Goal setting is a formal process for personal planning. By setting goals on a routine basis, you decide what you want to achieve, and then you move step-by-step towards achieving those goals.

Advantages of setting goals

· Helps achieve more
· Improves performances
· Increases your motivation to achieve
· Increases your pride and satisfaction in your achievements
· Improves your self-confidence
· Plan to eliminate attitude that holds you back and causes unhappiness

Research says that people who set goals effectively would suffer less from stress and anxiety, concentrate well on what they want to achieve, show more self-confidence in their activity and perform better in activities that led them to achieve goals. Overall, they are happier and more satisfied. So let’s see how to form goals.

Broad guidelines to set effective goals

· State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively.
· Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in date, time and amount so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you would know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and you can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
· Set Priorities: When you have several goals, give each one a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important one.
· Write down Goals: This crystallises them and gives them more force.
· Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals, you are working toward small and achievable. If a goal is too large then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today’s goals from large once.
· Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. These could be bad business environments, poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
· Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people like parents, media and society can set unrealistic goals for you. They would often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively, you may be naïve in setting very high goals. You might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how many skills you must master to achieve a particular level of performance.
· Do not set goals too low: Just as it is important not to set goals unrealistically high, do not set them too low. People tend to do this when they are afraid of failure or when they are lazy! You should set goals so that they are slightly out of your immediate grasp, but not so large that there is no hope of achieving them. No one would put serious effort into achieving a goal that they believe is unrealistic. However, remember your belief that a goal is unrealistic may be incorrect. If this could be the case, you can change this belief by using imagery efficiency.

Achieving Goals

When we have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately.

With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans.

· If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goal harder.
· If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier.
· If you learnt something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
· If while achieving the goal you noticed a deficit in your skills, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
· Failure to meet goals does not matter as long as you learn from it.

Remember too that your goals would change as you mature. Adjust them regularly to reflect this growth in your personality. If goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go. Goal setting is your servant, not your master. It should bring you real pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

Important points to remember

Make sure the goals you are working for is something you really want, not just something that sounds good. When setting goals it is very important to remember that your goals must be consistent with your values.

A goal cannot contradict any of your other goals: For example, you can’t buy a 652,000/- house if your income goal is only 50,000/- per year. This is called non-integrated thinking and would sabotage all of the hard work, you put into your goals. Non-integrated thinking can also hamper your everyday thoughts as well. You should continually strive to eliminate contradictory ideas from your thinking.

Setting goals in each area of life would ensure a more balanced life as you begin to examine and change the fundamental of everyday living. Setting goals in each area of life also helps in eliminating the non-integrated thinking as discussed above.

Write your goals in the positive instead of the negative: Work for what you want, not for what you want to leave behind. Part of the reason why you write down and examine your goals is to create a set of instructions for your sub-conscious mind to carry out. Our sub-conscious mind is a very efficient tool, it cannot determine right from wrong and it does not judge. Its only function is to carry out its instructions. The more positive instructions you give it, the more positive results you will get. Thinking positively in everyday life would also help in your growth as a human being. Don’t limit it to a goal setting.

Write down your goal in complete detail: Instead of writing “A new home,” write “A 5,000 square foot contemporary with 4 bedrooms and 3 baths and a view of the mountain on 30 acre of land.

Can you close your eyes and visualise the home described? Walk around the house. Stand on the porch off the master bedroom and see the fog lifting off the mountain. Look down and the garden full of tomatoes, green beans and cucumbers. And off to the right is the other garden full of carnations and roses. Can you see it? So can your sub-conscious mind.

Once again, you are giving the sub-conscious mind a detailed set of instructions to work on. The more information you give it, the clearer the final outcome becomes. The more precise the outcome, the more efficient the sub-conscious mind can become.

Instead of setting a goal of… ‘I want to lose some weight’ State it more specifically such as …‘I am at my ideal weight of 85kg having lost 15kg of body fat through healthy eating and regular exercise. I now look and feel great’

By setting your goals in a specific manner, you begin to instruct your sub-conscious mind to produce this exact result. By all means, make sure your goal is high enough. Shoot for the Moon: if you miss, You will still be in the Stars.

Writing down your goals creates the road map to your success. Although just the act of writing them down can set the process in motion, it is also extremely important to review your goals frequently. Remember, the more focused you are on your goals the more likely you are to accomplish them.

Sometimes you realise, you have to revise a goal due to circumstances. If you need to change a goal do not consider it a failure, consider it a victory as you had the insight to realise something was different.

So your goals have been written down. Now what?

First of all, unless someone is critical to helping you achieve your goals, do not freely share your goals with anyone. The negative attitude from friends, family and neighbours can drag you down quickly. It’s very important that your self-talk i.e., the thoughts in your head are positive.

Reviewing your goals daily is a crucial part of your success and must become part of your routine. Each morning when you wake up read your list of goals that are written in the positive. Visualise the completed goal, see the new home, smell the leather seats in your new car, feel the cold hard cash in your hands. Then each night, right before you go to bed, repeat the process. This process would start both your sub-conscious and conscious mind on working towards the goal. This would also begin to replace any of the negative self-talk, one may have and replace it with positive self-talk.

Every time you make a decision during the day, ask yourselves this question, “Does it take me closer to, or further from my goal.” If the answer is close to then you’ve made the right decision. If the answer is further from, well, you know what to do.

If you follow this process everyday you would be on your way to achieving unlimited success in every aspect of your life.

S.M.A.R.T GOALS

Whether personal or for business, the most effective goals are designed to be S.M.A.R.T.:

· Specific
· Measurable
· Attainable
· Realistic
· Tangible with target date

Specific

Goals should be straight forward and emphasise what you wanted to happen.
Specifics help you to focus your efforts and clearly define what you are going to do.
Specific is the What, Why, and How of the SMART model.

WHAT are we going to do? Use action words such as direct, organise, coordinate, lead, develop, plan, build etc.

WHY is it important to do at this time? What do you want to ultimately accomplish?

HOW are you going to do it?

Measurable

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. In the broadest sense, the whole goal statement is a measure for the project; if the goal is accomplished, there is a success. However, there are usually several short-term or small measurements that can be built into the goal.

Choose a goal with measurable progress, so you can see the change occur. How would you see when you reach your goal? Be specific!

Attainable

When you identify goals that are most important, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop that attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. You begin seeing previously overloaded opportunities to bring yourselves closer to the achievement of your goals.

Goals you set which are too far out of your reach, you probably won’t commit to doing. Although you may start with the best of intentions, the knowledge that it’s too much means your sub-conscious would keep reminding you of this fact and would stop you from even giving it your best.

Realistic

This is not a synonym for Easy. Realistic, in this case, means do-able. It means that the learning curve is not a vertical slope; that the skills needed to do the work are available; that the project fits with the overall strategy and goals of the organisation. A realistic project may push the skills and knowledge of the people working in it but it shouldn’t break them.
Timely

Set a time for the goal: For the next week, in three months, by fifth grade. Putting an end point on your goal gives you a clear target to work towards it.

If you don’t set a time, the commitment is too vague. It tends not to happen because you feel you can start any time. Without a time limit, there’s no urgency to start taking action now.

Everyone would benefit from goals and objectives if they are SMART. SMART, is the instrument to apply in setting your goals and objectives.

By setting goals, and measuring their achievement, you are able to see what you have done and what you are capable of. The process of achieving goals gives you the confidence and self-belief that you would be able to achieve higher and more difficult Goals. Provided you have the self-discipline to carry it through, goal setting is relatively easy.