GOAL SETTING: WHY IT IS IMPORTANT AND ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES

 WHY IS GOAL SETTING IMPORTANT?

Goal setting is the fundamental key to success. Whether it’s increasing your intelligence, learning a new skill or rekindling a relationship, setting goals lets us create our future. It also helps us grow and expand, pushing ourselves to transform in ways that we never imagined. In order to feel fulfilled, we need to know and feel like we’re working to achieve something.

Effective goal setting lets you measure progress, overcome procrastination and visualize your dreams. If you don’t know what you want to accomplish, you can’t create a plan to get there. Setting goals is the vehicle that will drive you to your desired destination.

Goal setting also keeps you accountable. Whether you’re learning how to set goals at work or in your personal life, telling others about your goals makes you more likely to establish the patterns that will accomplish them. Here we’ll cover how to set goals to ensure you achieve them. You’ll learn what makes a compelling goal as well as the steps you need to take to see them through.

HOW TO SET GOALS (THE ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES)

The best way to guarantee the fulfillment of goals is to set them the right way.

1. DEVELOP AND WRITE DOWN YOUR CORE VALUES

What you value the most is what structures your habits, processes, and the goals that you set. When you’re not aligned with your core values, chances are you’re not motivated to achieve them at any capacity, even if those goals are inherently good for you like losing weight or being a better partner. If you don’t have core values in those areas, then chances are your willingness to improve isn’t going to be much.

And that’s okay. Because that often means you are more focused on other things that are more important to you. You won’t know what that is until you put together your core values.

There are many examples of core values. Some of these are:[4]

• Authority
• Competency
• Determination
• Leadership
• Love
• And many more

You can do this in two ways: either write your goals and find core values after or find core values you associate with and set goals around those.

2. USE SMART GOALS

Every goal you define has to be SMART.

SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-Bound

In summary, your specific goals should be very well defined. They shouldn’t be generic or broad, and every detail should be clarified as you’re goal setting. If you want to start running, how often do you want to do it? How long will each session be? For how long will you continue this habit?

There has to be a connection between your goals and beliefs or you’ll never be able to achieve the results you want. Most importantly, do not be unrealistic. You cannot learn to fly, and forcing yourself to try is only going to demotivate and stress you out.

3. ALIGN YOUR GOALS WITH YOUR PURPOSE

Several studies have pointed out that people tend to get to achieve their goals when those goals have roots in their life purpose. [A life purpose is something that your entire life is designed to achieve. It is the thing that drives and motivates you to get out of bed every day and hit the ground running.

If you have not yet identified the purpose of your life, then your first priority is to discover that purpose.

When you have discovered your purpose, then align your goals with the purpose. Your personal, career, financial, and family goals, etc. should actually stem out of your purpose. Everything should fit into the ultimate agenda for your life.

It’s just like building a house. Every unit is placed together to bring out the beauty of a masterpiece called a building.

4. PRIORITIZE YOUR GOALS

As you’re looking into how to write goals for the next month or year, it’s likely you’ll come up with more than one. In this case, it’s important to prioritize which are the most important or the ones that have the tightest deadline. This is going to be subjective, as only you know which goals will have the most impact on your life. What this refers to are the goals that make you feel good but aren’t driving you to pursue them.

The more goals you have means the more opportunities there are for distractions. As much as goals are important, it’s key that you have a narrow focus on the goals that you set and a narrower one on goals that you are working on.

One way to help you focus on goals is after you’ve written down your list, create another list. One list ought to have the five most important goals for you at this moment. The second list has any other goals that you may have or come to mind.

The list of five or fewer goals is your “must-do” list, while the other is the “avoid all of them” list. In still in your mind to only focus on the most important goals.

5. BREAK DOWN YOUR GOAL INTO MILESTONES

Achieving your goal will be significantly easier if you learn to focus on smaller units of the goal rather than the whole goal itself. This means that you can break down your goals into smaller units that you can complete in the short-term.

For example, if you have the goal to self-publish a book in a year, you can break your goal into milestones to make it achievable. This includes activities like creating and researching your book idea, creating the outlines, researching the potential content, writing the manuscript, getting someone to edit it, peer review and endorsements, graphics design, publishing and marketing, etc.

Each of your milestones should have a timeframe within which they should be completed.

6. THINK OF THOSE AROUND YOU

As you’re working on goal setting, keep your loved ones in mind. You may have a partner, children, or employees that depend on you, and you should take them into consideration with your goals. For example, if you set a goal to travel to 10 different countries in the next two years, how will this affect your children?

If you want to lose 30 pounds this year, is there something your partner can do to support you? S/he will need to be made aware of this before you set off on your weight loss journey.

7. TAKE ACTION

Setting goals is the first step, but in order to be successful, you have to follow this with action. If you set goals but never act on them, they become dreams. Create an action plan laying out the steps you need to take each day or week in order to achieve your big and small goals.

The biggest thing is that an action plan allows you to break down your goals into smaller pieces. Often, people feel overwhelmed when looking at a big goal. Furthermore, people are more motivated if it’s a smaller task.

In the end, an action plan can be made however you like, but it has to outline actions you can do every day. If you put down daily actions, it puts into perspective that goals are habits you work on regularly.

8. DON’T FORGET THE BIGGER PICTURE

Most people refer to the big picture as their vision. Whether it is the long-term result or the connection of the goal with your desire, keep it in mind to keep yourself from getting distracted.

Developing a strong goal setting mindset with these steps can help you too.

Set — and Achieve — Your Goals

FINAL THOUGHTS

These are just a few of the benefits of goal setting that outline why it truly is so important. If you take a moment or two, I bet that you can even think of a few more benefits yourself that you could add to this list. If I could leave you with something, it would be this:

Goal setting has the potential to take us to some amazing places in life because we all have talent and ambitions. To achieve your biggest dreams, you need to be willing to sit down and create a life design uniquely tailored to you that will help you achieve them!

Have fun setting personal and professional goals and achieving them as you work toward your best self. 

KEEP LEARNING AND KEEP GROWING !

FURTHER INFORMATION: www.niraaleeshah.com

#personalbrandingservices #personalbrandingexpert #etiquettemapping #corporatetraining #corporatetrainer #personalitydevelopment #corporatetraining #communicationskills #businessservices #brandingexpert #indianetiquettebook #indianetiquette #businessmentor #businessmentorship