How to set goals you can achieve - part 1
Have you ever tried to quit smoking which was unsuccessful? Have you ever wanted to do sports regularly, but there was still something that drew you away from it? Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to achieve something, we can’t stick with what we intended. The biggest obstacle here probably is not the lack of strong will, but the way we set our goals. In this article you will learn how to set your goals so that achieving them is easy and fun.
Have you ever tried to quit smoking which was unsuccessful? Have you ever wanted to do sports regularly, but there was still something that drew you away from it? Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to achieve something, we can’t stick with what we intended. The biggest obstacle here probably is not the lack of strong will, but the way we set our goals. In this article you will learn how to set your goals so that achieving them is easy and fun.
This article consists of two parts. If you use the tips listed here, the likelihood that you achieve your goals effectively will increase several times. The internet lacks comprehensive articles that would accurately describe the whole process and how to set goals. A thorough study of this text will be a great investment for you. Remember that in addition to doing the reading you will have to spend a little time to work on your goals. If you decide to do this, I guarantee you will achieve your most ambitious goals and dreams.
Ambitious mind
In the beginning I would like to write a few words about what is happening in the mind when we set our goals (if you read my blog you have probably noticed that I try to direct everything, in some way, to mind processes :-)).
Well, neuropsychologists’ studies confirmed that when we set our goals, we act as if they already were a part of us. The mind cannot exactly distinguish between what we have and what we want to have. It believes that the desired effect is already a part of us. For example, when we cannot achieve the already set goal, we suffer almost as if we’ve lost something that belonged to us. In fact, people often feel tremendous pain when they fail to achieve their goal, even though they lost something they didn’t really have. Thanks to this mechanism, the mind helps us achieve our goals.
One of neurotransmitters – dopamine – is responsible for striving to achieve our goals . It produces the feelings of pleasure, when the mind is stimulated by the achievements. So when we are on the way to reach our goals, dopamine makes us feel very good. But when something goes wrong, dopamine isn’t produced and consequently stress appears.
So, when we set a goal, it right away becomes a part of us. The mind helps us in achieving our goals by rewarding us for striving towards them. Therefore, a visualization of the already achieved goal and pleasurable feelings connected to it are so important in the whole process. It reinforces this mechanism which takes place in our mind.
Why all this?
It’s an obvious question. If we want to achieve something in life, we have to set some goal. I mean here a more formalized process of setting goals, which I will describe later in this article. Why should we devote time to writing down and defining all of this? First of all, it helps us determine what the most important things in our life are. In addition, it allows us to notice and get rid of the irrelevant ones. Goal setting motivates us towards achieving them, builds our confidence once we’ve achieved them.
How to do it most effectively?
The exercise described below requires devoting a certain amount of time, even 1 to 2 hours (including defining the goals, which will be discussed in the second part of the article). It’s important to think about who you want to be in the future and decide what the really important things in your life are. What I suggest below starts with your setting life goals, which are your objectives for the next 10-15 years. If you can’t come up with such long-terms goals, it can be, for example, a 5-year period of time. Nevertheless, if for now you don’t want to set life goals but you want to know just how to set goals (the short-term ones, for example, for a year or half a year), you can skip the first step and go straight to the principles of defining goals (in the next section) .
To start with, you can just sit back and imagine yourself in 10 or 15 years. See your life the way you want it to be. Let all your dreams and expectations be included there. The first step is about setting goals in different areas of life. Such as:
- career
- family
- finance
- health
- education
- relationships
- personal development
- fun
Firstly, write on a piece of paper 2-3 goals for each area. For now, let them be quite general. We will be working later on describing goals more specifically. The very fact of jotting it all down on a piece of paper is crucial because it becomes, in a sense, a commitment to our mind. Then choose one from each area and cross out the rest. Now, choose the most important ones that you care about most.
Once you decide on how your life should look like in these areas, it will help you to build a "frame" of your future life. From now on, you can start, step by step, attaching to this frame additional elements that will be the integral parts of the biggest goals. Knowing what you want to achieve will place you on the correct path. As you can see, knowing your life goals is very, very important. I guess you don’t want that in a few years it appears that you have headed in the completely opposite direction?
From the second part of this article you’ll learn how to define each goal, how to determine it so that it’s easy to achieve it. This will make it a source of strong motivation and desire to act quickly.