“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.” —Andrew Carnegie
Many people want to achieve something in their life. But only a few can achieve what they
want. Also, Everyone dreams of something and it is ok to dream for something you want. But
it is not that much easy to achieve. For instance, many people never achieve that and the personal
goal setting is important to achieve something. People work hard their entire life but at
last, they don’t seem to get anywhere and they feel adrift in the world. It is because they don’t
actually have their goals to achieve them.
So, The personal goal setting process is a technical process. We should know how to set a goal
so that we can get what we want in our life. Also, Here we are going to talk about the process of
goal setting and discuss some of the ideas about goal setting suggested by professional and
successful people themselves.
WHAT’S IN IT
1. Difference between goals and vision
2. Why we should set personal goals
4. SMART personal goal setting
1. Difference between goals and Vision
So, People often get confused about their goals and visions. They think about their vision and their goals
and misunderstand the concept of personal goal setting. But, Vision is something like dreams.
It is an imaginative form. If we wish for something then it is vision.
But the goal is something different and Hence, The goal is a more concrete form. So, We can see progress and
achievement in goals but we can’t on vision. For example: if you think you want to earn $1
the millions of dollar then it becomes your vision because you haven’t specified how you’re gonna
make it. But, if you think you want to make $50000 this year from your business or
whatever you do then it will become your goal.
So, What I meant to say is that the goal is specific and concrete that you can see the progress of
achievement but the vision is not specific and we can’t evaluate the process of achieving the vision.
Hence, We should have our vision but we should also know the difference between vision and goals.
So, Most of the time, people think of their vision as their goals and end up achieving nothing
great.
2.Why we need personal goal setting
Personal goals setting is the way to think about plans and ideas needed to make your
imaginary future vision into reality. Also, Many successful businessmen, actors, artists, athletes
and other successful people make their goals. So, The main reason for personal goal setting is
to get the direction where you want to go in future.Hence, If we look into the interviews and read about
famous and successful people, we can find that what they have achieved is all because of
their personal goal setting. So, we need a personal goal setting because of these benefits
1. Goals make us focus on our dreams.
2. They give ideas about the actions we need to take for the future.
3. Goals help us to improve in new skills and learn new things.
4. They give momentum and energy to get our work done.
5. Goals make our mind stable and give the proper path and direction to the brain.
3. How to set a goal
Goal setting gives a long term vision and short term motivation to achieve something. So, It is
important to set a goal which helps you to get what you want.Also, In the personal goal setting,
the main thing you need is a technique to set a goal.
So, Here I am going to share some of the ideas which help you in your personal goal setting.
These points are also suggested by most of the successful people in the world.
1.Unlock potential:
Let’s start with an example. suppose you put a pigeon in the case and pack it in the box, take
it long away and release it. What do you think a pigeon does? Obviously, it flies over the sky
for some time and it manages to find its nest anyhow. This is the potential of that pigeon.
Similarly, we humans have way more potential than pigeons for our goal seeking. But often
we can’t find out our potential. Hence, We think that we don’t have the potential to achieve
something and often we neglect to select a particular goal. We are not aware of our success
in achieving potential. so before you make any goal you should know about the potential in us,
which is obviously very high. So, That means we can achieve anything, just we need a proper
goal. So, never underestimate setting a goal.
2. Take charge:
Emotions play a vital role in our personal goal setting. Especially, negative emotions are
never going to make our goals achievable. People often blame others for what they haven’t
achieved, which is not something you should do. In Fact, you should take a 100% charge of
anything so that you can set a personal goal for yourself to improve yourself.
We can think from two perspectives. If we blame others for everything then we actually never
find out our potential to grow but if we stop justify our negative emotions we can focus on
ourselves and make goals more feasible.
So, the main idea of this point is negative emotions can affect your good goal-setting so we
should avoid them. In fact, we have to avoid all these negative emotions so we can clearly
set our goals.
3. True Goals:
If you set the goals, you have to achieve them. The main reason for setting goals is to
achieve them. But many times we can’t get what actually our true goal is. Many people don’t
know what they actually want but set goals in which they are not really interested. This
happened with us also. for eg. maybe you have a passion for creative writing but you don’t
know your passion and set a goal to be an engineer. This type of goal cannot be achieved. So
you should make true goals.
BLUE SKY THINKING Technique
The best technique to find a true goal is BLUE SKY THINKING technique. In this technique,
you set your goals looking to the sky, not in the land. I mean to say that you set your goals
limitlessly. In this technique you make a note of all the goals you want to achieve in your life
and think that you have all the abilities, money, support to achieve your goal then you can
choose what will be the best goal for you.
For this, you have to ask some questions to yourself and give a genuine answer to those
questions. This exercise helps you to find your true goals:
you should have a clear answer to these questions:
- Write down your three most important goals in life right now.
- What are your three most pressing problems or worries right now?
- If you won a million dollars in cash, tax-free, tomorrow, what changes in your life would you make immediately?
- What do you really love to do? What gives you the greatest feelings of value, importance and satisfaction?
- If you could wave a magic wand over your life and have anything you wanted, what would you wish for?
- What would you do, how would you spend your time, if you only had six months left to live?
- What would you really want to do with your life, especially if you had no limitations?
If you have answers to these questions then I hope you will get your true goal. You should
focus on your true goal and beside true goal you can also work for your side goals. But
remember the true goal is important for your happy and peaceful life.
4. Planning for your goals:
Planning is important for personal goal setting as well as to achieve them. If you got your
clear goals then the next step is to make a plan to achieve them. It’s ok to not have a clear
plan but you should always have a plan for how you’re gonna make your goal achievable. So
the next question is how to make a plan?
There is a proverb that if you want to eat an elephant then the best way is one bite at a time.
The same thing applies here also. If you want to achieve some big goals then you have to make
a plan by separating your goal into the year, months, weeks and days and you have to
complete it at that specific time.
● First, understand your big goal and estimate how many years it will take to complete.
● secondly, you separate that goal into the littler and littler makes a speciality of which
you need to hit to reach your lifetime objective.
● Finally, you have your plan and now you can work into your personal goal setting to
achieve them.
So manage your every morning to make a plan for that day, what you are going to do to
achieve your goal.
5. Measure Progress:
I already mentioned above that goal is measurable. You have to measure your progress on
your goal frequently. If we complete our goal in time then our brain releases endorphins
which give us happiness and also it motivates us to improve our skills also. So It is
necessary to measure the progress of achievement of your goal.
To measure the progress, examine whether you are doing good or not and give a score.
Also, you can give a proper deadline for your goal. This helps to activate the subconscious
brain and help to achieve your goals subconsciously.
6. Focus on one goal at one time and don’t wait for anything to start:
Most people focus on multiple goals at once and want to achieve them at once. But this idea
is not worthy. Yes, you can make multiple personal goal settings but you have to give the most
preference to one important goal only.
The other thing that people often do is that they wait for something for their personal goal
setting. For eg; Many people wait for new years and take a goal that day often those goals
were never continued by them.
What I want to say is that we should not wait for anything to take a goal. If you want to
achieve something big then start from now, take a goal and start working
4. SMART personal goal setting
SMART goal setting is one of the ways to make your goal more powerful. It has various
meaning but it usually stands for
- S – Specific (or Significant).
- M – Measurable (or Meaningful).
- A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented).
- R – Relevant (or Rewarding).
- T – Time-bound (or Trackable).
Using this mnemonic, our goal becomes more concrete and specific. For example instead of
putting the goal as “I want to visit the world” you can put your goal using a SMART technique
as “I will finish my world tour on 22 March 2030.”
Check out goal-setting theory to learn more about the goal-setting process.
5. Achievement of Goal
Personal goal setting is one thing but achieves your goal is another. So, you manage to achieve
your goal then take a time and enjoy the moment of your achievement and If the goal is very
significant then don’t hesitate to give yourself a deserving reward. It will help you to set
further goals and it also helps to increase confidence in you.
● Evaluate the process of achievement. if you have achieved them easily then set your
next goal harder
● If you have achieved that goal very hard then you should have your next personal
goal setting quite easy.
● During the process, if you learned new skills which help to change other goals then
do so.
Conclusion
Personal goal setting means motivating yourself to turn your future dreams into reality. Every
successful person has their own goal setting techniques. Here we have discussed
some of the professional ways of your personal goal setting. Remember that you should
have specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound goals.
Also you can read our blog on How to Start a Day -Manage Morning When You’re Not a “Morning Person”
