Personal Goals Achievement

This article describes how creating a goal or target can help you to succeed in life. I myself want to be successful in life and have read many books on the subject. One lesson and something all the successful people I have read about seem to do, is that they are always setting themselves goals for the future. Setting targets has among other things helped me to quit smoking cigarettes. I hope you enjoy reading my article.

One example I clearly remember from one such book, described a survey that had been carried out for schoolchildren who were in their final year of high school. One hundred people took part in the survey and they were asked to answer a number of questions. The main question the people who commissioned the survey were interested in was about where the children wanted to be in five years time and what they wanted to be doing, for example in their business life.

Not all children of this age are that mature and in the end there were only five answers which were taken as being a true goal for the future. Five years later these one hundred people were contacted again and were asked to fill in yet another survey. The results were quite staggering as the five children who had set a goal for the future had a higher combined net worth than the other ninety five added together. Money of course is not everything in life, however for me this showed, that is if you believe everything that you read, that you are more likely to be a success in life if you set yourself a goal.

I then looked at the aspects of my life with which I was not happy with. At that age, I smoked around fifteen cigarettes a day. This was something I quite enjoyed but which I knew was not healthy for me and something which also cost me a lot of money.

I set myself small targets, I would firstly reduce my intake to only ten a day and after two weeks reduce it down to five. I would then try to totally stop smoking after around a month.

This sounded so simple, however proved to be quite difficult. I was determined to stick to my goals and kept thinking of all of the benefits of quitting smoking. I am happy to say I was successful in my quest to stop smoking, even though it did take rather longer than one month.

I have since followed the same pattern in other areas of my life, to help me to lose weight for example. This attitude has helped me no end and I will continue to set myself more goals in the future.

Goal setting is equal parts art and science. Many people create goals that simply don’t work. If you’re in business, you don’t have the luxury of creating goals that don’t work. You need to work effectively and you need goals you help you do it.

Here is a great way to create good goals that work? that keep you on track. They’re called SMART goals and the acronym SMART will help you to remember the things that each goal needs to be:

* Specific: Your goal needs to be stated in a way that is clearly defined. Saying, I should work more, is not a goal that will be kept. However, saying, I am going to work a total of 8 hours each day, is a goal that is much clearer and specific.

* Measurable: This is closely related to the above attribute except that it also includes a way to make sure you are on track. A goal that says, I want to make more money, isn’t measurable. However, a goal that says, I want to earn $6000/month, is a far more measurable goal. It’s easy to see, at the end of the month, whether or not you achieved it.

* Actionable: This means that your goal should be something that you need to do yourself in order to accomplish it. If you want to increase your income this year, it’s not realistic to say, I’m going to win the lottery this year, because you have no control over whether you will win the lottery or not. However you might say, I’m going to increase my sales efforts by cold calling 10 people each day, which is something you can take action on yourself.

* Realistic: Goals that are actually achievable are much better and far more motivating. You’ll feel better about yourself when you do hit goals than if constantly shoot for them and fall short. Realistic goals should not be so easy that you hit them every single time but should not be so hard that you never reach them at all.

* Time-oriented: Similar to the measurable attribute, your goal should have a timeframe for you to accomplish it in. Deadlines help people achieve their goals. If you anchor your goal to a time, you’ll be able to watch your progress.

You can remember this with the acronym, SMART, so that when you’re creating goals, you can create better goals for yourself. This is a popular goal-setting acronym in business, although occasionally the words are changed slightly to reflect the needs of the business.