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By Jayaram V
Goal setting is a powerful way of providing direction to your
thoughts and actions
and achieve success and fulfillment in your life. It is through
goal setting that you take control of your life and feel responsible
for it. Goals are used by all successful people in all wakes of life.
Powerful goals can change your life forever and the way you think and
act. When you feel challenged by them, they bring out the best in you.
When you are motivated by them, they help you transcend your own
limitations and weaknesses to realize your true potential and
competence. As you get into the habit of achieving your goals,
they build your self-esteem and self-confidence and push you to your limits.
Goals have therefore the potential to make an ordinary
person extraordinary and the impossible possible. They can transform
your dreams and wishes into reality. If there is one secret to success
it is this: have well defined goals and live for them. Treat them as
the means rather than the end. Surround yourself with them. Saturate your
mind with the visions of achieving them. Organize your life around
them. Think of them constantly and work for them tirelessly till your
realize them. Be flexible but firm. Be realistic but determined. Be positive
but well prepared. Everything becomes possible for a person who lives
with such an attitude. Neither loneliness nor boredom nor failure can
stop him. Like a soldier in the battlefield of life, he or she marches
on, undaunted by the challenges lying ahead, with his gaze firmly fixed
on his target.
Every success and every accomplishment in life begins with a definite aim.
Success is not a result of luck or chance, but an organized effort in
which luck and chance augment the effort. Many people lead aimless
lives, surrendering themselves to despair and helplessness. They give up without even giving a fight. When
you do not have well defined goals, you squander many opportunities
that come your way. You ignore your true potential and waste away your talents and
skills or use them for mediocre work, never giving yourself a chance to truly
excel, which only add to your misery and
feelings of emptiness. Without a goal, a writer would probably end up
as a teacher and a player as a spectator. We should not only
have goals but the right ones that are truly in alignment with what we
can achieve in our lives.
Following are some tips for
setting effective lifetime goals.
Align your goals with your life's main purpose: When it comes to setting lifetime goals, the first rule is to know
the purpose of your life and set your goals accordingly. You will know
the purpose of your life by knowing what you
like most and what you value most. It is not easy because you have to
involve your heart more than your mind to know exactly what drives your
passions and emotions and what you ultimately cherish in your life. You
have to overcome your lopsided beliefs and prejudices. Once you know the purpose of your life, you can set individual goals to
realize it. This two step process in setting goals is important for success in your
life. When you know the purpose of your life, you can organize your
life around it and put your goals and resources into action. You can prioritize
your goals with some certainty and devise ways and means to
accomplish them. Your life's purpose acts as the guiding principle of your
life. You may set goals without knowing it and without any correlation
to it and may even achieve some degree of success and fulfillment in
life. But chances are you may not enjoy what you do and you may not
feel totally committed to your goals.
Create SMART goals. To use the project management terminology, your goals ought to be
SMART, that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound.
Your goals
have to meet these criteria because your subconscious
mind is a goal seeking consciousness which accepts unconditionally
whatever is presented to it and manifests it according to your
thoughts, beliefs and intentions. Your ideas, dreams and wishes are
vague yearnings of your heart. Your subconscious mind do not act upon
them effectively, unless you translate them into SMART goals. Dreams and goals are both important for your
success. Dreams show you the horizon, while goals show you the path to
it. To realize your dreams or bring them into the realm of
possibility you need to set goals and pursue them with positive
conviction.
State your goals in positive words. Your goals should be not
only SMART but also positive because your subconscious mind has a
tendency to accept your thoughts, beliefs and words literally and unconditionally
and ignore any negativity implied or expressed. When you say to
yourself, "I
will not weigh more than 130 pounds by the end of the year,"
chances are it will ignore the negativity in your statement and
interpret it as "I
will weigh more than 130 pounds by the end of the year!"
Prioritize your goals. Not all goals are equally important.
Nor you can accomplish them all at the same time. When you have
multiple goals aligned to a central purpose, you have to prioritize
them according certain criteria, such as their relative importance,
costs involved, urgency, dependency etc. Dependency means
whether a goal requires completion of one or more other goals before it
can be completed. Prioritization will help you in specifying time frame for each of
your goals.
Write down your goals. One of the best ways to create SMART goals is
by writing them down. When you write down your goals, they become clearer, more
specific and more concrete. Your subconscious mind also gets a clear picture of
what you intend to achieve. So write down your goals in as much vivid detail as possible
on a paper and preserve it as an important document like your personal will for
further reference.
Affirm your goals. Once you have a written list of goals, read
them aloud or silently in your mind several times a day, starting in the morning immediately after you wake up and
ending in the night before you go
to sleep. Carry the list with you wherever you go and glance through them on as many
occasions as possible, especially when you are relaxing and your subconscious
mind is receptive. Visualize your goals as you read them. Read them with the
conviction and belief that you are on your way to accomplish them. Believe your goals
are already accomplished in God's vision and express gratitude for the help you have
received.
Overcome your mental blocks. You set your goals not only according to
your vision and aspiration, but also according to your fears, perceived
threats, self-esteem and your negative thoughts and beliefs. You need to cultivate a different mindset to overcome these self-imposed limitations to
challenge yourself and set achievable bit difficult goals that truly reflect
your abilities, skills, experience and talents. Fear is the most important
inhibiting factor that you face in setting your goals. Fear comes to you in various guises
such as fear of rejection, fear of failure and fear of being
vulnerable to criticism. You can deal with them effectively by the following:
- Become aware of your fears and anxieties by paying close attention
- Understand how they are
limiting you.
- Dispute your negative thoughts
- Replace your negative thoughts with positive ones
- Use the power of belief
- Use affirmations
- Think big
- Be realistic and objective
- Stay in the present
- Focus on the process and the tasks to do
- Think of possibilities and opportunities
- Anticipate setbacks and develop plans to deal with them
- Think of alternatives
- Challenge yourself
- Stay away from negative people
- Find mentors who can inspire you
- Involve your family to understand your negativity
- Read good books
- Improve your skills and knowledge.
- Seek the help of God or a higher power
Accept responsibility. Take full responsibility for everything that
happens to you. You may need the help of others to achieve goals. But the primary
responsibility for setting your goals and reaching them is yours. When you accept responsibility
for your goals, you will accept accountability for your failures and successes. You will not waste time
blaming others for your failures. You will learn from them and use your
knowledge and experience to polish your skills and improve your
effectiveness. You will
develop new ideas, new attitudes, new ways of doing things and finding
solutions.
Do what is possible to achieve the impossible. The human mind has a
tendency to follow the routine, avoid stress, pain and discomfort. It wants to
pursue the well trodden paths, even if it is inconvenient because it is known and safe. It resists
change because it does not like to deal with the unknown and the uncertain, and
also with the untested and the unpredictable. So most of the time it tries to
stick with its habitual way of thinking and
doing to make sure that you do not venture out of your comfort zone into an
unknown territory where many dangers may lurk. Because of this basic nature of
our minds, many of us lead mediocre and ordinary lives, limiting ourselves, our
dreams and vision and our achievements. The best way to counter this mindset is to think of what is
humanly possible in the context of what you intend to do and then try to do a little more than
that. For example, if your goal is start a business, find out what is
historically the best performance recorded in the field by any one and
aim to go beyond it. The idea is if others have done something in the past, you
too can do it and perhaps even better. You can apply this simple rule in other areas of your
life and give yourself an opportunity to transcend your
limitations and exceed your own expectations.
Leave it to higher powers. The Bhagavadgita declares that people
should perform their actions dutifully with detachment and a sense of sacrifice
and leave the results to God. It does not mean that you should not have goals or
think of them. It only means that you set your goals as a part of your
responsibility and offer them to God or a higher power and let Him do His part, while you continue to do your duty sincerely, without
any anxiety about the outcome and any pride for your involvement. With such an attitude you will
withstand all difficulties when things go wrong and deal with your goals
confidently. You will accept your failures and setbacks as lessons from God and improve your performance and
effectiveness by focusing on your actions rather than on their outcome.
Goals setting is a challenging mental process in which you succeed to the extent you
challenge yourself and transcend your mental blocks. Your goals help you find direction and fulfillment in your life.
They are the
roadmap of your life. Goal setting is the first process in achieving success, in which faith,
belief, determination, resolve, perseverance, courage and confidence and a host
of other factors make your dreams come true.
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