May 25

May 25 Reaching Our Goals

Setting goals can help motivate us to take the steps we need in achieve the things we want.

Goals help us to better understand ourselves and what we want out of life. They don’t have to be big dreams either, in fact smaller goals are often easier to achieve and help us to make little steps toward big things.

Why set goals in the first place?

Goals help us to focus on the things we really want. It’s human nature to want for things, experiences or certain feelings. If we’re not clear on what we really want, we’ll always feel something’s slightly off. We’d feel bored, aimless or we’d get easily swayed by the opinions of other people or society.
Goals help us get to know ourselves. Setting goals and ticking them off helps you to learn about your process, and what you do and don’t want out of life. This knowledge of yourself will help you for the rest of your life, especially when going through big life changes.
Goals help us grow. Working toward goals helps us grow in many ways. We learn life lessons and skills like time-management and resilience. Just by trying to achieve your goals helps you to grow and understand what you want to learn about and work towards. Even if you don’t achieve your goals, you grow and know yourself better.
Achieving them feels good. That sense of accomplishment once we achieve something we’ve been working hard for is priceless!

““What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” ”

— Henry David Thoreau

How to set goals you can really stick to

Think about how you want to feel. We usually have goals because we want to feel a certain way, and we think our goals will get us there. Do you want to feel inspired? Happy? Smart? Content? Excited? Get to the root feelings behind your goal. This will give you perspective on why you really want to achieve that goal.
Write it down and make it happen. Research has proven that people who write their goals down accomplish significantly more than those who don’t.
Keep it down to 3. Most of us can’t really focus on more than 5 goals at a time. Once we feel overwhelmed with too many goals, we lose focus and end up procrastinating. Keep it down to 3. This makes goals easy to remember and follow through.

Make your goals specific and realistic. It’s good to stretch yourself with a big goal that excites you but figure out what you specifically want to achieve. Goals that are too general, vague or almost impossible to achieve won’t move you to action.
List down baby steps. Divide each goal into baby steps or small actions you can do now. This can help you make progress over time and stay motivated as you achieve each step in the journey toward your long-term goal.
Check your goals regularly. Read what you’ve written everyday so it’s always on your mind. This can help keep you on track and identify opportunities as they appear.

““Goal-setting is powerful because it provides focus. It shapes our dreams. It gives us the ability to hone in on the exact actions we need to perform to achieve everything we desire in life. Goals are great because they cause us to stretch and grow in ways that we never have before.” ”

— — Jim Rohn, Writer and Entrepreneur