Personal Goal Setting
Posted on June 21, 2020 by Diana Elizabeth Martinovich, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Live Your Life the Way you Like it!
Many people feel as if they’re adrift in the world. They work hard, they try hard, however they don’t seem to get anywhere worthwhile. A key reason they feel this way is they didn’t really think about what they want from life, and haven’t set formal goals for themselves. After all, would you set out on a major journey with no real idea of where are you actually going? Probably not!
How to Set a Goal?
Before being able to take any actions, we have to consider what we want to achieve, and then commit to it. It is important to set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) goals that motivate us and write them down to make them feel tangible. Then, we will plan the steps we must take to realize our goal, and cross off each one as we work through them.
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about our ideal future, and for motivating ourselves to turn our vision of this future into reality.
The process of setting goals can help us to choose where we want to go in our life. By knowing precisely what we want to achieve-we know where we have to concentrate our efforts. We can also quickly spot the distractions that can, so easily, lead us out of our way.
Why Goal Setting?
Top-level athletes, successful people, celebrities, successful business-people and achievers in all fields -they all set goals. Setting goals gives us a long-term vision and short-term motivation . It focuses our acquisition of knowledge, and helps us to organize our time and our resources so that we can make the most of our life.
By setting focused, sharp, clearly defined goals, we can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and we’ll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a pointless destination. We will also raise our self -confidence , as we recognize our own ability and competence in achieving the goals that we’ve set.
Setting our Personal Goals
We set our goals on a number of levels:
First we create the “big picture” of what we want to achieve in our life (or over, say, the next 5 years), and identify the large-scale goals that we want to achieve.
Then, we break these big picture down into the smaller and smaller targets that we must first achieve before reaching our big, lifetime goals.
Finally, once we have our plan, we start working on it to achieve these goals.
This is why we start the process of setting goals by looking at our lifetime goals. Then, we work down to the things that we can do in, say, the next five years, then next year, next month, next week, and today, to start moving towards them.
Step 1: Setting a Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what we want to achieve in our lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting lifetime goals gives us the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of our decision making.
Now let’s do some practice. Try to set your goals in some of the following categories (or in other categories of your own, where these are important to you):Career – What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?
Financial – How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?
Education – Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?
Family – Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
Artistic – Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?
Attitude – Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.)
Physical – Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
Pleasure – How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that some of your life is for you!)
Public Service – Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these things, and then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals that you can focus on. As you do this, make sure that the goals you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want. (If you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants – however, make sure that you also remain true to yourself!)
Step 2: Setting Smaller Goals
Once we have set our lifetime goals, we will set a five-year plan of smaller goals that we need to complete if we want to reach your lifetime plan.
Then, we will create a one-year plan, six-month plan, and a one-month plan of progressively smaller goals that we should reach to achieve our lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on our previous,main plan.
Then we will create a daily To-Do-List of things that we should do today to work towards our lifetime goals.
At an early stage, our smaller goals might be to read books and gather information on the achievement of our higher level goals. This will help us to improve the quality and realism of our goal setting.
Finally, review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
