Goal setting strategies & Goal setting tips
goal setting definition
goal setting is simply having a clear plan and a future vision of where you want to be somewhere in the future , in order to set goals or have a plan you must first know where do you want to be in the future, you must have some kind of a dream , something that you really want , this can be anything starting from having a successful relation thought buying a big house or car to being the president of the united states.
first step to goal setting
just sit and think of what you do really want to have, what is the thing that will change your life if you got it, what do you really need, what will make you live a happy and proud life rather than living defeated. visualization can help you much in knowing what you want,just set in any place where you wont get disturbed and dream!!. after visualizing your dream the goals that you are going to set are going to have the purpose of serving the big dream or the plan, for example suppose that you decided to be an ambassador , most likely you goal list will contain items like studying political sciences , learning more than two languages and having superior communication skills.
each goal on its own doesn't make you become an ambassador but together they serve the plan and so help you to get closer to your dream. upon deciding what you want , its time to set the goals .
goal setting rules and guidelines
there are some rules for setting the goals which are:
- goals must be challenging but achievable: for example if your plan was to have a perfect form then one of your goals may be losing 10 pounds of weight, if you decided that you are going to lose those 10 pounds in one week you may end up depressed because you may never do it, on the other side if you decided to lose 0.1 pounds per week you wont be motivated at all due to the lack of a challenge, your goal must be challenging to motivate you and achievable to prevent depression.
- goals must be time limited : in order to set a goal you must have a time limit set for it, after all you aren't going to live hundreds of years, life is short, not setting time for your goals may result in lacking motivation or being indifferent.
- goals must be measurable: after all you can't set a goal like "i want to be good at computers, what do you mean exactly by being good? instead you should have a definite phrases like reading 50 computer related articles and learning two programming languages .by the way not all goals are measurable in fact your goals should be divided into short term , medium term and long term goals, the more you approach the short term goals the more specific the goal should be ,for example being an ambassador could be the long term goal , one of the medium term goals could be learning three languages, and one of the short term goals could be mastering French language this year. if your goals were not measurable you wont be able to track your performance and you may end up lost not knowing what you are after
- you must be flexible in setting the goal: for example having a goal of earining a five digit monthly salary is more flexible than saying "i will be a sales person who works for Cisco corporation and who earns a five digit monthly salary". your goal should be focusing on what you want and not on how you are going to do it,after all if you wanted a five digit salary why limit this to being a sales person? there are hundreds of ways to do it. flexibility is reaching your final goal using whatever method you could find and not getting bounded to a certain method that don't work.
goal setting and time management
Usually when goal setting is mentioned, another topic is mentioned along with it which is time management. Learning time management will make you more capable of using your time efficiently, this will lead to faster results in reaching your goals.
crisis management
finally you should have scenarios for what to do in case that you were unable to achieve your goal, having a scenario for an unexpected event that may occur will prevent sudden emotional decisions when the event happens as you will be already prepared, it will also prevent depression in case that the goals are not met and that there is no other choice rather then getting depressed.
goal setting and having a vision
a vision is a mental image or a mental video that you have in your mind for where you want to be in the future, its like imagining your goals and dreams after they have came true. a vision is aslo your expectation for the future of your buiessns,yourself or a technology change. having a vision is an essential item for reaching your goals.