Scientology and New Year Resolutions - Part 2 - Name Your Product

I strongly recommend that you read the article "Name Your Product". It is dated 7 August 1976 and can be found in the Admin Know-How Series of articles in Management Series Volume 1. Mr. Hubbard explains it much better than I can. Anyway, here is my attempt:

If you want to achieve something then the first step is to name it fully and completely and to the level of detail necessary to really know what you are going for. Maybe that sounds obvious, but let's look at a common New Year Resolution: "I'm going to lose weight". Okay, so you lose an ounce - resolution achieved, you lost weight. Hmmm, perhaps you were intending more than that. How about "I'm going to lose 10 pounds." So you go on a diet for 2 months and lose 10 pounds but by the end of the year you've put the 10 lbs back on. Well, how about this wording, "I am going to reduce my Body Mass Index to 23 and I am going to keep it at or below that level permanently." Now you have taken the first step in achieving your goal, you have accurately named the state or thing you are going to create.

One last important point - you are naming something you are going to have, not what you are going to do. "I'm going to eat less" is not a product, it is not something you can have, it is something you are going to do to achieve the thing you are going to have. In this first step you don't look at what you are going to do, you look at what you want to have. Doing comes later.