Goal Setting
I truly love goal setting.
Goal setting is a wonderful tool for planning your life. If you don’t plan you will bumble along, and for some people that might be OK. However, if you have ambition and you want to lead a better life then let’s get creative and start planning.
What do you need to know about setting goals for the year ahead?
Plan for all aspects of your life… relationships, family, career, health, wellness and financial.
Goals must be clear.
Think big when you plan goals - however don’t be unrealistic, they must be achievable. I laugh when the boss sets you a budget to achieve and dangles a bonus, but you know that it is not achievable… however you usually try to get there.
Commit to your goal. If it is important to you, you must commit.
Prepare to adjust your goal along the way, if necessary. It is a goal, however, circumstances may change and hence you might need to be a tad flexible.
6. Write your goals down…. you can then read them, visualise them and act on them.
7. Map out a plan to achieve the goal… If you don’t have a plan, it won’t magically happen- the magic wand approach never works.
8. The goals must be aligned to your values. don’t set a goal that someone else thinks you should achieve. Remember it is your life.
9. Goals should be a mix of short and long term. Short term goals are often the stepping stone to the long-term goal e.g. Long term- buying a home, short term – saving money every month to achieve that long term goal.
10. Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Time frame. SMART for short is a framework around goals. This is a well-known ACRONYM for goal setting.
“One thing we do know is that those people with tremendous success in life, such Apple founder Steve Jobs or tennis star Roger Federer is that their success is not an accident. Success happened because they set clear goals and then planned strategies for achieving them.”
