Are you a person who carefully analyzes a situation, sets a goal, and accomplishes it? Then you know working hard without specific goals is like going in circles, you never seem to get anywhere. It’s difficult to arrive at a destination without any direction of how to get there.
Understanding the importance of setting goals for yourself is crucial to accomplishing great things in life. Here are six reasons why setting goals will benefit your life.
Measure Your Success
Setting goals allows you to measure how effectively you are progressing in your life. A little tip: try quantifying the results you are hoping to achieve in dollars, time, or percentages. This enables you to measure what you have achieved, then you can adjust your plan accordingly. It also allows you to recognize when you ultimately reach your goal.
Tap Into Your Potential
Not setting goals prevents you from tapping into all the potential you have in store. By setting goals, you set targets and slowly start achieving dreams you never thought possible. There is no better feeling than seeing yourself slowly progressing towards your greatest desire until one day you can emphatically say, “I’m doing it!” Each of us has infinite potential that can only be captured by setting goals and achieving them.
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Give You Clear Focus
As Bill Copeland put it, “If you don’t have a goal in life, you are spending your life running around and not achieving anything for yourself.” Your life gets consumed with endless to-do’s, but they aren’t what you want. Every moment you spend not working on your goals is spent fulfilling everyone else’s goals. When you take a moment to write down a concrete goal, you can articulate to yourself, and others, your ambitions floating in your mind. Goals are a clear vision of what you want to do and how to do it.
Keep You Motivated
The key to staying motivated is baby steps. If you write down your greatest aspirations today and assume they will magically be completed by tomorrow, you will be left discouraged and disheartened. However, devising an action-plan (a specific list of actions that will lead to your end goal) will help you stay on track and keep your positivity at full speed. When you see yourself slowly progressing, it will motivate you even more - ultimately allowing you to enter into a cycle that only leads to success. Never let your motivation die as it will act as fuel to drive you forward when the going gets tough.
Organize Your Resources
Knowing what you want and how to get it helps you prioritize and budget. Many of our goals don’t come cheap and may require various assets, such as money, material, and others’ time, to achieve. Devise a plan to get your resources in order and position your resources behind what you really want.
Accountability
Setting goals leads to commitment and commitment leads to accountability. Rather than just talking the talk, show that you can walk the walk. This accountability is to yourself, not anyone else. When you are accountable toward your goals then you are being true to your ambitions. For example, if you have a goal to lose 20 pounds, this accountability is what you hold up to when you choose a healthy salad over that giant, greasy cheeseburger. Your little day-to-day actions and decisions must be in line with your end goal.
Setting a goal can be challenging, however, goals are a fundamental component to long-term success. Research has proven there is a direct link between goals and enhanced performance. Goals keep you motivated when you feel like giving up, and translate to a feeling of success and confidence once they are met.
How many times have you set at least five new goals at the start of the year to show up empty handed by the end of January? There is no better time to set a new goal than today, so as each day passes you are sure to be closer to achieving your desires.
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