How Setting Personal Goals Makes You a Greater
Achiever
Achieving personal goals deserves a huge amount of celebration
but setting these goals in the first place is a massive achievement in itself.
While the big goals serve as a destination, the journey is
probably the most important part of the process. It reflects your progress,
your growth and your ability take control and steer your life towards positive
change.
Whatever your goal is, whether it’s losing 20lbs or learning a
new language, there will always be a set amount of steps you need to take in
order to achieve it. Once you’ve set your sights on your goal, the next stage
is to take an assertive path towards how you will get there.
The aim of this article is to guide you through how to take
action towards your personal goals in a way that will help you achieve them
strategically and successfully.
1. Get very
specific
When it comes to setting your personal goals, honing in on its
specifics is crucial for success.
It’s common to have a broad idea of where you want to go or what
you want to achieve, but this can sabotage your efforts in the long run.
Get clear on what you want your goal to look like so you can
create solid steps towards it.
Say you have a vision on retiring early. This goal feels good to
you and you can envision filling your days of work-free life with worldly
adventures and time with loved ones.
If retiring early is a serious personal goal for you, you will
need to insert a timeframe. So your goal has changed from “I’d like to
someday retire early and travel the world” to “I’m going to
retire by 50 and travel the world”.
It may not seem significant, but creating this tweak in your
goal by specifying a definite time, will help create and structure the steps
needed to achieve it in a more purposeful way.
2. Identify the
preparation you need to achieve your goal
It’s easy to set a goal and excitedly, yet aimlessly move
towards it. But this way of going about achieving goals will only leave you
eventually lost and feeling like you’ll never achieve it.
You have to really think about what you need to do in order to
make this goal possible. It’s all very well wanting it to happen, but if you
just sit back and hope you’ll get there one day will result in disappointment.
Self-managing your goals is a crucial step in the process. This
involves taking control of your goal, owning it and making sure you are in a
great position to make it happen.
In the early retirement example, this would mean you will need
to think about your financial situation.
What will your finances ideally need to look like if you were to
retire early and travel the world? How much money will you need to put into
your retirement fund to retire at 50? How much extra savings will you need to
support your travels? You could also start researching the places you’d like to
travel to and how long you’d like to travel for.
Outlining these factors will, not only make your goal seem more
tangible, but also create a mind shift to one of forward motion. Seeing the
steps more clearly will help you make a more useful plan of action and seeing
your goal as a reality.
3. Breakdown each
step into more manageable goals
The secret to achieving your goals is to create smaller goals
within each step and take action. Remember, you’re looking for progress, no
matter how small it may seem.
These small steps build up and get you to the top. By doing
this, you also make the whole process much less daunting and overwhelming.
In the early retirement scenario, there are several smaller goals
you could implement here:
- Decide
to make an appointment with a financial advisor asking what financial
options would be available to you if you were to go into early retirement
and travel. Get advice on how much you would need to top up your funds in
order to reach your goal on time.
- Set
up and start to make payments into the retirement fund.
- Research
savings accounts with good rates of interest and commit to depositing a
certain amount each month.
- Make
sure you meet with your financial advisor each year to make sure your
retirement plan remains the best one for you. Research new savings
accounts to move your money into to reap the best returns in interest
rates.
- Start
investing in travel books, building up a library that covers where you
want to go.
- Think
about starting a language course that will help you get the most out of
your travel experience.
4. Get started on
the journey
Creating a goal planner in which you can start writing down your
next steps is where the magic happens. This is where the real momentum towards
your dream starts!
Create a schedule and start by writing in when you will start
the first task and on which day. Commit to completing this small task and feel
the joy of crossing it off your list. Do this with every little step until your
first mini goal has been reached.
In the early retirement example, schedule in a meeting with a
financial advisor. That’s it. Easy.
As I mentioned before, it may seem such a small step but it’s
the momentum that’s the most important element here. Once you cross this off,
you can focus on the meeting itself, then once that’s ticked off, you are in a
position of starting a profitable retirement fund…and so the momentum
continues. You are now on your journey to achieving your dream goal.
5. Create an annual
review
Taking a step back and reviewing your progress is essential for
keeping yourself on the right track. Sometimes you can be moving full steam
ahead towards your goal but miss seeing the opportunities to improve a process
or even re-evaluate your feelings towards the goal.
Nominate a day each year to sit down and take a look at your
progress. Celebrate your achievements and how far you’ve come. But also think
about changing any of the remaining steps in light of new circumstances.
Has anything changed? Perhaps you got a promotion at work and
you feel you can add more to your monthly savings.
Do you still feel the same about your goal? It’s normal for our
desires to change over time and our personal goals need to reflect this.
Perhaps you’d like to take someone new with you on your travels
and you need to take this into account regarding timelines. Are there any new
steps you want to add as a result?
Remember, reflection is a useful tool in realigning your goal to
any changes and it’s important to keep on the right trajectory towards it.
Strive to become
the best goal-setter you can be
Having personal goals gives you purpose and the feeling of
becoming a better version of yourself.
But it’s the smaller steps within these big goals that the
growth and achievement really lies:
- Whatever
your goal is, make sure you get specific on when you want to achieve it.
This helps you focus on the necessary steps much more efficiently.
- Research
the actionable steps required to get to the end result and…
- Break
these down into smaller, manageable goals.
- Create
a daily or weekly schedule for these smaller goals and start the positive
momentum.
- Reflect
each year on your goal journey and purpose, readjusting steps according to
changes in circumstance or desire.
Keep going and always have the end goal in sight. Remember the
‘why’ behind your goal throughout to keep you motivated and positive.
Leon Ho
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/five-self-management-ways-to-personal-goal-achievement.html
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