Self Development and Goal Setting Articles

Most of us, just keep dreaming about a good Job, a good home, good bank balance etc, but they just dream and forget it, because they dream for so many things together, they never even recall them. More specifically we can say its a "fleeting thought". They never decide what is that they really want, and they never commit heartily to get it. Goal setting is an essential practice for yor personal and professional growth.

The process of setting goals helps in choosing, where you want yourself to be in life. By knowing exactly what you want to achieve, where you want to go, you can better plan and utilize your energy accordingly

More than this, a properly set goal can be highly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you will soon experience that you are more confident individual now.

The great Aristotle told "First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end"

Step 1: Choose Your Goal and Stay Focused on it
When it comes to choose a Goal, you might have so many Goals, but you have to prioritize them. Take a paper and pen and write down all the Goals you have and see which is the most important Goal and begin with that. The simple idea is, don’t set a lot of goals at the same time, because this way your focus won’t be on a particular Goal and ultimately you won’t achieve any of them completely.

The key to goal setting is staying focused. It is not that easy to focus at many goals at the same time, as easy you might be assuming it to be.

Step 2: Produce a Desire to Achieve your Goal
Desire, is what that keeps us working all hours. It is desire that keep us thinking, keep us busy doing things, keeps us working from 8am to 10 Pm every day. You can think of it as fuels that ignite us to do something. What ever we do, a design to do it successfully is a must.

Take a minute and think about the goal you've set for yourself and ask your-self, "how committed you are to achieve this goal"? Found the answer? Ask next question “will you ever give up during the process of achieving your goal”?

You are right if you are truly committed and won’t give up. A True desire is a must to achieve anything you want to achieve.

Step 3: Develop a Self-Believe
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve”, if you notice this line closely you can easily understand that, if you conceive and believe, you can achieve. I repeat in bold letter “conceive and believe”. If there is a fraction of doubt in your mind that you cannot achieve something, you won't be able to commit yourself to it. In order to achieve, you must believe it is possible and that it’s possible for you to achieve.

Step 4: Set a Deadline to achieve Your Goal
Having a deadline help you to plan your time, energy, efforts and concentration in a very systematic way. When you have a deadline set for yourself to finish a work, you will realize the rate of completion is very fast an accurate.

Take the following two situations for illustration;
Situation 1: you have been assigned a job/task and you do not have a deadline to complete it.
Situation 2: Same job is assigned to you with a realistic deadline and you finished it. Now realize which job you managed and finished better, in which job you enjoyed finishing… no need to say. It’s the second job for which you had a deadline.

It’s a human nature, when you have a sense of urgency, you won’t dare to waste any resources and put your best with a systematic planning to complete it on time. Deadline can always move you to take actions to achieve the task /job assigned.

Step 5: See your Goal with open eyes
As of now, your goal might be just a thought, whenever you seat and close your eyes you can see it, you can feel it. But now, see your goal with your open eyes. Open eyes? Yes open eyes. I want you to see your goal by open eyes. Write down your goal on paper and read it, see it, feel it.

Recall your school days, when you learnt your first rhyme in Nursery class. When you read and re-read a phrase the impression on the mind becomes deeper and deeper and chances are very less that you will ever forget those rhymes.

So to remember and feel your goal in front of you, please write it down on a paper and keep it on your table, or somewhere you can read easily and frequently.

Step 6: Identify the Obstacles
After having a clear picture of the Goal and the milestones, there is something else that need you attention. Gues!! You are right, the obstacles. There is nothing that you want to achieve and it ha sno obstacle. Obstacles are bounded to be there when it comes to achieve something. So you have to identify them and write them down on the paper.

When you have the Obstacles that you think you have in the path of achieving your Goals, it will help you to make more appropriate action/task plan to achieve you milestones.

Step 7: Identify the Resources You have
Now when you have identified the obstacles for your goal, you have to find out the resources you need and the resources you have. Identification of required resources are equally important, as because you will need them during the completion of your milestones and the goal.

Step 8: Define the Milestones
Now you will be making milestones to for your Goal. It’s always a best practice to divide the goal to milestones. Most of us, do not achieve our goal, just because it appears overwhelming when we see it. When we divide a big task to small tasks, it becomes easy for us to finish each task. Milestones are easier to achieve and shows the progress. When you see progress in task, you find more interest going ahead, and doing things.

Step 9: Define Task to Achieve Milestones
Now we are making the actual action plan to achieve the ultimate goal we have set for ourselves. To do this first of all lets again divide the milestones into easy-to-accomplish tasks. Task is the ultimate action we will be taking to achieve our goal. The idea of dividing the milestones into different tasks is just for the ease of action and execution.

Make sure to list all the tasks, even those you think, can be done in minutes, because you have to spare a minute for it. While working with a systematic plan and for a scheduled task, every minutes count.

Now when you have enlisted each and every task, you have to perform with deadline set, as to when the task should be completed, its time to real action now. Sort the task in order of date of completion, importance and chances of ease of completion. Once sorted out, start finishing the listed task and mark the task in the list as completed with date of completion for your self-analysis.

Once, you finish a task, mark them as completed and don’t forget to put the date of completion. Make an extra column for time gap, and write the time gap here. When you was supposed to finish the task and when you actually finished it. Highlight completed task with different color, so that initially, you can feel; out of so many tasks only these has been completed and as you progress, you will see ninety percent of the task has been achieved and then hundred percent. This task list is going to help you monitor your progress. It should be easy to read and should give you a clear picture of tasks already completed and the tasks that is yet to be completed. When you will have a look on this list, it will keep you motivated. Every completed task will motivate you to go ahead and complete the next task. Once you have done it, you achieved your Milestone.

Keep on finishing your milestones and finally achieve you ultimate goal.

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