The Life Changing Guide to Setting Smart Personal Goals
Do you work hard but feel like you’re getting nowhere? Do you have big dreams but don’t know where to start?
Here’s the deal: when it comes to achieving success, you have to start setting good goals.
Goal planning is a powerful process that lets you think hard about the future, decide where you want to be in life, and motivate yourself to actually get there. Whether it’s your professional career, personal desires, or relationships, goals can push every aspect of your life to the next level. It all boils down to having a specific goal in mind and working towards it.
But not all goals are created equal. Setting specific, smart, and personal goals is the best way to concentrate your efforts and really follow through.
It’s time to start using goals to turn your ideal future into reality. Here’s how to do it.
Why Set Goals?
Athletes, business people, entrepreneurs, and successful achievers in all different fields set goals for themselves.
These goals can be any kind of objective. They could be small, like waking up earlier than normal, or large, like earning a promotion at work.
Setting both short term and long term goals in all aspects of your life–business and personal– help give you the motivation to improve your way of life. It helps you organize your time, energy, and resources to make the most of what you have.
By setting clearly defined goals, you’ll start to see forward progress as a result of your efforts. Even just achieving small goals will boost your self-confidence and help motivate you towards achieving greater goals.
Setting Smart Personal Goals
Would you set out on a trip without having any idea of your destination? Probably not!
Setting the right goals will help you choose exactly where you want to go in life–and how you want to get there. It will also help you spot the distractions that might be holding you back.
Ready to become your best self? Check out our guide on setting smart personal goals that can change the way you live your life.
Step 1: Setting Long Term Goals
The first step towards setting personal goals is to think about what you’d like to achieve in the long term. This could mean within a year, ten years, or even over the course of your lifetime.
These long term goals will help give you an overall perspective to guide the choices you make.
Aim for a broad look at all the important areas of your life. Pick out what matters most to you and start thinking about the ways you want to improve. Here are some areas to consider:
- Career. What do you want to achieve in your professional life?
- Finances. How much do you want to earn, at what time?
- Relationships. What kind of relationships do you want to build and how can your relationships improve?
- Behavior. Is there anything about your attitude or mindset that you want to improve?
- Fitness. Is there any fitness or athletic goals you’d like to achieve?
- Education. What do you want to learn and how far do you want to go in your education?
- Personal. How else can you live a happier life?
Step 2: Setting Short Term Goals
Once you’ve established your long term goals, now it’s time to assemble your plan for how you’ll reach those goals on a day to day basis.
You can create a daily, weekly, and monthly plan of progressively larger goals you’ll use to reach your long term goals.
Make a daily to-do list of things that you’re hoping to achieve.
At a smaller stage, your goals could include things like establishing a morning routine, stretching every morning, or reading during meals. Other goals could include working towards big projects, enrolling in a fitness program, or setting aside time to spend with your family.
Step 3: Keep Things Specific
Now that you’ve made these goals, it’s important that you can stick with them. The key is making your goals measurable and specific.
Ambiguity is the easiest way to kill your motivation. You need to set clear, concise, specific goals that are attainable.
Instead of saying “I want to have a better body,” say something like “I want to lose ten pounds before the end of next month.”
Without specificity, you won’t know exactly how to achieve your goals. When you lose sight of an end goal, it becomes much harder to achieve any significant change at all.
While goal planning, make sure you define clearly what you want to accomplish and how you plan to do it.
Step 4: Hold Yourself Accountable
Anyone can set goals, but unless you make yourself stick with them, chances are that you’re not going to succeed.
Start by creating a realistic deadline for each of your goals. Know what you hope to accomplish by the end of each week and each month. This will help you focus on what you need to do day to day to keep moving forward.
Just remember, these goals aren’t set in stone. If you don’t meet a deadline, you haven’t failed to achieve the goal.
Using time to hold yourself accountable is meant to motivate you to achieve your goals–not discourage you if you don’t meet those standards. You can always adjust and update your to-do list when needed.
The Bottom Line
Setting personal goals is the best way to improve your life–and it’s simple enough that you can go ahead and get started right now!
Goal setting exercises can be powerful and eye opening in terms of your priorities. Just by setting some goals, you can start changing yourself for the better. What we do every single day is the start towards living a more productive and meaningful life.
Looking for more ways to take your life to the next level? Check out our tips and tricks for self-improvement.