Why You MUST Set Goals?
Goal setting is used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your 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. You will also raise your self-confidence as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you’ve set.
SMART Goals
A great way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. SMART stands for:
- S – Specific (or Significant).
- M – Measurable (or Meaningful).
- A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented).
- R – Relevant (or Rewarding).
- T – Time-bound (or Trackable).
For example, instead of having ”To earn $100,000 this year” as a goal, it’s more powerful to say ” I earn $100,000 by December 31, 2012.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if you have a plan and action steps in order.
Staying The Course
Once you’ve decided on your first set of goals, keep the goal process going by reviewing and updating your To-Do List on a daily basis. This is a MUST.
Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.
Goal Setting Tips
The following Tips will help you to set effective, achievable goals:
- State each goal as a positive statement – Express your goals positively
- Be precise: Set precise goals, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement.
- Set priorities – When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
- Write goals down – This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
- Keep operational goals small – Keep the low-level goals that you’re working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental which gives more opportunities for reward.
- Set performance goals, not outcome goals – You should set goals over which you have as much control as possible. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
- Set realistic goals – It’s important to set goals that you can achieve. If not, you are setting yourself up for failure.
Goal setting is an important method of:
- Deciding what you want to achieve in your life.
- Separating what’s important from what’s irrelevant, or a distraction.
- Motivating/Inspiring yourself.
- Building your self-confidence based on successful achievement of goals.
Set your lifetime goals first. Then set a five-year plan of smaller goals that you need to complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Keep the process going by regularly reviewing and updating your goals. And remember to take time to enjoy the satisfaction of achieving your goals when you do so.
If you don’t already set goals for yourself, you need to do so starting NOW. Making this part of your daily life, you’ll find your career/life/realtionships accelerating and you’ll wonder why you didn’t do this years ago.
I’m John R. Salkowski, Founder of Achieve Success Academy, Retired Police Officer, Survivor of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) Leading Authority on Overcoming Adversity, Finding Your WHY Power & Achieving Greater Success. Entrepreneur, Speaker and Self-Made Man.
I can be reached via email at John@JohnSalkowski.com for questions, comments and speaking engagements.
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