Everything that is man-made is designed before it is built. Be it a house, car, clothes or anything for that matter. But when it comes to the most precious thing of all, our life, no one bothers to design it. We often forget that the secret to a successful life is setting the right goals in life.
People fail not because they lack the ability, intelligence, willingness or earnest to succeed, but because they lack goals, they lack the direction in which to expend their efforts. Having goals, whether big or small, give purpose to our lives and are stepping stones to a happier life. They are the reasons we carry out our day-to-day activities.
Most of the people do not get what they want in life because they do not know what they want. Complicated, as it may sound, but goal setting is a skill anyone can learn and master if they are willing to put in the effort.
HOW TO SET GOALS IN LIFE AND ACHIEVE THEM
To get clarity of goals follow these simple steps:
1) Believe in yourself: The goal setting process should always and always begin with the absolute belief in one’s own abilities to accomplish any task no matter the odds, difficulties and adversities. Our success, by and large, is the result of our iron faith in ourselves translated into action. It is the “open sesame” to success.
2) Visualise your dream: Imagine yourself five years from now living a perfect life of your dreams. You have everything that you always wanted. Now answer the following questions:
a. How your lifestyle will be after 5 years?
b. How much money you will be earning
c. Which car you will be driving?
d. What work or business you will be doing?
3) Write it down: For the last question in the previous point keep sky as your limit and set goals for yourself as high as you can think. See what work you will be doing after five years in order to live your dream life. Once you have visualized that write down your vision. By writing down your goals you become their creator which will make you more careful and protective towards them.
4) Create sub-goals: Since, achieving the life goal is a long and complicated process it must be broken down into smaller, simpler and easy to achieve sub-goals. This paves the way to your life goal where each sub-goal is a step towards it.
5) Fix a deadline: the previous step gives you some clarity of the approximate time you will need for the goal achievement. Using this, give yourself a deadline for your long term goal and also set shorter deadlines for the sub-goals, that is, divide the total time into yearly, monthly, weekly and daily basis, according to the sub-goals. Deadlines keep you motivated. They add a sense of urgency and do not let your goals to slip down your priority list. As they say, “The only difference between a goal and a dream is a deadline.”
6) Make Plan: A goal without a plan is just a wish. Hence, make a plan and stick to it. Follow these simple steps:
a) Do some research and identify all the long term activities that you will need to do to achieve your main goal and sub-goals. List them down. Break down each of these activities into smaller and simpler daily-activities.
b) List down all the activities you do during a day.
c) Analyse and see which all activities are not adding any value to your goals and that if you can eliminate or delegate them to create time slots.
d) Now when you have time slots available, readjust your daily routine and fit in your goals related daily activities in it.
7) Perform: Once your daily plan is ready perform your tasks according to it. The idea is to do something towards your goals, work on your plan, every single day.
8) Reflect and reward: Take time out to look back, reflect and review your progress. This will motivate you and help you to stay on track. Moreover, this will also help you to revise your plan and make necessary adjustments in the face of changing requirements. With every progress you make and with every accomplishment, whether big or small, do not forget to reward yourself. Be proud of your achievements. This will keep you encouraged throughout the course of your plan. For this you can keep a jar and put some money into it every time you do anything towards your goals. At the end of the month you can treat yourself with something valuable which will help you move closer to your goals.
Goals make us grow. Our potential is unlimited and to discover our true potential we must find a goal that is big enough to challenge us, to push us beyond our limits. We all have that superpower to make our life whatever we want it to be. Our success does not depend on anyone else but us.
