The Importance of Setting Life Goals

Setting goals in life may be the single most important thing you could ever do. They can give you a foundation and direction of where you want to go in life. Setting goals, writing them down, and reading those goals weekly can help make them become reality. Without goals or direction, you most likely will never get anything done.

When you wake up in the morning, you usually define the day that is ahead of you. You may not write it down, but you perform it. Whether you go to school or off to a job, you know what you have to do every morning to get yourself ready to go and the next steps needed to reach your ultimate destination. Setting up and mapping out your life goals should follow that and be of the same importance. Your daily goals should be a means to your life goal.

Your life goals must be attainable. They must be measurable and have a purpose. They must be conceivable and controllable, yet challenging. You must have the desire to get past your fears and know the means to the end to finish it through.

When you look back on your life, will you be satisfied with what you did? Life goals can help you get there. Having a meaningful life and having an average life are only separated by the goals you set.

Not many people have clear goals for life. This is perhaps related to the fact that 90 percent of the world's wealth is created by only 10 percent of the population.

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Goal Setting Guidelines

The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:

State each goal as a positive statement: 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'Don't make this stupid mistake.'

Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement.

Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.

Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.

Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.

Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control.

Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions.

“The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success.”

Henry Ward Beecher

Now It’s Time to Set Your Own Goals

How do I decide what is a good goal?

SMART Goals: A useful way of making goals more powerful and lasting. SMART is a mnemonic which stands for:

•S- Specific •M- Measurable •A- Attainable •R- Relevant •T- Time-bound

It is also important to set smaller, achievable goals that will help you complete a long term task!

Brain Storming

Setting Short Term and Long TermGoals

1-2 Weeks1 Month1 Marking period1 season6 MonthsFreshman-Senior YearCollegeCareer

Short Term Goals

Long Term Goals