Personal goal setting

Article Outline

1. Personal Goal Setting 'Rules'

2. How to Have More Focus When it Comes to Achieving Your Goals

3. Giving Up

4. Staying On Track with Your Goals

5. Have an Effective Strategy

6. Learn How to Focus On the Benefits

7. Tracking Your Performance

Remember these personal goal setting rules before you set your goals:

• Your highest priorities in life- set goals that are in line with your values, not other people’s values

• Your struggles or achievements in the past which will pump-up more encouraging spirit when you encounter obstacles in the future

• What contributes to your personal happiness?

• Your self-discipline or personality which could be improved to meet the challenges in your plan

• What gives you a sense of fulfillment? Is it helping other people?

After doing this, you should set your goals. In the goal setting steps you will learn quick and effective ways to set your goals.

Keep in mind that goals act as guideposts and does not necessarily mean that it is the exact result that you have in mind. You must stick to your goals, but you can review and adjust your goals accordingly to the changes. If you don’t adjust to new changes, it will only contribute to time-wasting frustrations!

Don’t confuse this with procrastination. If you set a goal and the deadline is by the end of January, adjusting to changes does not mean delaying that deadline to June! This is clearly procrastinating and you will never achieve your goal if you keep delaying and not taking action. You should recognize changes, adjust it and straight away get moving to reach your aims when unexpected circumstances arise.

How to Have more Focus

Another way is to split your goals into short term and long term goals. This will help you achieve more focus, because you will be working towards one direction in the long-term. Long-term goals help you focus on what you can do in the short-term. Without it, you will be distracted and you might focus on short term results that waste your time.

This does not mean short-term goals are useless. After setting long-term goals, you need to know small steps you can take to achieve your goal. Short-term goals will help you focus on the task you have at hand. You want to build a beautiful home. That will be your long-term goal.

Getting started on the foundation will be your short-term goal. In personal goal setting, make sure you have split them into short-term and long-term goals!

Giving up

Remember that only a small percentage of people will keep pushing themselves until they reach their goals, most give up. Persistence and hard work are what drives successful people like Donald Trump to achieve wealth. Being in debt, most people would have given up, some commit suicide. But Donald Trump was nearly a billion dollars in debt, but he could turn his fortune around because of his sheer persistence and the ‘never give up’ attitude. If achieving success is so easy, then everyone would be successful!

How about the fast food outlet’s name you hear almost everywhere around the world? Yes. McDonalds. The man behind it was Ray Croc. Although he had the great idea of marketing this concept he also faced problems along the way. He nearly went bankrupt after running into some financial problems! But he recovered so well that if you are in any major city around the world, Los Angeles, London or Hong Kong, you will see a McDonalds chain nearby.

“Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do.” –Napoleon Hill

Use reminders to stay on track!

So how do you stay on track to achieve your goals? After you put your goals down in writing or use personal goal setting software, you should review your goals often. With time management or personal goal setting software it reminds you automatically, but if it’s in writing, make sure it can be seen easily. Even better, make it into a poster and stick it on your wall!

Review your goals periodically. This is a crucial step to take. You can ask yourself whether you are moving closer to your goals as the days pass. Are you making any significant progress? Will you achieve your goal by the deadline you set?

Personal Goal Setting- Be effective by having the right strategy

This helps you be more effective when dealing with failure. When you know that you failed because you used the wrong strategy, you will be able to change it. But if you did not identify the wrong strategy you used, you would continue doing the same old thing again and again. If this is so you will very likely get the same results. Repeated action brings repeated results!

If you are hardworking but applied an ineffective strategy, you will not reap fantastic results. However if you have your strategy is planned out effectively, working hard on your plan will bring substantial results!

Did you know that Thomas Edison succeeded at inventing the light bulb only after he failed 10000 times? But the thing is that he did not repeat the same actions over 9999 times! He kept looking for new ways to get the results he wanted. Some people give up after 2 attempts. Successful people never give up. They work towards their goals no matter what. To quote Thomas Edison, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” So if you are not achieving something, don’t give up, but change your strategy!

Learn how to focus on the benefits

Final Step- Tracking Your Performance

Then you will know if when you can relax or if you have to double your efforts when you are falling short of what is expected of yourself. After setting your goals together with proper planning, you will notice that you tend to overcome procrastination easily.