Are You Setting the Right Goals for Yourself?
There is a lot more to goal setting than just picking a goal and moving forward. While that is important, it’s also important to ensure that you are setting the right goals at the right time so that you can truly be successful. A good goal will check all of the below boxes, and you’ll feel good about working toward it. A bad one will do the exact opposite.
How To Know if You’re Setting The Right Goals
To determine if you are setting the right goals for yourself, ask yourself (and answer!) the following questions:
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Are You Setting Specific and Realistic Goals?
It takes a little research to ensure that a goal is realistic. If you’re not sure if something is actually achievable then you haven’t done enough research yet. Once you’ve set a goal that is indeed realistic, then you need to be specific enough in your description of it so that it’s also easy to take the goal, and work backwards to create a schedule of actions needed to succeed.
Are Your Goals Multifaceted?
Focusing on only one part of your life is a bad idea. People live multifaceted lives and need to make goals for all areas of their lives in order to feel successful. If you have a wonderful business and career but your personal life suffers, then no matter how successful you are, you will not feel successful. Something will always feel as if it’s missing from your life if your goals aren’t inclusive. Therefore, make sure your goals include something from each aspect of your life.
Now, I am going to make an exception here. Sometimes, you need to just do one thing at a time, particularly if you are new to goal setting or reluctant to make change. Just know that once you complete that first small goal, that your next goals should address a bigger life area than the first did.
Is Your Schedule Realistic?
Once you create a schedule for yourself to reach each goal that you’ve set, you need to truly consider how representative it is of reality. Say your goal is to be healthy and reduce your cholesterol by 10 percent in six months. But, you haven’t set aside the time needed to exercise and eat right. If you don’t make room in your schedule to work on your goals, you won’t succeed because something will always be in your way taking time away from you. You’ll find yourself frustrated because you can’t do the work needed to reach your goals.
For instance, if you are going to exercise 30 minutes per day, setting aside only 30 minutes isn’t going to be realistic. You’ll probably need to set aside an hour to account for getting ready as well as cooling down or getting cleaned up to go back to work.
Are You Learning from Failure?
Many times when setting goals and schedules, instead of learning from failure, people give up. Using the example above about scheduling time for exercise, once you implement your schedule to reach the goals that you have set, you may notice that there are things you forgot to plan for. Don’t give up. Learn from the mistake and change the schedule to be more realistic.
You might find that you constantly have to rewrite all your goals and your schedule, but this is perfectly normal. Many people believe failure is something negative, but the truth is, if you don’t fail sometimes you’re not going to learn much and it’s likely your goals are too easy.
Do Your Goals Represent Your Needs and Wants or Someone Else’s?
A lot of people set goals that represent what someone else wants instead of what they want. This can really cause a lot of bad feelings and resentment which can derail the best laid plans. As you set your goals for your life,ask yourself, “whose goals are these?”. If a goal isn’t entirely yours, make sure that you’re ok with working on that goal for someone else.
It’s okay to do things because of someone else, but it’s important that you are honest about that and make some goals for yourself too that don’t involve anyone else’s needs or wants.
Are You Checking in Often to Stay on Track?
Schedules are very important to the success of reaching any goal in life. To do lists pale in comparison to a well laid out calendar or planner of tasks and activities that get you from point A to point B. Ensure that you look at your schedule every morning and every night and note when you succeed on sticking to your schedule and where you don’t. Noticing a pattern of activity can be helpful in fixing a poorly written schedule as well as staying realistic about whether or not you’re sticking to the plan.
Do You Have Too Many Goals Set at One Time?
Just as setting too few goals can be a problem, having too many goals can be a problem too. Everyone has a personal life and a career life and points in between. If you have set goals in too many areas of life at once, you might tire yourself out and get overwhelmed. Instead pick one personal goal, and one other type of goal to focus on until you reach them, and then you can add more goals as time goes on. You don’t need to do everything today.
Setting the right goals for yourself takes some thought and consideration. Don’t try to set all your goals in one day – instead, set some goals in different stages and in different areas of your life and give a lot of thought to why you’re making the goal in the first place.
Leave a comment! What are some goals you’re working on right now?
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