The Importance of Setting Personal Goals

The Importance of Setting Personal Goals

Not many people realize it, but everything we do goes towards trying to achieve something. These goals are what help us get up in the morning, ensure we get enough rest, push us to attain work-related quotas, and so much more. Without goals, life would pass by in a blur. After all, what is the purpose of doing anything if you are not looking to attain any desirable result?

Every new groundbreaking event in our lives, or in the lives of those we look up to, tends to stir up a need for achieving continuous success. However, saying something and going through with doing it are two different things. Anyone can say whichever word in the heat of the moment. It could be to get a job, to create a relationship, adopt a new habit, among other reasons. The challenging part comes in having parameters in place to guarantee we arrive at the goals we set out to attain. That is why you will come across many people planning their new year’s resolutions by the end of December. However, come the end of January, they have taken new life paths. Sometimes these end up being very different from what they had projected. Why is that? The simple answer is that they did not plan their goals in a workable way.

Types of Personal Goals

Every individual has something he or she would like to do with their lives, based on their personal experiences. More so, these things tend to have a time limit, giving them a sense of urgency. Depending on where you aim to get in life, there are different finish lines you can create for yourself. But whatever the case, these can get broken down into two distinct groups.

1. Short Term Personal Goals

With short-term goals, you would be making plans for things that are in the immediate future. The time limit can be anywhere from the following day, up to a maximum period of six months. Therefore, for you to feel a sense of achievement, you must have reached your goal within the set timeframe. Short-term goals include making plans such as:

• Waking up earlier each day
• Starting an exercise regimen
• Preparing healthier snacks
• Getting enough rest every day to rejuvenate
• Opting to cook for yourself rather than eating out
• Cutting out alcohol and drinking more water
• Starting a daily journal to document your days
• Studying more to advance your career
• Reconnecting with people you haven’t spoken to in a while
• Reaching out to different networks to meet and interact with new people

Short-term personal goals set a baseline that enables you to start setting achievable goals. From there, you can proceed set lasting plans, which will lead to your fulfillment.

2. Long Term Personal Goals

When someone talks about long-term plans, they are referring to things they would like manifested in the future. That could be anywhere from six months in the future and beyond. The thing with long-term goals to keep in mind is they can only get achieved by setting short term goals throughout the timeframe you’ve allocated yourself. Therefore, in a way, long-term goals are dependent on your consistency in following through on the shorter personal goals you set. Long-term personal goals can also be called lifetime goals. That is because they shape out the course of your life if done right. These include plans for:

• Landing a promotion at work
• Leaving employment and starting your own business
• Reaching your health targets for a given period
• Having investments that boost your income
• Finding a life partner
• Starting a family
• Buying a car or house
• Attaining that educational requirement you’ve always wanted

The list of possible long-term goals is endless. But it all starts with knowing how you’d like your life to turn out.

Steps to Help Create Sustainable Personal Goals

To make your goals easier to attain, you need a strategy that works for you. You cannot try something that someone else did in the hopes that it will get you the same results as them. That is because you both have different motives for wanting to reach that result. A good example is of this is setting a goal to get healthier. For some people, this could mean starting by first shedding off excess weight, then maintaining healthy eating habits. For someone else, it could just mean adding visits to the gym to their weekly plans since they already have healthy eating habits as a daily routine.

1. Look at The Bigger Picture – What is your end goal?
2. Make A List of Your Plans – From the end goal you have decided upon, make a list of everything that should get done for you to reach there.
3. Allocate Timeframes for Each Item – For each goal, you set, ensure you allocate a timeframe for it. Not having deadlines is the first reason people procrastinate and even abandon their personal goals.
4. Remain Consistent – You know what you want, so ensure you keep at it. Building momentum for your progress is the only way to reach your goals. Make your goals a priority, not an option.
5. Embrace Setbacks – Sometimes, things do not go as planned. You may have started to save, and then the funds get redirected elsewhere to an unavoidable emergency. Do not get discouraged. Accept that some elements in life are unpredictable, but that you sticking to your goals is something that you can control.

How to Remain Accountable At All Times

There are plenty of ways to keep track of your different goals. To get you started, place your goals list somewhere you always see. From there, you could set alarms for short-term goals such as drinking water more frequently throughout the day. Technology has eased our work in maintaining our goals. That is through mobile apps that keep reminding us of our goals. These apps can also keep track of your progress, which proves essential, especially in keeping track of health goals. They can track elements such as whether you are walking more if you are getting uninterrupted sleep, among other purposes, due to their embedded sensors. It is also essential to keep the right crowd. Having someone around that supports your goals could be what you need to stay consistent.