How to Set Goals – and Achieve Them

“What Goals Can I Set for Myself?”

Having goals to aim for gives us a sense of purpose, so it's important to set goals – and reaching them gives us a sense of achievement. Need some inspiration in choosing what goals to set? Here are some suggestions to help you plan for a positive, successful and vibrant new start. It’s probably best not to pick too many at first – just choose a couple that appeal to you, and that you think you can stick to. You can always add more later.

 

Learn a New Language

Learning a new language has a lot of benefits. The most obvious one is that it enables us to communicate in the country where that language is spoken, but there are others. It helps us understand and master our own language better. It also helps improve problem solving, creative thinking and memory skills. Choose which language you want to learn, sign up for a course and commit to spending a certain amount of time each week on your studies. You’ll be amazed how much you’ve learned after a year.

 

Read a Certain Number of Books

Reading is hugely beneficial. If you prefer fiction, choose books by reputable authors whose work will inspire you and give you new insights. If your preference is  non-fiction, choose the subject(s) which are of most interest to you and do your research to find the most informative, authoritative and readable works. Either way, commit to reading a certain number of books in a year – or spending a certain amount of time each week reading – and stick to it.

 

Overcome a Fear

Is there a particular fear that is holding you back? Perhaps you’re frightened of public speaking, or of travelling alone. Maybe you have a fear of heights, or of flying, or of using a lift. Whatever it might be, why not set a goal to overcome your fear? There are many ways of setting about this (one affordable approach is a programme called Panic Miracle) but the important thing is to tackle the task at your own pace. Also, remember that even if you only partially overcome your fear, you have still achieved something worthwhile – and you’ll feel better for it.

 

Tackle Any Emotional Problems Holding You Back

Many people have deep seated emotional issues, often resulting from experiences long ago. We tend to ignore them and pretend that they aren’t there. Why not make it a goal to get to the root of any emotional problems which might be holding you back? Processing our emotions is never easy; our goal will be an ongoing one of regaining and maintaining control of our thoughts and feelings.

 

Learn Something New

Learning something brand new is very therapeutic. It gives us motivation, boosts our confidence and helps our mental faculties. Think of something you’ve always wanted to learn and set aside a certain amount of time each week to pursue your studies. It could be anything: cooking, history, mathematics, woodwork – whatever interests you. Consistency is the key, so even if you’re only able to devote an hour or two a week to your learning, make a schedule and stick to it.

 

Set a Health and Fitness Goal

Taking care of our health is obviously important, and most of us could make some improvements in the way we treat our bodies. So whether you need to lose weight, or exercise more, or just be more active, why not set a specific goal and work towards that? Maybe to lose a certain number of pounds, or to go to the gym twice a week, or just to go for a walk every day. We all know we’ll feel better for it; it’s just a question of getting into the habit. More on that below.

 

Change Your Situation for the Better

Maybe you’re in a job that you hate, or living somewhere that you really don’t like. Maybe you find your lifestyle unrewarding for whatever reason. This is probably not something that you can change overnight, but why not make it a goal to take gradual steps to change the situation?  In a year’s time you’ll be surprised at how much progress you’ve made.

 

Add to Your Professional Skill Set

Once we’re qualified and in work it can be very tempting to stop training. Many employers realise that ongoing training is beneficial – both to them and to their employees – but if your employer is not providing any training, why not take the initiative and learn something that you can add to your cv or resumé? It can only help you if you choose to apply for a new position.

 

Do a Good Turn Every Day

Make it one of your goals to exude a culture of kindness. Each day, challenge yourself to do at least one kind thing for another person. Pass a compliment, help someone with a task, hold a door open or surprise friends and family with extra acts of kindness. Doing these things regularly not only brightens their lives, but yours as well.

 

Start Saving

Having a nest egg is something that we should all strive for, and even though it’s very difficult to save these days, why not make it a goal to set aside a certain amount of money every week or every month to start some sort of savings account. Even if the amount that you can save is very small, every savings account has to begin somewhere. The important thing is to be consistent: set a realistic goal for the amount that you can save, and stick to it.

 

So, we’ve set our goals. The next task is to pursue them steadily and not give up. The key to that is to form habits that will help us:

 

5 Habits to Help You Achieve Your Goals

Goal setting is one thing: goal achievement is quite another. We often set ourselves goals – especially at the start of a new year – and can easily get dispirited if we feel we’re not moving towards the achievement of our goals. Here are 5 habits we can adopt that will help us move in the right direction.

 

1. Break bigger goals into smaller, more manageable ones.

A big goal can seem daunting and make us feel overwhelmed. It can be all too easy to think we’re not getting anywhere, and to give up. By breaking these bigger goals up into a series of smaller goals, we make our ultimate goal less frightening and more achievable. The smaller goals become stepping stones that lead us in the direction of our bigger goal, and as we focus on each of these smaller goals one by one we maintain our sense of purpose. There is also a steadily growing sense of achievement as we tick off each of these smaller goals in turn.

 

2. Keep Tags on Your Progress

It’s important to monitor our progress as we advance through our series of mini goals. We need to know how many we have achieved, and how many more we have to accomplish before we achieve our ultimate goal.

There are various ways of doing this. Some people find it helpful to write a journal. Putting our goals in writing gives them more gravitas and enables us quite literally to tick the boxes as we move along. Others like to use a spreadsheet as it gives a sense of simplicity, organisation and management. We can list our mini goals in one column, write notes in the next and record our achievement in the third. We can add extra columns if required to make it more comprehensive.

Some people like the sense of accountability they get from posting their progress on social media. Of course, this will inevitably invite criticism if there are any mishaps along the way, but this can be used to positive effect (see Habit No. 5 below).

 

3. Let Your Goals Govern the Decisions You Make

We make a lot of decisions in the course of a day – often without really thinking much about them. Some of these pretty mundane, such as what socks to wear, but others can have an impact on our goals.

For example, if improving our health features in our list of goals, then the decisions we make about what to eat are fairly significant, and we need to let our goals overrule any desire we might have to eat unhealthily. Similarly, if our goals require that we get up early to get certain things done, then we need to summons the willpower to decide not to stay up late watching television.

It’s important to make our primary goals the primary factor in the decisions we take. This will give us the focus we need in order to achieve them.

 

4. Establish Routines

The word “routine” suggests something boring and mundane, but it really refers to an activity or a series of activities that we repeat so often that it becomes a habit – something we barely even think about. Once a routine has been established and the habit has been set, it practically automates certain parts of our lives so that even things we might otherwise have put off or avoided become part of our normal everyday activity.

This is a psychological technique that we can use to our advantage if our goals require us to do something difficult, off-putting or challenging. So if we have to get up earlier than we would wish to, it’s going to be difficult for the first few days, but once our subconscious mind has got the idea that we have to get up at a certain time, we will just do it.

Of course., there’s no limit to the number of daily routines we can set for ourselves. Setting routines that incorporate the steps we need to take to reach our goals is hugely beneficial.

 

5. Turn Criticism into Positive Input

Nobody likes to be criticised. When our ideas, plans, aspirations or actions come under fire we have a tendency to dig our heels in and go on the defensive.

We could try a different approach. Ask ourselves – in all honesty – whether the criticism is at all valid. If it is just being made out of spite (such as hateful comments on social media) we can try to rise above it and take no notice. But sometimes there is some validity in the criticism we face.

Think of an annual review at work. We’re unlikely to come out without at least some criticism of some aspect of our performance. This criticism is not intended to be insulting; it’s intended to help us improve.

Seeing valid criticism in this light can help us turn it into useful and usable information to harness our efforts to accomplish our goals.