Whether we know it or not we all have some sort of goals that we're consistently striving for. Some of them are clear what it is that we're working towards and others not so much but we vaguely kind of understand what they could be. When you clearly understand the goals that you're working towards it gives you the ability to be more purposeful with your actions.
It motivates you to move with a greater emphasis that increases your focus and helps incorporate new helpful behaviors. Your effort tends to be higher which leads to consistently giving your best. This makes you more direct and efficient with your time. When you set goals that you want to achieve it comes from being able to identify what results you're looking for. Giving enough thought to what you want.
Research has shown that over 90% of the time, goals that are specific and challenging, but not extremely challenging, led to higher performance when compared to easy goals or goals that were too generic such as a goal to do your best. Ideally goals should be used to improve yourself so if you are not stretching past your limits, it makes it much more difficult to achieve big goals. So easy goals will not prepare you to reach new levels, it keeps you where you’re currently at but they do serve a purpose to get started, to build momentum and increase confidence.
There are times when goals can be seen as this big, scary thing that requires so much work and less difficult goals are a great place to begin to help work your way up. Those less difficult goals can also be generic which do not measure your progress so it can leave you in the unknown. The goal of trying your best is hard to measure unless you have some sort of evidence based on your effort. A great way to measure giving your best is if you’re exhausted every day from it because without it you might think you’re giving your all when maybe only the motions are being done. That is where complacency sits in, and those specific measurements keep you on track, it makes you accountable to do what is necessary.
Know why you set goals
As you're working to figure out what your goals are make sure you understand why you set them for yourselves. This gives you a greater connection to it that's going to increase the effort that you put going forward. Having goals just to have goals is less likely to achieve them because it lacks a sense of internal significance. The tangible things that can be seen and touched such as trophies or material things can be appealing but will not be enough when setbacks are experienced.
The foundation of your goals should be aligned with your values and principles in some way as this not only gives you greater motivation but inspiration. Motivation is driven by an external reward while inspiration is an internal satisfaction that is dependent on what compels you to do things over the long term. Having these two gives you greater energy in your pursuits so the external reward can be short lived, inspiration will remind you to keep going forward.
Take your time to figure out what goals you really want to achieve. It might even help just to write out all the things that you want to accomplish. The list might be 10, 15, 20 things that you want to get done and then maybe you narrow it down to five things and then from there you can narrow it down to two or one based on what really captivates you. The great thing about writing all this down is that those higher priority goals can be taken on immediately and once they're accomplished you can move on to the next one. It's a good idea to really come to understand yourself better before you really jump into setting goals for yourself because goals without knowing what drives you can feel empty even when you achieve them.
Goal Setting Principles
To make your goal setting effective make sure they are clear, challenging, have a commitment to it, provide feedback, and breaking down each task. This is known as the goal setting principles to improve your chance of success. Now there are many other ways to go about setting goals, but this helps you operate within a specific framework to get you going. This can be useful when what you have in mind is vague. It guides you to create your own customized plan.
Clear and specific goals take out the confusion of what you’re working towards as you’ll know what things to focus on. Having a way to measure what you are aiming for makes you know whether you arrived or if there is still more to do to get there. The greater your focus is on what you do, the better chance you at doing it well. A goal might be to gain more knowledge and to clarify how you’re going to measure it is by reading a non-fiction book per month for 13 months. You can tell when you reached it or not. There is no subjectiveness here, it is a yes or no if you reached the outcome you wanted.
Making your goal challenging forces you to go beyond what you think you can that betters you inch by inch, foot by foot and then by miles. The key is to find the right difficulty where it is not too extreme that it restricts growth, something that gets you out of your comfort zone. So if you currently do 10 pushups and want to do more, shoot for 15 instead of just aiming for 100. Falling short of a big goal can be crushing at times but with the progress you make of doing 15 then you can increase it to 25, 50 and then 100. This gradually builds you up so you can continue to take on challenging ones instead of extremely daunting ones.
Being committed to your goal increases your chance of achieving it because most of the time we all do not get it on our first try. It takes repeated effort as gradual improvements occur overtime. Remind yourself that there is a difference between a commitment and when being interested. When you’re interested you do things when it’s convenient, when you’re committed you make no excuses, you find a way to get things done. Commitment helps you do things when you don’t feel like it or even when there are obstacles in the way, you maneuver your way to make it happen.
Providing honest feedback to the progress made or lack of it helps you know what was done well and what needs to be improved on. This helps you recognize if you need to make certain changes or if you are on track to reach your goal, where it saves you time because of the accountability piece. With so much going on there are more things that occupy your attention than just your goal and this helps you reflect on how things are going in greater frequency. Like when trying to lose or gain weight, weekly weighs in give you an answer on the results you are getting. Are things working or not.
The final part is breaking down each step needed to reach the goal. Usually when a goal is set it is one big objective and to reach it, there are many small actions involved that add up. When you can identify what those small steps are, you outline the path to ensure you reach your objective. Without this part, many simply things can be overlooked that make the difference in achieving what you want. Like an instructions manual for putting together table, missing a few steps can cause the table to not hold up properly. It might fall on its own or a certain amount of weight can cause it to become unhinged.
These five things combined can improve your overall performance that will increase your confidence going forward. Skip out on any one of them or put in partial effort, then it will show up in the results. Initially looking at these principles can seem like it’s unnecessary or too much, but this provides a roadmap of how you will get things done. A goal without a plan can be seen merely as a wish. I could say my goal is to have my own business but without an outline of what the business will be and how I will execute it really just is a thought that I am hoping for. Goals are transferring what you want to become a reality.
Focus on the process
Once you’re able to set these parameters in place focus on the process because it truly is about becoming and growing, where you’re transforming into more even though it might not feel or appear that way. When you can put all your energy into what needs to be done instead of paying attention to the result it in a away takes some of that pressure off because when a goal is thought of it can be motivating to pursue it but there more time spent looking at the goal it can cause impatience to occur where things are sped comprising the quality that leads to mistakes.
Where time could be seen as hurry up, I need to get there now instead of focusing on time is to be used to executing effectively daily and sometimes that means taken longer than expected. So if you’re not seeing the progress that you expect in a certain time frame, look at how well you execute daily. Is it poor, good, or great. How well the process is executed consistently gives a level of indication of the goal being reached.
Putting deadlines on your goals can be helpful as it makes you more accountable to get things done. Take it a step further and put deadlines on the actions that you need to complete as this makes you more processed oriented. If your goal is to save up $4,000 dollars in 8 months then further break it down into a monthly, weekly and daily basis to identify what you can do. This would be on average $500 per month, $125 per week, $17.81 per day.
Pick which one you will keep on track; a weekly deadline gives you just enough cushion to not feel panicked daily but not too much time to say I have the whole month to save $500. Then you could see what expenses to cut back on such as riding a bike or catching public transportation to get around, stop eating out, cut out streaming services, or pick up side work to earn a little more money. Having checkpoints that are action specific allows you to measure what you have done to move closer to your goal.
As you go about pursuing your goals, sacrifices need to be made or else you reduce the chance of achieving them. In the case of saving up $4,000 it's not comfortable riding your bike to get around as it takes longer and it makes you work for it or giving up eating out or no longer watching certain TV shows on those streaming services, it's a pleasure that you cut out.
These things you might have grown accustomed to, there is going to be a level of dissatisfaction that you're no longer going get to enjoy for a certain period. Have these types of conversations with yourself where you specifically state what those sacrifices are and if you're willing to give them up because if you're not it's going to severely impact your ability to reach your goals. There's a difference between what needs to be done and what wants to be done.
Statistics on goals
Here is a couple of statistics that are interesting, 84% of people do not set goals, 13% of people who do set goals do not achieve them and 3% of people set goals and achieve them. It is not surprising that the majority do not set goals because it might seem intimidating or even silly. Goals can be seen as difficult things to do and maybe protecting against disappointment is a reason many do not pursue them. Or maybe vaguely knowing what the goal is enough so why bother setting them with much energy.
Do we tell ourselves my goal is to eat today, for most of us it will probably be no. But those who do have goals relating to eating will have a greater outcome than those who don’t. Some might have a goal of consistently eating healthy 6 days a week and they will likely be healthier than those who do not set an eating goal.
Those that do not achieve their goals have many factors involved. Maybe the goal was extremely difficult, maybe enough times coming up short was too much to handle and decided to move on or more work needed to be completed with specific targets that must be met to ensure they were on track. Just because a goal is not reached is not the end, it just means that more work is required to achieve it. Many variables affect not reaching a set goal, but having a plan of how you will execute increases your chance of making it happen.
That 3% of people who do achieve their goals all had a great amount of focus and commitment to it because of the plan on how they executed. The structure and direction can be motivating to continue forward where the check points along the way become these small goals to add up to the big one. Resilience and consistency are great traits to help achieve your desired goals because many things will get in the way.
Daily distractions can disrupt the momentum that is built and those that achieve their goals are able to recognize what potential distractions might happen and they’ll work to minimize them. So if your trying to improve your grades, turning off the music, the phone and being alone will help you focus better. It is not so much the time put into what you’re working towards but the quality of work that is done. 30 minutes of intense focus at the task at hand is better than 2 hours of causally being focused. The greater the focus the more efficient you become with your time that leads to less burn out and enjoying the process.
Goals that are written down increase the chance of achieving them by 42%. What you are thinking starts to become a reality when you write it out, it becomes externally stored and you can see it. Typing it electronically is a convenient way to see it. This forces you to clarify what it is you want to achieve to help you make the goal specific. Having a set schedule action in commitment to the goal increases achieving it by 76%. This is part of that feedback where you know where you stand based on the work that was or was not done. If you present weekly progress reports to a supportive audience, it increases your achieving your goal by 40%.
Final thoughts
Having goals can be extremely beneficial to your overall development and belief in yourself. As you get started make sure to know your reasons why you want to accomplish specific goals. There's no need to try to prove something if it's not aligned with the things that you really value. Pursue goals that benefit you and it doesn't have to be a specific amount that needs to get done, maybe having one goal a month or having one goal every three months. It all depends really on what you want to get done. Some things can get done relatively quickly, others might take a year or more to get done. Make sure that as you start off that your patient with yourself and you build your way up to more challenging goals. If you feel things are too easy that'd be a great time or turn it up some to get you outside your comfort zone.
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