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10 Steps for Goal Setting

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When you think about it, our lives are, in many ways, a never-ending cycle of identifying, striving for, and achieving goals. Living is evolving, and one of the most natural ways we, as humans, evolve, is through setting and reaching milestones, or goals.

A young African American college student is in the library studying, she has concerns about goal setting for herself

Of course, it’s not quite this simple. Life is also about identifying and living by our core values and beliefs, forming and maintaining relationships, and learning to find and cultivate joy. But even these things, at their core, can be broken down into goals and steps we want or need to achieve in order to keep moving forward.

Why is Goal Setting Important?

If you don’t have goals, you don’t have a clear purpose in life. And if you don’t have a clear purpose in life, it’s easy to feel lost, untethered, or like you have no idea why you’re here or what you’re supposed to be doing.

Goals give us direction, drive, motivation, and something to look forward to. Goals are like a destination we want to reach on our own personal life’s road map, and the steps we take to reach them are our own GPS guiding us to the final destination.

A lack of goals can cause anxiety, uneasiness, stress, sadness, and even depression. If you feel as though you have no purpose, you may feel easily defeated or as though you don’t matter. But you do! And that’s why goals are so important. They remind you that you’re here for a reason, and that you have things to do, see, learn, experience, and accomplish along this road of life. Goals keep us moving, growing, and evolving into the best possible versions of ourselves.

How to Set Goals in 10 Steps

It’s one thing to have a goal in mind and want to achieve. It’s quite another to know what actions and steps to take to make that goal a reality. With these simple 10 steps for goal setting, you’ll be well on your way to identify, working toward, and ultimately achieving the goals that will elevate and improve your life until it’s exactly what you want it to be.

Define Your Goals

Before you work towards a goal, you have to know what your goal is. What do you want? What’s important to you? Sit down and think about your own core values and morals. What are the things that guide you? What are your principles and beliefs about life?

Once you identify these, think about what these values and guiding principles make you want to accomplish. These things are your goals. Take time with yourself to make them as clear and precise as possible. Don’t just decide you want to lose weight, for example. Decide you want to lose X number of pounds by X date. Don’t just decide you want to learn how to cook. Instead, decide you want to learn how to make x dishes within the next x months. The more specific you can be, the more likely you are to succeed.

The young college student reads a book in an asile of the library, she is working on her steps for goal setting

Write Them Down

Once you’ve identified your goals, write them down. If it helps motivate you, post your goals somewhere that you can easily see them. This might be on your refrigerator, at your desk, or even on the back of your bedroom door, so you see them every morning when you get up.

If your goals are of a more private nature, write them in a special notebook, and keep it accessible, so that you can open it and remind yourself of what you’re working towards from time to time.

Break Down Your Goals

Sometimes, goals are big. In fact, sometimes they seem so big they feel overwhelming or even impossible. The good news is that you never have to try and do it all at once. No successful marathoner ever finished a race by taking one giant leap from the starting line to the finish line. Instead, they take thousands of smaller steps that carry them from start to finish, getting slightly closer every time their foot hits the ground.

Think of your goals like a marathon. It may be impossible to accomplish them in one fell swoop, but if you put in the work, slow and steady, one foot in front of the other, you’ll be at the finish line before you know it.

Set Priorities

You might have a whole bunch of goals you want to accomplish. That’s wonderful! But don’t try to get them all done at once. Trying to focus on too many things at once is not only stressful, but it can also be counterproductive.

Sit down with your list of goals and prioritize them based on which is most important to you right now. Start with one to focus on fully. You can always add more in as you learn to manage your goal-setting workload.

Create a Plan

Even the best intentions can fail if you don’t have a fool-proof plan in place. Break your plan into actionable, measurable steps. Have a backup plan in case things don’t go exactly as expected. And then have another backup plan in case plan B falls through. The more prepared and thorough you can be when developing your plan, the more likely you are to succeed.

Stay Accountable

Hold yourself accountable, no matter what. This can be the difference between getting where you want to go, and watching your goals and dreams fall to the wayside over time.

This doesn’t mean to be completely inflexible. If you miss a step along your journey, don’t eternally punish yourself. Acknowledge that you’ve made a mistake, recommit, and get back to work! Being kind to yourself is another kind of accountability and will help to keep you motivated.

Track Your Progress

It’s hard to know where you’re going if you have no way to look back and see how far you’ve come. Implement some kind of tracking system into your goal setting process, so there’s never any doubt about where you are along your path. This will keep you motivated and moving forward.

Stay Persistent

At times, your goals may feel tiresome or burdensome. This is the most important time to stay locked in and persistent. Doing something when you really don’t want to can be the push you need to get over any roadblocks and breakthrough to the next level in your goal setting journey.

Review and Reflect

In the flurry of working towards a goal, don’t forget to give yourself time to review your progress, reflect on your work, and think about where you’re going. Allow yourself to enjoy the process and take in the beauty of the journey. Not only will this keep you motivated, but it will also make the entire process so much more pleasurable.

Visualize Success

Whenever your commitment starts to waver, stop and visualize why you started down this path to begin with. Allow yourself to see and feel what it will be like when you reach that ultimate goal. Let the excitement of that fuel you and keep you going when you need it most.