Going after your goals can seem daunting. There are ways to set goals and plans that will help you reach your goals. Start living your best life with these tips.
Goal Setting
When you set your goals, you should set yourself up for success. Dreams can be vague, but goals should be tangible. Your goals should have the following qualities.
Your goals should be quantifiable.
“I want to be rich” is too vague. You should have a specific net worth you are aiming for. “I want to be fit” is still vague. While fitness isn’t just about numbers, you can still set weight, measurement, or body fat percentage goals. You should be able to objectively measure your goal so you can review your progress.
Your goals should be achievable in the near future.
Aiming for one million dollars in net worth is grand, but you are likely nowhere near it. A goal that is too far will not motivate you to work for it. Start by making a thousand dollars first, or even a hundred. Then you get to the next step, and next step, and eventually, you will get to your end goal.
You goals should have deadlines.
Due dates can motivate you to work towards them. Especially if you’re like me, who cannot get things done without a deadline. Deadlines can be external, for example signing up for a 5K race on a certain date so you would train for it, or it can be self-imposed. Write it down so you can remind yourself what you’re working towards, and evaluate when the time comes.
Action Plan
Every goal should come with a plan on how to get there. Without action, aspirations don’t come to fruition. Having a plan helps you make sure you are taking the actions you need to get to your goal. But remember, it’s actually following through with the plan that makes a difference! The following tips can help you with that.
Action plans should be broken down to simple tasks that can be done in one sitting.
Let’s say your goal is to get a straight A grades, and in order to do that you have to nail your final essay. “Write an essay” is too big of a goal, and you probably can’t churn out a really good essay in one sitting. Breaking it down to researching, outlining, writing the introduction, elaborating on the main points, and finishing the conclusion makes it more actionable.
Action plans should have specific time attached to them.
“I’m going to work out 3 times a week” will have you putting off working out until the very last minute. Instead, it should be “I’m going to work out Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 7PM to 8PM.” This should go into your calendar or planner. Creating a plan and sticking to it is the key to achievement.
Reflection
Sometimes you don’t achieve your goal before the deadline. That’s ok! Stagnation can happen, setbacks can happen. What’s important is reviewing why you didn’t achieve your goal in time and reassess so you can continue making progress.
Celebrate the progress you did make.
If you wanted to make one thousand dollars but only made five hundred, that’s still five hundred dollars that you didn’t have before.
Be honest with yourself.
Maybe you didn’t reach your weight goal because you didn’t stick to your meal plan and ordered more takeout than you had intended. You have to own that so you can do better going forward.
Let go of the disappointment.
It is discouraging to not reach your goals, especially when you know you haven’t done your very best. But negative feelings can be counterproductive. Have a positive outlook
Reevaluate your goals.
Perhaps your goal was unrealistic to begin with. If you wanted to lose 10kg in one month, that likely wasn’t achievable as medically recommended weight lost rate is 1kg per week or so. Having a drive for getting results quickly isn’t a bad thing, but it’s important to understand that some things take time.
Reexamine your action plans.
What action plans you were and were not able to stick to? What was the reason? Understand the problem and address it so your next try will be more successful.
Those are my top tips for setting goals and going after them! I hope this was helpful.
Great tips. Goal setting can be really confusing and when you get it wrong, you often feel SO bad about yourself. But the thing I always try and remember is that you’re setting your own goals and they’re not carved in stone. You CAN change them if you want and nothing bad will happen 🙂 xx
This is so important! Sometimes you fall short and there’s nothing wrong with readjusting!
Fab tips! I think reevaluating your goals to check that they still reflect what you want to achieve is so important, and celebrating any progress is also key to keeping up motivation. Thank you so much for sharing such a helpful post x
Thank you! Yes, goals should be adjusted as we change. So important!