Personal Goal Setting
Goal setting is a powerful process for personal planning. We’ve touched on this previously here.
The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You’ll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.
More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you’ll find that your self-confidence builds fast.
Achieving More With Focus
Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help 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. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you create your “big picture” of what you want to do with your life, and what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.
We start this process with your Lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.
Your Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future) as setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.
To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some these categories (or in categories of your own, where these are important to you):
- Artistic: Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?
- Attitude: Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
- Career: What level do you want to reach in your career?
- Education: Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
- Family: Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
- Financial: How much do you want to earn by what stage?
- Physical: Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
- Pleasure: How do you want to enjoy yourself? You should ensure that some of your life is for you!
- Public Service: Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these, and then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus.
As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want (if you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants, however make sure you also remain true to yourself!)
As an example, here’s a picture of a personal set of goals that I set for myself a few years ago.. Most are completed and some are still a work in progress.. However, as you’ll see I’ve incorporated mind maps which I’ve discussed here17
Further details regarding goal setting and how to really set them correctly can be found in my book The Capstone Pattern or book a consultation risk free.