There are a lot of people who feel that they are working really hard, but still, they don’t seem to reach anywhere worthwhile. The main reason behind this can be a lack of goal setting. A key reason that people feel that their hard work is going all wasted is that they haven't spent enough time thinking about what they want from life, and haven't set themselves any formal goals. A person once went to a railway ticket counter and asked the attendant for a ticket, in turn, the attendant asked him till which station he wants the ticket. The person had no answer and could not get a ticket. He had money in hand and also made the effort to reach the ticket counter but could not get the ticket; the reason is that he has not planned his journey. The same way we all have to plan the journey of our life for a successful journey which is in the form of goal setting.
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality. Setting goals is a very important event in our life. The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life by knowing precisely what you want to achieve while concentrating on your strength and abilities. The main purpose of the goal setting is to outline a set of objectives and strengths by which means you will be able to achieve them. Goals are something that provides direction in life and helps a person stay focused, motivated, and improves performance. Goal setting is a process. By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you'll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. It is also worth noting that your goals have to be realistic and attainable.
It is really important for us to plan our future well in advance. Effective goal setting requires mixing goal types, such as outcome, performance-based, and process goals. Along with our goals we also need to realize our capacity and capability. Goal setting can either be a short-term goal setting or long-term goal setting. Short-term goal setting means setting a goal that will be accomplished in the near future, easily attainable and part of your daily routine. Long-term goal setting involves something larger that needs more time and depth to accomplish. Long-term goal setting often relies on well- defined short-term goals. Long-term goals are always more challenging ones. Goal definition can be important to your quality of life. Personal goal setting is important for things like:
- Academic Career
- Sports and Fitness
- Wealth, Abundance, and Prosperity
- Achievement
- Wellbeing and Life Satisfaction
- Motivation
- Increased Self-Confidence
- A greater sense of Control and Effectiveness
Importance of Goal Setting in Life
Goals represent expectations, hopes and dreams, and to the extent, our goals are achieved, we are successful. It is very important to define and establish realistic goals in your life. It’s your goals only that will guide you along the paths of life and also suggest you what is best for you. By setting and achieving worthwhile goals, you can give your life greater meaning and purpose. You will also find your work and personal life more exciting and rewarding. Setting goals goes a long way toward making positive changes in your life and toward creating abundance and prosperity. An effective goal can motivate the behaviour that is needed to achieve it. Goals are analogous to roadmaps and can help identify the path toward achieving them by promoting the actions and behaviours required to reach that point. Just like you plan your journey for vacations, in the same, way you set your goals for your journey of life. Self-motivation sustains your effort to stay on that path and move forward even if you face challenges. Your goals constantly motivate you to move on without stopping. Setting goals in your life can help you in the following ways:
- Goals help Us believe in Ourselves: One of the most important aspects of setting goals is that these motivate us and helps us to believe in ourselves. Setting goals for yourself is an effective way to fuel your ambition. Goal setting isn’t mainly just about creating a plan for your life and holding yourself accountable, in fact, it also deals with realizing your potential and positivity’s and it’s also about giving us the inspiration necessary to aim for things we never thought possible. Unless you make it a goal for yourself and work every day towards achieving it, why would you ever believe that you could accomplish it? Our goals drive us towards the success and make us believe that these are achievable and at times also push us to work harder to achieve our desired goals.
- Goals encourage Us: Setting prescribed goals also helps you to remain motivated and acts as a constant source of encouragement. Having a goal written down with a set date for accomplishment gives you something to plan and work for. A written goal is an external representation of your inner desires; it’s a constant reminder of what you need to accomplish. It is possible that in mid-way you may feel hopeless at times, but at those times your goals can act as motivation for you and propel you to work even harder to accomplish them. There’s a very common pattern that comes with working towards goals. It is a fact that when you set your mind to something, you get excited and work even hard when you think about results, and then motivation starts to wane. Having goals that you can focus on and visualize helps you better connect yourself with your inner desires, and gives you the motivational energy you need to work through periods where your focus inevitably starts to wane.
- Makes your Goals feel Achievable: There is a common tendency that we back out of things fearing that it might be too difficult to achieve. Most of us have big dreams that seem impossible to accomplish. It’s easy to feel discouraged when you’re starting with a new project or work, and during starting it all may seem to be really difficult. You exactly are not aware of your potential, you need to explore yourself and that is what your goal setting helps you with. Proper goal setting can help break larger, intimidating aspirations into smaller, more achievable stepping stones. You plan everything according to time and abilities. Planning towards these smaller goals not only makes it easier to formulate a definite plan of action that we can start working on right away, but research has shown that hitting smaller milestones provides real motivation and greater contentment.
- Helps us to realize Our Wants: Goal setting is an effective way to plan your future course as well as it serves an effective way to decide what actually a person wants. There are certainly times where we set goals that don’t really reflect what we want. If we don’t plan well then it is possible that we may have random thoughts every other time that we think. Sometimes we think we need more money when really we need a change of environment or someone to love. Human mind always has different thoughts at different events. Sometimes we think we want more free time, but what we really want is work that we can be truly passionate about. Sometimes we think we want to be alone, but really we need to be around more positive people. Hence it is very important to sit down with a calm mind and think about what actually we want and to plan accordingly.
Steps for Setting Goals
Goal setting is an essential part of personal as well as professional life. By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you'll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. Once you have prescribed goals and you know yours realize your capabilities it gives you a great sense of self-confidence, as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set. You must be able to imagine, conceptualize and understand the goal as well as the desired result. Goal setting gives you a visualization of actual success. By visualizing your success in great detail, you are conditioning your mind and preparing yourself to achieve your desired success. However, before you start checkout few steps for goal setting:
- Make a Decision: Most important thing to start with is to decide what actually you want. It would not be wrong to say that the goal setting is the opposite of floating through life and letting things happen to you that come along your way. In life, it is very important to have a path that you would follow for success. If you don't know what you want to achieve, what you want to be and what exactly you want to succeed at in life, then you are surely at the risk of being open to doing whatever others suggest you, which at times can be right for you and sometimes wrong. Setting goals requires you to make a decision about what you actually want. Striving for those goals lets you achieve your known desires. And goal setting requires setting a deadline so that you don't waste precious time. When you decide about your goals you tend to get into a commanding position with your life and decisions, which is a great sign of being serious with your life and goals.
- Set Short Term Goals: It is not always necessary that you start with long-term goals; you may start with setting some smaller goals and then gradually move on to making some long-term plans. Also for your major long-term goals, you can have a cluster of short-term goals so that you can analyze your performance easily with time. For a long-term plan, you can create a one-year plan, a six-month plan, and a one-month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan. Also, create a daily To-Do List of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. Finally, review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
- Set Achievable Goals: It is a very important task to set your goals according to your strength and capabilities. At times people just make some big goals without realizing their capabilities and they end up messing things for them. A lot of time people start for some big goals and leave everything midway, the reason is that they didn’t plan well according to their abilities. This may lead to a great deal of demoralization for you when you leave things incomplete in mid. Hence it is advised to carefully decide your future goals keeping in mind your abilities. Set targets that you know you can achieve, do not push yourself so much that you have to leave mid.
- Be Realistic: While setting your goals, it is very important for you to be realistic. Don’t under-estimate or over-estimate yourself. It is very important that you realize your potential and act accordingly. Do not set goals that are too easy not the ones that are too difficult. To increase your potential you can try with goals a little higher than your normal potential, at the same time do not underestimate your capabilities. It’s tempting to sometimes just slack off or let yourself off too easily. The fear of failure is sometimes to blame for setting our goals too low. While setting your goals does fear anything, just be realistic according to your capabilities.
- Review your Progress: It is really important that you make in a provision for reviewing your progress from time to time. After setting, affirming and doing, comes reviewing. As part of setting your goals, be sure to write in occasional statements requiring you to review this goal's progress. You can also try setting some smaller short-term goals so as to review your progress. It's an important reminder to keep you on the path of achieving the goals you've set yourself. Now go set your goals and start working on them.
