One of the most important benefits of setting goals is the actions that you take and your personal evolution. Goal setting is important because it provides focus and helps to shape your dreams. It also helps to hone those skills which you need to perform certain actions, to achieve your goals. Setting goals are great because it helps to push you outside your comfort zone making you grow.
Life is designed in such a way that requires you to take both a long and short-term perspective. The present tends to offer many challenges; hence you need to set goals, as they provide a long-term vision. Everyone needs powerful and long-term goals which can help them to overcome any kind of short-term obstacles. If your goals are more powerful, you will be able to act more on them and be rest assured that they will eventually pass.
Let’s take a look at some of the key aspects to learn and remember while setting goals so that you can make them practical and forceful.
1. Evaluate Your Goals and Reflect on Them
In order to decide what you wish to achieve in the future and how to get there, you need to analyse where you are right now and what is your present satisfaction level. So you need to take some time to ponder and write down your present situation.
The objective of self-evaluation is twofold. Firstly, it enables you to objectively view your accomplishments and your pursuit of the vision that you have for your life. Secondly, it tells you where you are at present so that you can determine where you need to go. The process of evaluation provides you with a baseline to operate from.
You should take a couple of hours in a week to evaluate and reflect upon your goals and your present situation. Observe where you are and jot it down so that as you progress. This alone can be highly exciting and motivating!
2. Make a Conscious Effort to Define Your Goals and Dreams
One of the amazing things that we have as human being is our insatiable desire to lead a better life. We also have the ability to set goals, so that we can achieve our dreams of leading a better life. The best part is that we not only have the ability to dream, but we also have the ability to pursue those dreams. We have the cognitive ability to formulate plans and strategies to achieve our dreams.
Make a conscious effort to listen to your heart to figure out what dreams lay within you. Everybody has dreams – some have them right on the surface, while some may have them deeply buried within. You need to take some time to be quiet and peer deep within. Switch off all the noise of the external world such as cell phones, laptops, computers, and even people for some time. Just keep a pad and pen with you and of course your thoughts.
Spend some time thinking what excites you. For instance, think about what would you like to do either for a living or for fun? Think about what you would love to achieve. Think about what would you try if you were guaranteed that you would succeed? Think about what kind of thoughts give you joy and excitement. When you make an effort to answer all these questions yourself, you will feel awesome and will be in a dream zone. It is at this juncture that you can experience what dreams lay within you.
3. Set SMART Goals for Yourself
The acronym SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reliable, and Time-bound.
Specific: Goals can never be vague. They should always be specific. If you set ambiguous goals, it will produce ambiguous outcome as well. Goals which are incomplete produce incomplete futures.
Measurable: Whenever you set goals, always ensure that your goals are individually measurable.
Attainable: Your goals should always be achievable. One of the unfavourable things that many people do while setting goals is to set really high and unattainable goals. It does not serve the purpose even though the intention of setting it may have been good.
Realistic: Your goals should always be real. Goals should always be such that you can reasonably make them be a reality in your life. There are some goals that are simply not realistic. You should be able to convincingly say that it will take x, y and z to do it, but if these happen, then it can be certainly achieved. You can have a big goal, but it must be realistic.
Time-bound: Ensure that all your goals have a timeframe attached to it. One of the prevailing aspects of a great goal is that it has an end—a time which you are targeting to accomplish it. Time-bound goals keep you on your feet because you don’t want to fall behind. Hence you will work diligently because you want to meet the deadline. It may need you to break down a big goal into several small goals which are measurable within a set timeframe.
4. Be Accountable for Setting Goals
When you are aware of your goals, you automatically tend to be accountable towards achieving them. When a goal is set, and only one individual is aware of it, it does not have much power. However, if you have more than one people who can hold you accountable for your goals, it becomes much more powerful.
To summarise, you need to write down all your dreams and prioritise them. Select the ones which are most important to you, or most feasible, or the ones which you would love to do the most. Prioritise them in the order in which you wish to achieve them. You need to remember that you are constantly moving towards action and not just dreaming of achieving those goals.