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Next: Achievement
Goals are the measurable things you wish to achieve. You might think of goals as your life dreams, or the stepping stones to realize those dreams.
Just as values shape meaning and meaning shapes purpose, your purpose shapes your goals. Your purpose is the reason you work toward your goals.
Knowing your purpose, you may choose to pursue relatively small goals (learning to meditate, losing a few pounds, staying in touch with friends)
or much larger goals (starting a new business, getting married, retiring in ten years).
Setting clear, attainable goals helps you focus on actionable behavior. In other words, goal setting will help provide motivation.
Working toward goals helps you overcome procrastination and also encourages momentum and self-mastery.
Setting Goals
As mentioned before, your purpose drives your pursuit of goals. Your goals are the measurable things you wish to achieve.
The steps you take in setting goals might be,
- Set goals that motivate you.
- Set SMART goals. For goals to be powerful, they should be designed to be SMART: (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Bound).
For example, instead of having the goal, "To sail around the world," it is more powerful to use the
SMART goal "To have completed my trip around the world by end of year, 2030."
- Set goals in writing.
- Make an action plan.
- Stick with it!
Here is where life coaching can help in a big way. Coaching can help you create SMART goals and become accountable to yourself while carrying them out.
Watch the videos below to learn more about goals.
Goals Quotes
"Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives." Viktor Frankl
"You have to break a big ambitious goal down into these more manageable decisions ... in order to improve the odds of achieving the outcome you desire." Stephen Duneier
"Most of the old moles I know wish they had listened less to their fears and more to their dreams." From the book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
"Goals are okay in their place but what you need more than goals is a system, a process."
"Luck is the biggest factor in anybody's success and if you try one thing and it doesn't work and then you stop trying, luck doesn't really have a chance to find you. So what I am recommending is that you try lots of stuff, things that won't kill you, bankrupt you, or leave you debilitated in some way, and just keep trying until something works."
"It's about those tiny little decisions, like when you are sitting at your desk putting in just a little extra time at the end of the day,
or you're lying on the couch clicking through the channels with your remote control, or scrolling through your FaceBook feed.
And in that moment, make the decision to put it down."
“The brain and body are much better at moving away from fearful things than towards things we want.”