Goal Setting for Your Personal and Professional Life

One of the most inspiring goal setting quotes I know of is this:

"Aim for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll still land among the stars!"

The importance of this quote just can't be stressed enough. Although it's important to set REALISTIC goals, it's also important that you don't sell yourself short. You're a smart, capable person. You can probably do a LOT more than you think you can!

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Setting lofty goals can really motivate you to do more. Remember, as long as you work very hard toward your goals, and you don't give up, you don't have to beat yourself up if you don't achieve them 100%!

Let's say you need to lose 40 pounds before you high school reunion in two months. Can it be done? Probably. It it likely? Maybe not that quickly.

But is there any reason why you shouldn't set that goal for yourself? As long as your doctor thinks it's safe, then there is no reason you should set a goal for yourself of losing 40 pounds in two months!

Maybe you'll only lose 30 pounds, but if you'd set a goal of losing only 20, you might be more tempted to cheat here and there, because you'll be more confident that you'll still be able to reach your goal in time.

The same thing can apply to any type of goal setting. Business goal setting, career goal setting, goal setting for students, and even goal setting for kids!

Don't ever sell yourself short. Selling yourself too short can let you get lazy, or not work as hard as you should. By setting bigger goals, you have a lot more to work for!

If you need a little bit of practice setting goals, then you can try some of these goal setting activities. These activities can be used by anyone to improve their goal setting skills.

First, you should grab a blank notebook or notepad and your favorite pen. Go somewhere where you'll have a little privacy, and start making a list of EVERYTHING you can think of that you would like to have within five years.

Your list might look something like this:

1. Buy a new 4 bedroom house.
2. Get a promotion at work.
3. Start a part-time consulting business.
4. Lose 40 pounds.
5. Have another child.
6. Buy a new Nissan Pathfinder.
7. Buy a horse.
8. Buy my mother a diamond necklace for Mother's Day.
9. Invest at least $20,000.
10. Get liposuction.
11. Get a tummy tuck.

Your list will probably be much longer, but you get the idea. Now, start circling the goals you think are absolutely critical to your happiness. These are the goals that you want more than anything in the world.

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Next, take those extremely important goals and put them all onto one list, titled "Mission Critical" or something equally important-sounding.

The rest of your goals should be put onto another list, titled something like, "Hey, I can hope, can't I?"

Next, you'll need to put every single goal onto its own page, and make notes about what you'll have to do to achieve that goal. Use more than one page if you need to. Just keep them organized and well-labeled.

If your goal is to buy a house, you might need to make notes like this:

1. Improve my credit by 75 points.
2. Pay off my student loan.
3. Pay credit cards down to under 20% utilization.
4. Save up $20,000 for the down payment.
5. Start eliminating clutter for the move.

Be as detailed as you can. The more detailed you are about what you need to do, the closer you will come to your goal!

Now, every single day, go through your pages and find at least ONE item to cross off. Every day it must be at least one, but you can do more if you like.

The more of these small items you cross off, the closer you are to your ultimate goals! As long as you complete at least one item per day, you should easily achieve your goals within five years!

The same thing can also be applied to more long-range goals, or even very short-term goals by just modifying the size and length of the lists.

Remember, some of your activities may require more than one day to complete. For example, if you need to clean up your credit to buy a house, you should break that up into even smaller tasks, because it can't be completed in a single day.

Focus on your "Mission Critical" list first. The more of your critical goals you achieve, the more you will believe in yourself, and the easier it will be to achieve the rest of your goals!