Setting Goals Will Lead To Achieving Our Dreams
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” –Les Brown
As we near the end of the year, it is time to reflect on the year coming to an end and start creating goals for the upcoming year. Setting and achieving healthy goals is essential to our well-being and happiness. Striving towards realistic goals demonstrates that you’re the boss of your life and that life isn’t the boss of you. Goal setting allows you to take control of your life’s direction and also provides you with a benchmark that can be used to determine whether you’re making progress or not. To accomplish any goal in life, you need to know what a goal is and how to set healthy goals for yourself.
Goals are what our desires become when we set deadlines for them to make them a reality. To feel like you’re progressing and making adequate progress in life, it’s crucial that the goals you commit to pursuing drive you toward accomplishing a greater vision for your life. Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you genuinely want to achieve. When you set goals for yourself, they must inspire you. If you don’t have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish in life, you can spend years going around in circles committing to things you don’t care about and becoming frustrated with life.
The first step of goal setting is defining your vision and taking full responsibility. The vision or goals you develop cannot be what others want or expect from you, but to find something that will motivate you. A meaningful vision for your future can be as simple as making a difference in one other person or impacting the world on a greater scale and everything in between. It’s important to set goals that align with your priorities in life. Achieving goals requires commitment, patience, and perseverance. If you lack these elements, your chances of successfully fulfilling your goals are limited.
The part of goal-setting that most people dislike is the hard work required for the goal to be accomplished. But, if we become too immersed in our chunked-up reasons why we have our goals, we end up lacking actionable steps to make our vision a reality. Being able to critique and analyze our best intentions can help us become more effective and start making progress on our goals. You have to be able to first ask yourself the following questions about your goals: what, how, and why. We may know what goal we want to achieve but may be stuck on how to do something or why we want to. Without the “why” we lack motivation, without the “how” we lack momentum, and without the “what” we lack direction. Once these questions are answered, we can look at how measurable and achievable our goals are.
When working towards our goal, we need to be able to measure the goal, our progress toward it, and the impact it has. You have to ask yourself a few questions: What are your short-, medium-, and long-term goals? What milestones are there and how will you get there? And how do you know you are making progress? We also need to make sure your goals are achievable. If you do not have goals that are practical and take years to achieve, it may deter you from pursuing more achievable goals in the future for fear of failure. If we can look at how measurable and achievable a goal is and be honest with ourselves, we can start focusing on the results we want and give ourselves a time frame.
Having a results-focused mindset can help you measure the progress you are making towards your goal. For most goals that you pursue, you will have to learn new skills along the way. For example, as I have pursued my career as a Life Coach, I have had to get certified, learn how to conduct effective coaching sessions, learn how to build a website and learn different ways to advertise. As I took steps towards opening my business, I have had to set my own timelines and hold myself accountable for maintaining my deadlines. Giving yourself deadlines creates a sense of urgency and proves to yourself that you can genuinely commit to the goals you are pursuing. It is important to make sure that your deadlines are realistic and that you allow flexibility for unforeseen obstacles along the way. While pursuing our goals it is important to be kind to ourselves and learn from our failures.
It’s one thing having a goal, it’s another taking steps towards achieving that goal. Only you can decide if your goal is worth fighting for. Allowing time and space in your life to pursue your goals in life will help you feel a sense of accomplishment and allow you to continuously grow as a person. Next week, we will look at action planning and how it can aid you in accomplishing your goals. If you or a loved one is looking for support in pursuing their goals, set up a free online consultation with me on my appointment page. And remember, we all can rise from our ashes and soar.