Top Tips for Setting Life Goals and Achieving Them

Everybody has goals in their life, whether they are aware of them or not. But what are they? How do you set them? And most importantly how do you achieve them? This article will help you move forward in the right direction. 

What are goals?

Goals are something that is desired to be achieved either on a personal level, with a group of people, or even for a business. They are generally dreams that have deadlines and consequences attached to them. They can range from small and easily manageable tasks to large, complex, and time-consuming efforts.

Why you should set yourself goals

Goals generally have challenges attached to them, this is a healthy way of testing and bettering yourself. Having certain goals set can not only help give you the motivation to do better, but also a sense of direction in life.

Top tips on setting your goals so that you can achieve them

Each person is different, and therefore your goals and the way you go about achieving them will be slightly different to the next person. But these tips are easily implemented into any plan and should be taken into consideration when you are looking at setting yourself goals that you wish to achieve.

#1 Write your goals down

A great place to start and an easy win when setting any goals for yourself is physically writing them down. Get a pen and paper so that you can begin the transition from daydreaming about whatever it is that you want to accomplish, into an achievable plan. You might be thinking “why can’t I just keep all the thoughts in my head?”. Well, you can. However, there are many benefits to making a physical note of what you want to achieve and your goals, as not only will you not forget any of them, but you will also make all future steps in reaching these goals seem more real.

#2 Make yourself a plan

Now that you have your goals written down, and you know what you want to work towards achieving, it is time to create a plan of how you are going to achieve this. You can tailor your plan and make it as detailed, thorough, or simple as you like. Some people prefer to lay out many simple steps in easy bite-sized pieces as this can help mentally by ticking off a lot of steps when you complete a section of the plan. Others prefer to bullet point major milestones that they want to achieve in their plan, as too many steps can overwhelm some people. The trick is knowing how you operate and best work, and then adapting your plan to best suit you.

#3 Take steps towards your goal

This part is very important and an easy hurdle to fall at if you are not careful. No matter how big the goal that you set for yourself is, there will always be small steps that you can take towards achieving it. For example, if you work for yourself and are currently looking to buy a property, one small step you could take is to look at a self employed mortgage calculator to see where you are with regards to the next stage of your plan. People can often find themselves overwhelmed, disheartened, or simply just not motivated to push forward, even if their goals are laid out with a plan that fits their lifestyle and personality. So, the thing to remember if you find yourself in this position is that you don’t need to hit large milestones each time you work on achieving your goals, even if you complete just one small step towards your goal, it is still progress and will greatly help you in the long term.

#4 Highlight any possible problems

You must not be afraid of failure, challenges, or problems that you may face on your journey, as they will undoubtedly crop up from time to time. A great way to combat this is to take some time to highlight and make sure that you are well-prepared for any possible problems that could arise throughout your plan. Not only will this help to give you an edge if any problems present themselves, but you will not be as surprised when they happen, and you should feel a lot less intimidated when actioning parts of your plan, as you will be aware of any potential issues. These problems and issues may not even have to happen, as highlighting possible problems is also a great way of avoiding them completely too.

#5 Review and rework

If or when problems do arise, and if things do happen to go wrong, or something unexpected happens it is important to be flexible. You might feel like giving up at this point in your journey, but instead, look at it as a lesson. Take some time to review what happened, how it happened, what you can do to avoid it from happening again, and what you can do better, and then rework your plan to incorporate your new method or steps. Something that a lot of people and businesses will do is regularly review and rework any operations or plans that are currently in progress even when everything is going smoothly. This can help to highlight any places when improvements can be made, and potentially even help prevent future problems too.

#6 Hold yourself accountable

Whether you are setting these goals by yourself, in a group, or with a partner it is important to hold yourself, and any others accountable for the progress that you need to make so as to achieve your goals. Consistency and steady progress are the keys to eventually hitting your goals, and if you are not holding yourself or any others who are involved accountable, then this can greatly increase the time for completing said goals. If you are on a solo project, one way to do this is to publicly or privately share your progress, ideas and thoughts with others. If you are in a group or working with others, you could arrange daily, weekly, or monthly catchup days so that you might see where everyone is at.

#7 Use the SMART goal method

Sometimes it can be a challenge in itself to actually set and create feasible goals for yourself, your business, or your team. One way that you can make this a little easier is by using the SMART goal method which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Specific – Make sure that the goals you are setting are specific and not too vague as that won’t help you or anyone else who is trying to achieve them. For example, if you are trying to improve your fitness and want to set a goal of running more, instead of saying “go for a run” you could say “go for a 30-minute run at least 3 times this week”.

Measurable – Now that you have your specific goal set, you need to be able to measure it and its success or completion. In this example of wanting to run more, it is fairly easy to measure as a specific time to run for and a specific number of times to go for that run was set. Therefore, it is clear when the goal has been or has not been reached.

Attainable – There is no point in setting yourself or others a goal that is unattainable, as this will waste your time, energy and potentially money depending on what it is you are planning to achieve. You might not be able to reach your goal on the first try, but you need to be realistic with what you are setting for yourself. If running is new to you for example, 30 minutes of running, 3 days a week might be a struggle at first, but it is much more achievable than setting yourself a goal of 3 hours of running, 7 days a week.

Relevant – When setting your goal(s) you need to make sure that they are relevant for what is to be achieved. Again, using the running program as an example, if your aim is to improve overall fitness and your goal is to run more often, then you can see the correlation and reasoning behind setting this as a goal to help improve fitness. However, if a goal such as “spend more time gardening” was set, although there are health benefits such as being outside and in nature, it is not directly relevant to improving your fitness.

Time-bound – Goals that are set should have adequate timelines. Just be sure not to set unrealistic expectations for completion as this will negatively impact the morale of anyone attempting to hit these goals. If you have an easy goal to achieve, make sure that you do not set a timeframe that is too far in the future. Similarly, if you have a large and complex goal do not set the timeframe too close to the start of your journey.

In conclusion, whatever goals you are setting for yourself, your family, your friends, or even your business to achieve, make sure you consider these top tips.