How to Set Great Goals for Yourself

The basics of goal setting are an open secret known by top-calibre athletes and all types of achievers from different fields. The basics of setting goals give you short-term and long-term motivation and focus, they help you focus and help you to plan and organize your resources and your time so that you can get the best out of your life.

Setting clearly defined short term and long term goals will enable you to measure your progress and achieve personal satisfaction once you have successfully met your goals. Charting your progress will also allow you to see the stages of completion leading to the actual realization of your goals. This eliminates the feeling of a long and pointless grind towards achieving your goal. Your self-confidence and level of competence will also improve as you will be more aware of your capabilities to complete or achieve your goals.

The basics of goal settings will involve deciding what you really want to do with your personal or professional life and what short term and long term goals can help you in that direction. Another step is to break everything down into smaller and more manageable objectives that you must complete on your way to achieving your bigger lifetime targets. Every milestone will become a cause for celebration, which will ensure good morale and eagerness to push forward.

An excellent way to compose a manageable goal list is to have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual goals. Define each of them as specific and realistic as possible. Your objectives should be measurable and defined within a time frame because deadlines will keep you motivated. By doing all of this, you will always be in the position of going forward with your life plan goals and every day will be a new opportunity to accomplish your dreams.

Here are some pointers that should be taken into consideration in setting goals and achieving them:

Impossible is just a word

The most common problem in setting goals is the word impossible. Most people get hung up thinking they can’t reach what they set out to do. It seems too hard, too demanding, too complicated….in one word – impossible. You need to have faith in yourself to push through this first perception and take the time to study every angle before you decide something cannot be done. The next step is to start practicing what you have learned, make connections and persevere until you get the desired result.

Only dreaming about some something and not putting in the work for those dreams will result in a broken heart and tattered aspirations. If you limit yourself with self-doubt and self-limiting assumptions, you will never be able to break past what you deem impossible

So dream on, friend! Don’t get caught up with your perceived limitations. Think big and work hard to attain those dreams. As you step up the ladder of progress, you might discover that the impossible has just become a little bit more possible.

Attitude plays a huge role in setting and achieving your goals

You must ask yourself if any part of your brain is holding you back on your path to completing your goals or if your behaviour forms a sort of barrier that keeps you back on the road to success.

If you experience issues in finding the right attitude to help you move forward in the pursuit of your goals, you have to take a step back and analyse where everything is coming from and fix it. You can only reach your dreams if you have the correct motivation and this starts with a positive mindset. Set goals that mean something to you, be enthusiastic about them, believe in yourself because you deserve to achieve them, have confidence and push away your fears, and you will eventually get what you want.

Find an accountability system

Accountability equals responsibility, either to yourself or to others, and it can be an important factor in achieving your goals. An accountability system implies that you should share your goals with someone else because keeping them secret could lead to the idea that not reaching them might be okay. However, when you connect your plan to a person, a community or any type of public, it becomes real and they will hold you accountable for it.

Accountability can come from various sources, may it be a trusted person or someone you admire, who will help keep on the right track when things get hard. You can choose a family member, a mentor, a co-worker, a friend or even larger communities, but it is essential to have someone interested in your progress. People you involve will hold you accountable to what you have promised to achieve and this will give you the strength to carry on.

Prepare for roadblocks

It’s not always easy to remain focused throughout the entire process of chasing your goals, and preparing for the roadblocks that you may encounter will give you the power to overcome your troubles.

If you accept that your journey may not be as smooth as you imagined, that you will be faced with challenges and obstacles, you will be mentally prepared for all of them. Before you start, make a list of possible roadblocks you may find on your way, and think of possible solutions for them. Making a plan for hard times you will give you the determination to face and crush any obstacle.

Education is the key to achieving your goals

If your goals require you to have a certain degree, specialization or skill, make your plans around getting the appropriate education. You have to take the time and resources to invest in your skill development and learning, and the more you learn, the better it will be in the long term.

Ideally, to reach your goals, the skills should be targeted towards particular niches that will help you in the process. Find out what abilities you need to succeed, start learning them, be persistent, patient and resilient on the road to achieving your goals, and you will find that all of these things will get you to the desired result.

Make your own self-improvement worksheets

The primary purpose of your self-improvement worksheet is to write effective goals and make a schedule for them. This is extremely helpful and essential because there will be times when your self- improvement goals will make you uncomfortable and you may lose sight of them.

When this happens, you need to have them written down to keep yourself on track and accountable. Posting your goals on the refrigerator, bulletin board, or in your planner ensures that you will be reminded of them daily. Don’t forget to review your self-improvement goals in order to stay on track. Check out your worksheet on the schedule you set. Reviewing them causes you to commit to their achievement.

According to studies, only 1% of the population actually understands how to set goals effectively. This is the reason why so many New Year’s resolutions are not followed. Moreover, this is also why people keep failing at the very same goal. The desire to improve yourself may be genuine, but the process you go about has to change to get you the results you hope for.

Having goals is great since it makes for a more fulfilled life and exciting perspective on life. This adventure of setting your goals, making a plan for them and seeing it through will provide with the energy to overcome even what you now deem as impossible. Goals make you believe in yourself and feed your ambition, they make you more responsible for your life, and your choices and they inspire you to dream big. So, be proud of yourself and your goals and believe that you deserve to achieve them.