but as long as I stick to my game plan of building enough quality pages to attract enough visitors I’ll have done myself proud.
PS That’s not to say I will stop buying lottery tickets. And if you like the odd flutter you can now buy your lottery tickets online. If you do so by following this national lottery link then I will earn a few pennies commission and be a little closer to my goal. Every little helps as Tesco keep reminding us