Essential Tips for Goal Setting – Goal Setting Series

Studies have shown that up to 92% of New Year’s goals end up in failure. And some 25% of goal-setters never make it beyond the first week. Important surveys have also shown that 83% of people don’t have goals at all, 14% had plans but do not have them in writing, and only 3% had written goals. Whereas, you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you have them written down. What about you? Have you ever written down your goals? How far do you go with your goals?

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What you will learn about Goal setting

Here are the subtopics we are covering in the article series on “Goal Setting”

• Essential Tips for Goal Setting – Goal Setting Series
• How To Set Effective Goals – Goal Setting Series
• Why You Need To Start Setting Goals Today – Goal Setting Series
• The Power of Goal Setting – Goal Setting Series

Essential tips for goal setting

Ladies and gentlemen. Compliments of the season and welcome to our series of articles on how to improve ourselves through the power of Goal setting. We have been treating this topic for the whole of this month.

If this is your first article in this series, please make sure you see the previous ones, so you can get the full detail of our discussion.

Like we have been discussing thought this month, effective goal setting starts with identifying specific goals and planning how you intend to achieve them and in a realistic way. It is not enough to have a lot of good wishes and haphazard plans on what you would like to do. You need to be more serious with that, so you can get the results you want, and results will only come when you demand it with everything it entails.

Here are essential goal-setting tips to help you succeed in your objectives. Pay attention to every single one of them.

Have your goals in writing

It is only after writing down your goal, that it will be easier to focus on what really matters. Writing down your goals will also provide an exciting feeling of motivation that can last up to months or more. Writing down your goals will also allow you to create a more detailed plan of action and feel less overwhelmed by the end of the year.

If you are not crystal clear about what you want, your goals will lack clarity. The more unclear you are, the less likely you will be able to reach your goals. It’s important to write down your goals so that you can refer back to them regularly and stay motivated.

In other words, make sure that you know where you are going in order to get there faster.

Have goals that align with your true values

This is probably where it should all start. It should always start from here because understanding your true and personal values helps you live an authentic and happy life. And what are true values? You may ask.

Well, your values are those things that you strongly believe are important to you:

• In the way you live,
• How you work,
• And how you interact with other people.

Yesterday, I had a long conversation with a psychotherapist friend of mine about a project we are developing together. At one point, she asked me how much I am influenced by all the negativities around these days: Many people are depressed due to the effects of inflation, the loss of jobs, and all that.

Then I told her that what I found to be working for me is that I am making a serious effort to control the kind of information that reaches me, because I know I am going to live with that information.

The point is that my personal philosophy is to search for the good side in everything and if I see anything, whether they are some random information or people who are not aligned with that kind of thinking, I try not to give them my priority. This is one of my personal values and it determines my own priorities in life and how I relate with the people around me. So, what are your own values?

According to Phil La Duke, an entrepreneur leadership, and network writer, “If your career goals aren’t supporting your life goals, you are bound to have a miserable existence.”

So, it’s very important that your goals reflect your personal values. That is how you can have the needed energy and inner drive to pull your goals through because it is not easy. Never was and never will be.

Set goals that you can control 

Goals settings are definitely powerful tools at our disposal. They provide us with greater clarity and insight. In fact, the best way to take control of our lives is to take control of our goals, so we can leverage its power to direct us toward a destination of our own choice.

That is the surest way that our future can have a deeper sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. So, start today; learn how to take control of your goals and you are by so doing taking control of your life.

Too often, we set goals that depend on other people, and I really don’t know if that plan is realistic enough for your life. That is like giving your power to someone else. In most cases, people are unreliable so you don’t want to take that kind of risk. What if the person disappoints you?

I don’t want to scare you, but except the major aspects of your goal are under your direct control, you have little chance of ever pulling it through. So, be in charge of your plans in life by setting the kind of goals that you can control.

Give yourself the time to accomplish your goals

You see. If you plant maize today, you cannot harvest and eat it today, no matter the best effort you might have invested in it. Everything has its own time and season. So, learn to give yourself the needed time to reach your goals.

No need for too much of a hurry and never buy into the erratic idea of competing with other people. Remain focused on your goals and continue to fine-tune your ability to pull through. 

Of course, you should be doing something every day that is moving you closer to the realization of your goal, to the destination you have set for yourself. If you want to move from your sitting room to your bedroom, you will not suddenly jump to the bedroom at once. Even the jet plane does take the right amount of time to fly from one side of the country to another.

This is the importance of setting a goal. Say, a year-goal to learn a new language, broken down into monthly, weekly, and daily objectives. The only way you can succeed in understanding the new language at the end of the year is to do your daily work while waiting for the year period you have set to perfect your work. 

So, give yourself the time to accomplish your goals. Keep working on it, one step at a time, and start visualizing where you want to reach, and you will certainly get there if you do not stop.

Review your goals and make changes if you need to

Now you have set your goals, you know where you want to go and you are on it, doing your daily, weekly, and monthly work. But honestly, I mean being honest with yourself. Are you satisfied with the way things are going, according to your plans?

If you continue to achieve the same objectives you are achieving right now, say in the next three to five years, will it bring you considerable happiness and satisfaction? This is where reviewing your goal is very important because there is no template for you to follow.

In fact, if there were a template, your life would have been a copy of someone else’s life and you don’t want that. You want your life. You are a complete and original human being, creating a human experience and this is part of it.

Should you really change or modify your goals?

Why would you change or modify your goals after sometimes and some reviews? Well, it might be that your focus has changed due to what you did not know before. Maybe it’s as a result of the loss of a partner or job, or a war in your country.

It can be because you have migrated to another country and now have access to new information, a natural calamity or you suddenly become wealthier and are now able to do more than you could have imagined when you set up your initial goal.

There are usually many reasons why people change their goals, to reflect their current state of things. If you have reviewed your goals and see the need to change, don’t be afraid to do so because nothing in life is static.

Everything is in perpetual movement, the mountains, the water in the oceans; the entire world we live in is in continuous movement and transformation.

Take a look at the picture you took some 10, or 15 years ago and see how much you have changed and transformed, both physically and even in your thoughts. So, don’t be afraid to change your goals if you have to.

Remember this. The object of your goal at the end might be important, but what is even more important is what you have become in the process of realizing your goal. Keep that always in your mind.

Just to recap. In this series on goal setting, we looked at the general idea of Setting Goals, Why You Need to Start Setting Goals Today, How to Set Effective Goals, and lastly, we learned about Essentia Tips for Goal-Setting.

Of course, you can review any of these articles. And if you have paid enough attention to what we have discussed throughout the month, I am more than confident that you are set to go out there and create a winning goal for yourself.

Your key takeaways essential tips for goal setting

You need to set goals in order to succeed in your personal life and in your business adventure. If you don’t have any clear targets, you can struggle to get anywhere. Setting a goal is also important as it provides an indication of whether you are on the right track or not.

Many people who are new to the world of entrepreneurship might not know what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Setting goals is a crucial first step to achieving your objectives as an entrepreneur. You need to know what you want and how to get there. Without a clear goal, you are just wasting time and energy in the process.

There are many benefits to goal setting. It’s one of the best ways to motivate yourself and reach your potential. Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve and ends with a lot of hard work to actually do it.

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