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ACHIEVING AMBITIONS WITH GOAL SETTING

Goal setting is a very powerful technique that can yield strong returns in all areas of your life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on and improve, and what is merely a distraction. By setting goals you can:

  • achieve more
  • improve performance
  • increase your motivation to achieve
  • increase your pride and satisfaction in your achievements
  • improve your self-confidence
  • plan to eliminate attitudes that hold you back

Research (Damon Burton, 1983) has shown that people who use goal setting effectively:

  • suffer less from stress and anxiety
  • concentrate better
  • show more self-confidence
  • perform better
  • are happier and more satisfied

The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime. Setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making. Try to set goals in all of the following categories:

      • Career
      • Learning
      • Creativity
      • Attitude
      • Physical
      • Interests
      • Family
      • Finance
      • Community work
      • Social life

The way in which you set goals strongly affects their effectiveness. The following broad guidelines apply to setting effective goals:

  • Express your goals positively.
  • Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that achievement can be measured.
  • Where you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
  • Write goals down to avoid confusion and give them more force.
  • Keep the goals you are working towards immediately small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it.

 

Set Performance, not Outcome Goals

You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. Goals based on outcomes are vulnerable to failure because of things beyond your control. If you base your goals on personal performance or skills or knowledge to be acquired, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them. Another flaw is where outcome goals are based on the rewards of achieving something, whether these are financial or are based on the recognition of others.

Set specific measurable goals

If you achieve all conditions of a measurable goal, then you can be confident and comfortable in its achievement. If you consistently fail to meet a measurable goal, then you can adjust it or analyse the reason for failure and take appropriate action to improve skills. Goals may be set unrealistically high for the following reasons:

  • Other people (parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you, based on what they want.
  • If you do not have a clear, realistic understanding of what you are trying to achieve and of the skills and knowledge to be mastered, it is difficult to set effective and realistic goals.
  • Many people base their goals on their best performance, however long ago that was. This ignores the inevitable backsliding that can occur for good reasons, and ignores the factors that led to that best performance. It is better to set goals that raise your average performance and make it more consistent.

Alternatively goals can be set too low because of:

  • Fear of failure. If you are frightened of failure you will not take the risks needed for optimum performance. As you apply goal setting and see the achievement of goals, your self-confidence should increase, helping you to take bigger risks. Know that failure is a positive thing as it shows you areas where you can improve your skills and performance.
  • Taking it too easy. It is easy to take the reasons for not setting goals unrealistically high as an excuse to set them too low. If you're not prepared to stretch yourself and work hard, then you are extremely unlikely to achieve anything of any real worth.

Setting goals at the correct level is a skill that is acquired by practice. You should set goals so that they are slightly out of your immediate grasp, but not so far that there is no hope of achieving them.

When you are thinking about how to achieve goals, asking the following questions can help you to focus on the sub-goals that lead to their achievement:

  • What skills do I need to achieve this?
  • What information and knowledge do I need?
  • What help, assistance, or collaboration do I need?
  • What resources do I need?
  • What can block progress?

Goal setting can go wrong for a number of reasons:

  • Goals can be so vague that they are useless. If achievement cannot be measured, then your self-confidence will not benefit from goal setting, nor can you observe progress towards a greater goal. Set precise, quantitative goals.
  • Goal setting can be unsystematic, sporadic and disorganised. Here goals will be forgotten, achievement of goals will not be measured and feedback will not occur into new goals. Be organised and regular in the way that you use goal setting.
  • Too many unprioritised goals may be set, leading to a feeling of overload.

When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having achieved the goal. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals.

Where you have failed to reach a goal, ensure that you learn the lessons of the failure. These may be:

  • that you didn't try hard enough
  • that your technique, skills or knowledge were faulty and need to be enhanced
  • that the goal you set was unrealistic

Where you have achieved a goal this should feed back into your next goals:

  • if the goal was easily achieved, make your next goals harder
  • if the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier
  • if while achieving the goal you noticed a deficit in your skills, set goals to fix this.

Remember too that goals 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 pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of achievement.


TASKS AND REFLECTIONS

1 Lifetime goals:

Consider the following areas of your life.

      • Creativity
      • Attitude
      • Family
      • Financial
      • Physical
      • Interests
      • Community work
      • Social
  • Decide your goals in these categories and assign a priority to them from A to D.
  • Review the goals and re-prioritise until you are satisfied that the goals and priorities you have set reflect the shape of the life that you want to lead (ensure that the goals that you have set are the goals that you, not your parents, spouse, family, or people around you want them to be).
  • Once you have set your lifetime goals, now set a 25-year plan of smaller goals that should be achieved if you are to reach your lifetime plan.
  • Then set a 5-year plan, 1-year plan, 6-month plan, and 1-month plan of progressively smaller goals that should be reached to achieve your lifetime goals.
  • Finally set a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to achieve your lifetime goals.
  • Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
  • Once you have decided your first goal plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review your other plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities.