When you set yourself a goal, you create a tracking device to measure progress towards productive change. If you work towards clearly defined goals you will pursue a specific route to the fulfillment of your vision for your life.
You may have been brilliant at setting goals in the past and it may be just a case of jogging your memory now, or this may be the first time in your life that you have ever sat down and thought about what you would like. Here is a simple process that will help you:
Be Passionate
Passion and excitement for what you want is the determining factor for achieving goals. If you are not passionate about what you are doing for work, who you are with in a relationship or about a particular cause or organisation, you are unlikely to be jumping out of bed every morning!
All successful business people believe in and are passionate about what they do e.g. Bill Gates, Madonna, Richard Branson, Nelson Mandela, Gordon Ramsay and those guys at Innocent Smoothies!
Think about what you really, really want to achieve in the different areas in your life and decide what you are passionate about doing.
Be Positive
You need to state your goal in the positive i.e. what you will achieve or do. This is critical due to how the human brain works: you get what you focus on. This explains why so many people do not manage to quit smoking or lose weight as they state their goal as e.g. I want to give up smoking. The unconscious part of your brain responds to direct commands so all it hears is “smoking” and no matter what you do, you will end up smoking!
So, think about what you would like instead? In this example, the person may wish “to be more healthy” which whilst being vague (more about that below), is better because the brain hears the instruction “healthy” and will help you respond to fulfill this message accordingly.
State what you want in the positive.
Be Specific, Have Feeling & Include a Measure
Again, you need a clear, focused intent. There must be no ambiguity about what you are going to achieve. It is really powerful to include an emotion for how you are going to feel when you have achieved a goal, or how you are going to look or what you are going to hear – whatever works best for you.
Generally, the most effective goal contains such a clear measure that other people will know when you have accomplished it. For example, if you want to lose weight you can amend a goal concerning “Lose 2 stone” to make it more inspiring to you as e.g. “Loving wearing my size 12 trousers” or “start my own business” can become far more exciting when you change it to “Feeling fantastic at delivering my first order!”
How will someone else know when I have reached my goal?
Make it Achievable and Set a Deadline
You want to ensure that you are encouraging yourself to be successful and are not setting yourself up to immediately fail, because how motivating is that? (However, failure is extremely useful because it helps us learn and grow). Powerful goals are ones that give you the goose-bumps and will really stretch you. Probably when you set them, you will not have a clue as to how you will achieve them. Great! These goals will be the ones that benefit your personal growth and ultimately increase your confidence, hence all those marathon runners and entrepreneurs across the world!
Setting a realistic deadline for your goal is a motivating force and helps you build momentum. I recommend having a maximum of three goals to achieve in twelve weeks. This is a manageable amount of time as it does not interfere with life plus, there is an end in sight, which facilitates getting started immediately. After all, if you have got a goal for a year’s time, how motivated are you to start NOW?
Stretch yourself to do what scares you and give yourself a deadline
WRITE YOUR GOALS DOWN
Read them every day. Create an image that represents the goal and your Vision.
Process & Results Goals
To enhance motivation to start working towards reaching your goal and importantly to persevere, divide your big goals into smaller ones that can be achieved along the way. This will help to track your development and give you a sense of achievement. Reward yourself as you accomplish these milestones!
For example, for a Results Goal: Achieve sales target of £500,000 a Process Goal or an Action could be Make 30 new sales calls each week.
Decide which is more motivating – you may set different types of goals for different areas of your life as sometimes, Results Goals are more powerful.
To put this in context within setting goals for the year, create a big goal to realize by December, and set quarterly goals to monitor progress. Perhaps, include monthly targets for these goals and then break these down into weekly and daily actions that you will take towards them. This will comprise your strategy – your plan.
Remember, when you fail to plan, plan to fail. Start planning!
Effective Goal Setting Worksheet
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