With the New Year quickly approaching, many people may be gearing up for their New Year's resolutions. The dawn of a new year allows people to reflect upon what has worked, and what they would like to accomplish moving forward. While everyone has probably spent some time setting goals, have you found that you either fall short of your goals or end up abandoning them after the resolution buzz has died down? Here are some tips to setting goals that you actually keep throughout the year.
First, sit down with a blank sheet of paper, lock yourself into a quiet room and make a list of everything you would like to achieve in your lifetime. It doesn't matter if it is big, small, or even silly-sounding; just list it. You may find it difficult to begin, but just keep at it, avoiding the urge to succumb to distractions. Once you get over the initial hump, you will probably find that listing things you want to do comes easy, almost to the point where you can't write fast enough.
As you are writing make a note of any items that you list that give you a special feeling when they come to mind. While you will just write most items down as they come to you, there will be a few items that give you a feeling of tranquility as you get them on the page.
Once you have completed your list, take a break. You can either take a day before you come back to your list or only a few hours. When you return to your list, highlight those items that gave you the most emotional impact. If they still hold the same feeling, these are the items that will determine your purpose.
On a fresh sheet of paper, list the items you previously highlighted, ranking them in order of importance to you. Most-people usually have 10-15 items on this list. Next, for each of your most important goals, write down how long you think it would take to accomplish. Some goals can be completed within the year, while some may take a lifetime. While it is easy to say you want to be a millionaire in the next six months, try to set realistic, but challenging timeframes for you goals.
Now that you have prioritized and given timelines for your goals, it is time to create a strategic plan to accomplish them. For your long-range goals, break the down by year, creating sub-goals that will help you achieve your larger accomplishments. Once you have your goals broken down by year, break them down further, setting six month and three-month milestones. Pay particular attention to what you want to accomplish in the short term, as creating a good plan now will help you achieve your goals further down the line. It's alright if some of the details later on are a little fuzzy, you'll have time to revisit and reevaluate these milestones later.
The result of completing this process is a detailed outline of what you will accomplish in the coming months and years.
Now, as a final step, and possibly the most important, is add two tasks that you will do everyday. These can be directly related to your goals, or something you'd like to do simply to make your life better. Make these tasks very easy to accomplish, such as getting the mail or taking a multivitamin. Make these tasks as specific as humanly possible, for example, rather than list "getting the mail" list "getting the mail everyday at 3 o'clock." It is very important that state these task that specifically.
Finally do the little task that you put on your list, when you agreed to do it. In our above example, if you wanted to get the mail at 3 o'clock, get the mail at exactly 3 o'clock, not one minute before or after. By creating these easy to accomplish goals and sticking to them, you set yourself up to accomplish your bigger goals in life. This strategy puts you on an automatic winning streak that become hard to break.
By following this strategy for goal setting, you not only have short-range goals which you can do consistently, but a framework to accomplish your larger goals in life.
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