What You Need to Know Before Setting Goals
The subconscious mind is constantly processing information in the movement towards a particular direction. If you do not map out a strategy to help you get to where you want to go, then the mind’s energy is wasted. Life planning is a task that every person should endeavor to pursue as it gives you a clear vision of your future, helps you stay motivated and monitors your progress.
Goal setting is a process of laying out a personal plan of clear objectives that give you direction and motivation needed to achieve the things you desire in life. When the mind has a defined target, it can focus, direct, refocus and re-direct until it reaches its intended goal.
‘He who fails to plan plans to fail’- Jim Rohn
To be successful in life, you must seek to create a roadmap that will give you guidance to accomplishing your greatest life goals.
7 Areas of Life You Can Focus on While Setting Goals
No one is perfect, and it is challenging to achieve all the things you desire to be or have in life. This is why you must intentionally outline a clear description of the kind of future you would like to have. Radical change is difficult to attain, adopting the ancient principle that, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, may be helpful and inspiring during planning.
Unfulfilled lives are full of regrets, chaos, stress, anxiety, frustration, and fatigue. Creating a balance on these seven essential areas of life will help you manage yourself and your time and will lead you to accomplish great things.
How well you relate with persons in your circle of life, dramatically affects your emotions and hence the results you get. It is known that true happiness lies in the quality of your relationships. You can use the life planning process to acquire or restore healthy relations with your children, spouse, neighbors, parents, social network and groups.
2. Career and Education Aspirations
You perhaps have wanted to learn something new or master a skill you need to improve the results or the value you add into your workplace or in the community you live. Including this aspect in your goal setting will bring you closer to making your dream come true and hence achieving that compelling future.
3. Personal Finances
Financial stability is essential to everyone. It determines the quality of lifestyle you have, i.e. whether you have enough money to cater for your individual needs or responsibilities and how generous you become.
Having a detailed plan to improve your financial status will help you to step out of your comfort zone, take new risks and give you a guide onto how to generate more income.
4. Health and Recreation
To ensure that your body and brain are working at peak levels, it’s vital that you create time for some physical exercises. Great success is inseparable from having an excellent physical health status.
Having a great vision for the future and all the other resources you need to achieve it, is not enough. Without the physical vitality to take action, these plans might never bring forth the desired outcome we wish to get. Creating time for leisure is equally important as it’s a wise way to handle stress and anxiety, and helps you enjoy the things you love in life.
5. Life’s Routine Responsibilities
Ignoring this factor of life, results in constant external and internal conflicts. It is crucial that we consider how to manage routine tasks around the home environment, household bills, and personal home issues. Life becomes much more comfortable and fun when you become more disciplined in handling your routine responsibilities and priorities.
A well-managed home environment forms the foundation to a happy home.
6. Giving Back to Society/Contributions
Giving or sharing the resources you have,is one of the ways you can find fulfillment in life. Therefore, it is crucial that you purposely make proper plans on how much and in what ways you intend to contribute positively in the lives of the people closest to you or in the lives of other people in society.
Leaving behind a meaningful legacy could also be another essential factor to you and needs proper planning to ensure that you make it happen.
7. Mental, Emotional and Spiritual Health
Feeling secure in who you are as a person, is an area of life that will give you satisfaction and confidence in your walk of life. Your mental health, spiritual strength and emotional balance are areas you may need to consider when designing your desired future.
3 Tips for Successful Goal Setting
To maximize your chances of success while setting goals, ensure that they are in alignment with your top priorities and are relevant to you. The people around you should not influence them. If they do, you stand a chance to lose focus, feel overwhelmed or give up too soon
Only Set Goals That Inspire You
It is crucial to focus solely on things that motivate you, are essential to you and achieving them will positively benefit the world in one way or another. If your goals are small or irrelevant to you, your chances of making them come to reality are slim.
Ensure that the goals you develop are not what other people want or expect from you, because you’re primary purpose is not to please others, but yourself.
Be Committed and Patient
Rome was not built in a day. Goal setting can be a time-consuming process if you do not have the proper tools for effective life planning. Therefore, exercising persistence and perseverance will ensure that you come up with a compelling life plan, which is inspiring and gives you a clear vision of the future you desire.
Define Your Greatest Life Vision
There are three types of goals; the long term, the medium, and the short-term goals. Your grand life vision is the end destination and is not achievable in one single step. It is the greatest of the long terms goals. This is your primary purpose in life.
Committing to this great goal will be your guiding principle to all your future decisions, actions, behaviors and attitudes until your last day to live. Failure to identify your life purpose will lead you to spend years either committed to things you don’t care about or frustrated with living a meaningless life.
Having a detailed personal life plan makes you the boss of your life and gives you the power to measure your progress and make any adjustments necessary along the way.
Final Verdict
The short and medium-term goals act as the stepping stones towards your most important life vision. Ensuring that you create a well-documented life plan will support you to achieve the kind of successful life you believe you deserve within a shorter period.
The goal setting process also helps you to determine the changes you need to make related to turning your dreams to reality and inform you of any areas of your life that need urgent attention. Such may include learning new skills, kicking bad habits or developing new ones. Having a balanced life is one of the highest goals anyone can achieve.