Many people just follow the stream. They work long and hard, and then understand that they haven’t achieved something significant. Yet this fact is not enough, because the process itself loses its sense if leads nowhere. It is always important to have a goal. Setting up goals is a keystone skill that allows you to think about the better future and to motivate yourself for getting it real.
Know what you want, stop distracting and focus all your energy on getting to your success. This article is written to help you do that.
Why to Set Goals?
Great sportsmen, businessmen and inventors always set goals, and they set them correctly. Why does it work? The fact of a goal set up gives you energy and motivation in both short-term and long-term periods. It allows to focus all efforts and time on reaching something that is important for you.When you have your goal clear, you can track your progress and feel proud even for small victories. This leads to the rise of your self-confidence and getting the feeling of happiness.
Start Setting Goals
The process of setting goals up consists of three steps:
- First you create a general picture of what you want to achieve during your life and what is the most important for you. These are goals for a year, five years and ten years.
- Then divide your global goals into small targets you can hit in a short-term perspective.
- Create a plan and start implementing it.
It seems to be easy, doesn’t it? But the most part of people only think they put global goals, and don’t really do something to achieve them. They are based on thoughts like “I should…” and “If I…”.
Long-Term Goals Set Up
This is the most important part of the process, which requires lots of your time. Think about what you want to achieve and make a decision.
When setting up important goals, it is worth to analyze every life aspect and to develop them parallelly:
- Career. What have you already achieved? What would be perfect for you to achieve?
- Finances. How much money do you want to earn on each stage of your career? How does it all combine with your career goals?
- Education. Which knowledge do you lack? What skills do you need to develop in order to reach your goals?
- Family. Do you want to be a father/mother? If yes, do you want to become a good parent? How much time do you plan to spend with your family?
- Creativeness. What results do you want to reach in creativity?
- State of mind. Do you feel your current way of thinking to pull you behind? Does your behavior make you sad and irritated?
- Physical health. Do you want to seriously tune up your body, or you’ll be enough with healthy eating and morning exercises?
- Satisfaction. How do you plan to entertain yourself?
- Serving society. Do you want to make the world better? If yes, then how?
Don’t give answers too fast here. Find enough time for yourself and think. Then make a precise decision about what aspects you want to develop and how. Think about what person you want to be a year, five and ten years later.
Setting Up Short-Term Goals
When you have clearly understood what exactly you want to achieve in life, divide global goals into smaller ones:
- 6 months plan;
- 3 months plan;
- Monthly plan;
- Weekly plan;
- Daily plan.
Don’t miss a single one of these plans: your future is being formed today. Think about what you need to do, even if they don’t lead you towards your long-term goal. Plan your schedule according to that.
Maybe, you’ll have to start from reading self-development and personal growth literature. Create a list of such books and set up a deadline to read them all.
How to Keep Up to the Course?
It has to become your habit:
- Create your daily to-do lists;
- Regularly analyze the general view in order to remind yourself why you do exactly what you do;
- Correct your plan;
- Train your self-discipline.
Don’t forget about setting right priorities. If you want to reach a significant success in 10 years, then you’ve got to keep working on it every single day. It is not easy, but if you learn to motivate yourself and to keep up to self-discipline, you’ll be able to reach even more.