Personal Growth: Setting and Achieving Life Goals
In this modern world, getting engaged in the hustle and bustle of life comes easy and often we tend to forget our larger goals. However, personal growth is best appropriated when one pursues goals that are truly worth pursuing. Simply put, setting and achieving life goals is not a checklist exercise, rather it is creating a life fuels with vision and satisfaction. In this blog, we start to delve into how to set and accomplish life objectives that help in your growth journey.
1. Envision The Future
While we try to race towards goals, we often forget to consider the vision we have for our life. Never forget what motivates you to achieve your goals. Your vision is the broadest indication that helps you in every decision you make and what things have the most importance in your life. To begin forming your vision, ask yourself:
- What fundamental beliefs of mine I cherish the most?
- What aspects of my life and existence satisfy who I am at the core?
- What is a realistic picture I have in the following timeline of 5 years, 10 years or 20 years?
These questions will assist in coming up with a base for your goals. Also, every goal must be aligned to this vision so that focus and motivation is never lost even with barriers.
2. Set SMART Goals
Once a vision is clearly set, the next step that follows is the concepts and ideas that ensures this vision is achieved. The framework of SMART goals - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound is quite effective for such goal setting.
- Specific: It is necessary to look deep within yourself and discover clearly what your goals are. Since getting into shape is way too broad, start by saying ‘I will run a 5K in 3 months’ there is a structured goal in place.
- Measurable: You have to come up with your own ways to track and acknowledge your triumphs. If a success for you is saving a certain amount of money every month, tell yourself exactly how much you need to save.
- Attainable: Set goals that you know you can achieve. Challenge yourself, but don’t set goals you know are likely to fail.
- Relevant: Make sure your goals contribute to your vision of the ‘bigger picture’. Every goal must be a stepping stone of your vision.
- Time-bound: Give timelines to your goals. This creates a feeling of urgency and helps to avoid procrastination.
SMART goals help you divide your broader vision into achievable steps, hence, making you easily stick to the path.
3. Divide Goals Into Steps
Procrastination and giving up as a result of feeling overwhelmed are both common avoidable practices stemming from incredibly large goals. To do this is to get your goals recast in smaller milestones. You can use these milestones as points for further evaluation, and reward yourself for your achievements in between.
For instance, while your larger goal may be to write a book, your smaller ones can be outlining chapters writing drafts and making edits. Each of them tackles the larger goal and the smaller milestones satisfactorily keeps you on course.
4. The determination of action steps as a result of an action plan is also a key element.
Following the order of achievements and goals, it’s imperative to unique blog topics every now and then. Get talking’s out and consider also what resources, time, and effort will it require. For instance, if your target is to learn a new language, so, the plan of action, in this context, may be enrolling yourself into the language course, practicing it for 30 Minutes a day, and joining the conversation group where the new language will be spoken.
Here’s a large example of where planning comes in to transform the idea into an action. It is safe to assume action planning translates vague ideas into clear cut practical tasks. Now try to repeat it on paper and see if the idea is still interesting. Action planning puts the ideas in quotes, but, it creates practical tasks that can be completed as mentioned as “clear cut”.
5. Either way, accountability needs to be established
In order to gain traction warrant strong publicity or have a consistent type of account which loyal followers will follow. Regular meetings or checkups with your accountability partner can definitely assist you in that goal. Share them with people who you trust like a good friend, family or a mentor, this way what changes will occur is you have chances to gain empathy in all of these arguments.
Further, you can include goal-tracking apps or some journals or vision boards through which you can track your goals. By continuously viewing the goals as visual prompts, reaching them will not seem like an overwhelming task as aid shows that humans react positively to incentives.
6. Take It Easy
While having strong convictions towards your goals is important, it is equally prudent to be flexible. After all, life has its turns and goals that might seem achievable today may not be tomorrow. If you feel like a certain goal has become a little too daunting for you to accomplish, then do take a step back.
Having such flexibility reinvents your ideas without the core vision being turned upside down. Always keep this in mind, moving forward can’t be visualized as a straight line it can be best compared to the zigzag motion of a snake. It’s all about progressing, learning something new at every twist and turn.
7. Consider It an Achievement
Setting and meeting goals is an achievement and an event worthy of celebration. Realizing that the end goal was the result of elaborate hard work is motivation in itself. Buy yourself something nice, or simply don’t forget to appreciate yourself for achieving what you did. It is an important aspect of setting goals.
8. Be Self Critical and Look Back
While you are on a journey of growth, you are bound to outgrow your old objectives and this growth should be internalized every now and then. Always remember to look at what you have achieved and set new goals that are better aligned with your refined vision. You should not be scared of setting tasks that seem a little ambitious or dropping the ones you’re not feeling passionate enough for.
Reflections are important since they enable someone to learn from their past experiences both through success and failure, improving their way forward.
Final Thoughts
Establishing and accomplishing life goals is not an easy task; it involves the awareness of one’s self, commitment to work and willingness to be adaptable. It has been said that if you concentrate on your vision, set measurable and realistic goals while ensuring that there is accountability in every step, it will offer you a chance to work towards growing in a more purposeful and directed way. Make the most of it, never forget to enjoy your achievements and strive to be the best you possible.
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