We talk about achieving goals! I have almost achieved my goal of passing on, what I feel is practical, ‘how to’ advice on the art of setting goals.
If you have gone through the steps I have given you so far I expect that you may have a list (maybe a long one) of how you can achieve goals in your business and what you would like to achieve and if you have been doing your homework, you will hopefully have turned your dreams into SMART Goals, but we are not finished yet.
Goal Setting
There are no hard and fast rules about how many goals you can set for yourself, and how to achieve goals. So that we go about how to create goals and setting ourselves up for success, rather than failure there is a certain process to this.
Firstly to aid goal achievement try to limit your initial goals to 2-3 short to medium term goals and 1-2 long term goals and take some personal accountability. If you just have one goal you want to work with like losing weight, that is fine also.
One of the other things to think about when setting personal goals is how to make things happen. Give careful consideration to how you will achieve your goal setting journey.
Smart Goals
Let us just go offer the smart acronym.
When you set expectations and set goals make them specific goals.
Ensure that they are measurable goals and attainable goals.
Have realistic goals and although they might be challenging goals they are also time-bound goals.
To do this you need to scrutinise the list you have made.
Separate out the long term goals from the short term ones, determine if a goal needs to be preceded by another goal in order for it to be achieved.
When doing this remember to be real with yourself, take a look at your limiting beliefs and what external factors might impact your making progress.
Take a look at your list and assess the actions involved against the time and resources you have.
Note: goals are not a to-do list.
You are not seeking to break them down that far. So it is ok to have a goal that reads, ‘I will work through all of the steps necessary to launch my own business within 3 months, rather than listing out each step individually.
Writing this goal may also prompt you to write another that reads, ‘Within 2 weeks I will identify all of the logical steps I need to take to launch my business.
So can you see how goal setting is also a process? Success comes from working on goal setting and setting smart goals rather than just making wild and wonderful statements.
Achieving goals
When you add an action to your goal you make it much clearer for yourself and you can start to see a number of things, such as the natural order your goals should take, how much time you will need to give to achieve the goal and whether the goal needs to be a long-term one or a short-term one.
Having both short and long term goals is a very positive way to approach your life.
Just remember, a goal has to have an action attached to it. So, ‘I want to be happy in 5 years’ time is not a goal.
You have to be specific about what you are going to do to achieve that and develop a list of mini-goals that will make it happen.
Life goals
If you have come this far with us you will now have some goals to begin working on and because you have created actions around your goals you should know where to start.
What you need to also do is stay focused and there are a number of techniques you can employ to help you maintain that focus.
In the next post, we will take a look at one of them; the To-Do List. Sounds boring?
Well maybe, but look at it from another angle, a to-do list is an effective tool and like goal setting it is one that is not always used to is the best effect by many of us.
In the meantime take some time to enjoy the fact that you have achieved something. You have set meaningful, action-orientated goals that you can achieve!
Just to recap:
set realistic goals.
set attainable goals.
set measurable goals within a specific time frame.
