A guide to setting goals to help you achieve them

As we start the year, many of us are setting our goals. I especially enjoy this practice because to me each year feels like an opportunity to reinvent and better ourselves and to prove this, most of our goals are usually positive things. Things to improve our lives in various aspects; financially, spiritually, physically, and so on. 

Goals are so important because they offer a sense of direction because you will know what to do and when. They offer that motivation to get up and work for what you want. In addition, they allow us to clearly see things and prioritize them in the order of our preference. All this will allow us to monitor our progress and appreciate our accomplishments.

Greg Reid, a renowned author, and filmmaker once said: “A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.”. This mostly emphasizes the importance of writing down our goals which I think is the best way to go about goals because it gives a sense of finality and you can see them more clearly.

Unfortunately, a good number don’t know how to set achievable goals but honestly speaking, a great contribution to this is the fact that goal setting is not discussed as much. As we know, most of us end the year without accomplishing all of the goals we had set for the year which is not good. Goal setting should really help in achieving our goals which is why I find if it is done correctly it will make reaching our dreams easier.

Firstly, as we have established, writing our goals down is best, however, we need to write them down in some sort of order. I prefer to write my goals down in order of priority. The important part is adding a deadline to the goal. This will give you a time frame to achieve it and allow you to monitor your progress toward the goal. 

Secondly, breaking down the individual goals into steps is key. It doesn’t matter how big or small the goal is, there are always going to be steps that lead to the achievement of that goal. My advice is to break down the steps until you can’t practically break them down further. The steps should also have their own deadlines and deliverables.  Deliverables are achievements or results that should be met after each step. By doing this, you’re enlightened on how to go about each goal. You also get motivated because you know exactly what to do to reach your goals.

There are some ways our goals should be structured to make them as efficient as possible. They should be SMART, which means that our goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based.  Applying this criterion when setting our goals will eliminate any room for poor goal setting and it will make the goals… smart.

After all that, the ball is in your court and it is up to you now to work towards your goals. It should be easier and you should be psyched since the goals have now been broken into simple steps. 

Finally, there is power in goal setting. It gives you a chance to better and improve yourself. When you’re setting goals, a good practice is to take that chance to push yourself to greater heights. You know yourself best and you know your capabilities, take that chance to do better and thrive.

Lastly, leave a comment, share this post, and follow the blog’s socials for more!

***All images are from pexels.com***