11/01/2013
Personal Goal Setting...Planning to Live Your Life Your Way...After all, WOULD YOU set out on a major journey with no real idea of your destination? Probably not!
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality.
Why Set Goals?
Here is my personal experience…
I was financially indigent / necessitous / cashless with the recent recession, had to give up my office, lost my home; found alternative work for staff (not all) and kids had to live with family.
The day Sheriff of the court came to collect household things, I sat my kids down and together we set 1 year, 3 year & 5 year goals.
I am happy to say that we achieved 1 year, and 2013 our 3 year and now 2 years away from the biggest goal, owning our own house again.
NOTE: Without an address or a map or directions you will find it very challenging to reach your destination, so …..
Starting to Set Personal Goals… You set your goals on a number of levels:
First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life (or over, say1 year, 3 year, 5 year goals or the next 10 years), and identify the large-scale goals that you want to achieve.
Then, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals.
Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to achieve these goals.
Step 1: Setting 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). 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 of the following categories (or in other categories of your own, where these are important to you):
Career - What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?
Financial - How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?
Education - Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order 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?
Artistic - Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?
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 behaviour or find a solution to the problem.)
Physical - Are there any athletic goals that 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 things, and then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals that you can focus on.
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 that you also remain true to yourself!)
If you are interested in getting the full details on the following, leave a comment and I will personalise each according to your needs & life requirements:
1. State each goal as a positive statement
2. Be precise: Set precise goals, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement
3. Set priorities - When you have several goals, give each a priority. Write goals down or create a vision board/book etc
4. Keep operational goals small - Keep the low-level goals that you're working towards small and achievable.
5. Set performance goals, not outcome goals - You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible.
6. Set realistic goals - It's important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (for example, employers, parents, media, or society) can set unrealistic goals for you
Tip:
You may also want to advise from RenaissanceWoman_LeeA on Personal Mission Statements, Crafting a personal mission statement can help bring your most important goals into sharp focus…let me know…
For those specifically interested in How to Set Business Goals…drop me a mail...
Your company's goals will only be effective if you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve--and how.
