Have you heard that you’re 97% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down?
The truth is that goal setting is important. In fact, it’s without goal setting you may never achieve the dreams of your heart. Every person in the world devotes countless hours to thinking of their future and their present situation in life. Almost everyone wishes that there was something that they could change in their life.
Whether you dream of a new car, a boat, or even to be a movie star, goal setting is the important catalyst to your success. So let’s get started because in
this article you will learn the fundamentals of goal setting, which begins with – how to choose the RIGHT goals to focus on.
Many of us are great at trying to set goals; most of us are practically incapable of following through with them.Think about it. How many times have you
decided on a course of action and simply didn’t follow through with it?
That is pretty much the norm for most people. Sometimes even setting goals at all is the harder part of accomplishing any. The easiest way of looking at this is to think of each and every New Year.
What is the biggest topic of conversation every year on New Year’s Eve? It is actually the resolutions.
But most us will only keep our resolutions for a short time. With each passing day and week, fewer and fewer of us STICK to our plans and our goals!
Sometimes setting goals alone is not the only problem that you must face.
Sometimes, choosing the right goals to begin with is harder. Basically, you can choose to work any goal that you feel is necessary for your health, stability and happiness.
Goal setting is nothing more than a formal process for personal planning. By setting goals on a routine basis you decide what you want to achieve, and then
move in a step-by-step manner towards the achievement of these goals.
The process of setting goals and targets allows you to choose where you want to go in life. By knowing exactly what you want to achieve, you know what you
have to concentrate on to do it.
Goal setting is a standard technique used by professional athletes, successful business people and high achievers in all fields. It gives you long-term vision and provides you with short-term motivation.
It helps to focus your attention and knowledge, which helps you to organize your resources. By setting sharp and clearly defined goals, you can measure
and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless effort.
By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability to meet the goals that you have set. The process of achieving goals and seeing this achievement gives you confidence that you will be able to achieve higher and more difficult goals later on.
Goals are set on a number of different levels. In the first place, you decide what you want to do with your life and what large-scale goals you want to
achieve.
Second, you break these down into the smaller aims that you must hit so that you reach your overall lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you
start working towards achieving it.
Succeeding At Goal Setting
Why is it that some people almost always succeed?
Here are four strategies to assist you to start changing the way you live your life, one day and one goal at a time.
In summary they are:
I. State your goal in very specific terms that you can accept
II. Plan backwards from your goal for the best results
III. Confront your fears and expectations immediately and progressively
IV. Put your plan on paper and into action as soon as possible
Let’s go through how this works:
Your goal
Planning a career move is much like mapping your route for a road trip. If you don’t know where you are going, you can’t decide how to get there, but if you
do know where you are going, you’ll get there faster.
Goals like ‘going back to school’ are too general and not specific enough. You have to translate these goals into specific statements such as “Enter a college accounting program by next fall” or “For the next two months, search for work in the computer securities field.”
You have to know exactly what you want to do and when to go about it.
Plan Backwards
One of the best ways to move forward is to plan backwards.
Start by asking yourself if you can accomplish your goal today. If you can’t why do you think that is? What do you have to do first? Is there something you
have to do before that?
Keep thinking backwards like this until you arrive at tasks you could do today.
This will help you to attain the goal’s starting point.
For example, if your goal is to take a two-year business administration program, could you start today? No, you have to be accepted to the program first. Could you be accepted today? No, you have to apply first. Could you apply today? No, you have to decide which post-secondary institutions to apply to. Could you decide today? No, you have to do some research first and so on.
I could do this all day but you get the point.
Don’t worry if your list of things to do becomes several lists. Deal with your fears and expectations of yourself.
Look over your list of things you will have to do to achieve your goal. Do you believe that you can do it? If you have doubts, take some time to think them
through first.
Are your expectations realistic? Have you succeeded or failed at tasks that were similar to this before? Whatcan you do to improve your chances of
success this time around?
For example, if there is a good chance you will not follow through with your plans, you have to ask yourself why.
Are you a professional procrastinator? If so, what can you do to make sure that you will keep going until you reach your goal? Are you afraid of failing?
If so, work at improving the skills you will need. Or test the waters by taking an evening or distance education course before you sign up for a whole program.
If you are having trouble identifying your fears or figuring out how to deal with them, talk to people you trust. Ask for their suggestions, but always make your own decisions.
Put your plan into action from to do list.
By this stage, you probably have more than one list of things to do and, if it is necessary, some plans foravoiding or dealing with potential problems. Now
you need to put them all together into one comprehensive plan.
You must list tasks in the order in which you must complete them and set deadlines for the completion of any major plans.
Successful career planners keep themselves on track using a variety of methods, such as:
I. Marking tasks on a monthly calendar (noting important dates such as application deadlines or action plans)
II. Making weekly or daily lists of things to do and cross off tasks as they are completed
III. Using a computer program to create timeline charts which give you your time limits for task completion
IV. Using a commercial appointment book or a notebook; even a palm pilot with a new page for each day or week.
V. Use whatever methods work best for you. If it is absolutely necessary, ask a friend to check on your progressoccasionally or question you on your successes because you are more likely to get things done if you know you’ll be asked about it.
Now you have learned a new way to set goals and follow them through. If you follow these four steps, there is nothing to hold you back.
Making Goals An Active Part Of Your Life
Setting Goals for Fitness/health
Health and fitness goals are certainly among the most common. After all, wouldn’t most of us like to shed a few pounds or commit to something that
would bring us the results of a fitness program?
If this is you, here’s how to go about setting goals for fitness and/or health. Begin by first deciding what it is you want out of it. Do you want to
improve your appearance, your physical skills; build endurance, flexibility or strength; are you trying to lose weight?
Make sure the activities that you pick meet the goals for what you want to get out of it. Set Yourself up for success. It’s important not to destabilize your
efforts with goals that are too long-term or impossible to attain.
For example; I want to lose all my extra weight before summer is too unrealistic; particularly if you have a great deal of weight to lose and summer is
just around the corner.
Too often goals are an end result of whatever program we choose, and not a part of it. You have to make goals an active part of your life by creating goals
that lead to the next goal. It is just like the backwards technique you may have already heard of. For instance, setting a goal to lose 10 pounds puts the goal at the end without putting too much pressure on you right away. You can add to this goal once it is achieved and so on.
Setting a goal to join an exercise class and attend it three times a week makes the weight loss goal a part of the program. You will have set a goal that is
achievable almost immediately. This gives you a sense of accomplishment, which is an incentive to setting and achieving the next goal.
Record your progress
Write your goals down so you have something to look forward to as well as to look back on.
To begin, map out no more than eight weeks of activities towards your first fitness goal.
Working within your lifestyle, decide on a regular program. It’s not necessary to work out every day, especiallywhen beginning a new program as your body
is not used to the stress. Our bodies become tired if expected to do hard work seven days a week.
Exercising every other day is a safe and realistic goal. Keep track of how much time you want to spend doing an activity, followed by how much time you will
actually spend on it.
Not everyone is looking at fitness and health to lose weight. Perhaps you are just looking to better yourhealth.
In this case you should think of this; we tend to focus most on the area of our health in our lives, when ourhealth is already failing or less than stellar.
Unfortunately, it may sometimes take a life threatening event, illness or some type of physical rehabilitationto give us a wake up call to make tough changes
in our current health habits.
We try to follow through on sound health principles such as enough sleep, a healthy diet and plenty of exercise,yet we may not have the time in our busy
schedule or have strong enough will power to implement a balanced andhealthy lifestyle.
With the pressures of the fast pace world in which we live, stress can set in and can take its toll. Many of us spend a lot of time away from home.What that
means is that we are eating on the road as well, which doesn’t always offer us the best or healthiest choices.
Perhaps we are lucky to get six, maybe seven hours of sleep per night while we now work at least six days per week.
The old saying, at least I have my health is finally starting to mean something to a great deal of people. You might be wondering what you can do to improve
your health. Prioritize what is most important to you in your own individual lifestyle.
The fact is that it doesn’t matterwhat your fitness/health goals are. If you have read the above sections on setting goals properly, and this section about
fitness and health, you are ready to go.
But you have to be honest with yourself at all times when it comes to your personal goals. And as often said, you should also consult a doctor before
making any changes to your diet or exercise regimen to ensure that you will not harm yourself.