If you’re looking to turn your dreams into reality, you’re going to want to utilize the power of goals. Ask any successful person their secret and they’ll tell you it’s largely in the goal-setting success.
So, what are goals and how exactly can they help you to achieve your dreams? What is the importance of setting goals? Here, you’ll discover everything you need to know.
“A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.” Greg Reid
In my previous blog posts, we identified our Purpose in this life and wrote a Vision on how to fulfill this life mission and create our dream life in alignment with our Core Values. Then we associated strong positive emotions with our Vision by visualizing our dream life with the help of a Vision Board. The next step to manifest our dream life is breaking down this big Vision into bite-size pieces: goals. When we have these specific small steps we will be able to take action that will bring us closer to our dream life every single day.
What is the definition of a goal?
The definition of a goal is a desired result a person wants to accomplish, combined with the effort to achieve it. Goals can be set for every single area of your life and they can be both large and small. Goals are the step by step plans to realize your Life Vision.
For example, you may want to progress in your current career. This would be your large, overall goal. However, in order to achieve it, there are certain steps you’ll need to take such as training, searching for new opportunities, networking. These steps can be broken down into smaller goals.
It’s actually really important to make sure you are setting small, achievable goals and not only large ones. This is because, in order to achieve any goal that you set, you need to stay motivated.
If your goals are too big and vague, such as progressing in your career, or losing weight, it’s going to take a long time to actually achieve them, you won’t see much progress along the way and you might lose your initial motivation. However, if you were to break down your goals, you’d accomplish your small goals quickly one by one, boosting your motivation to continue.
Examples of smaller goals include:
- Lose 1 lb in one week
- Sign up for a training course
- Go for a walk once a week
- Drink 6 glasses of water per day for a week
- Meditate for 10 minutes every morning or evening for a week
- Read 1 page from a book every day (to learn something new)
The smaller the goals, the easier you’ll find them to stick to.
So, now you know what goals are, why are they so important?
What is the importance of setting goals?
There are a lot of reasons why goal setting is important. The fact it allows you to work towards your dream life is one of the biggest advantages.
Increasing the chance you’ll fulfill your dreams
Even if you know your Purpose and have created your Life Vision, you’re not going to be able to fulfill your purpose and create your dream life if you don’t know what steps you need to take to get there.
Setting goals helps you to see your future more clearly. Rather than letting life decide what it is you’ll achieve, you’re making the decision over how it will be. This can be incredibly empowering and help you to fulfill your dreams much quicker than you would without any goals.
If you haven’t discovered your Life Purpose yet click on the image below. I will help you to figure out the meaning of your life.
They allow you to take control of your life
Do you often feel like you have no control over your own life? You are just doing one necessary task after the other all day long. It’s easy to lose our way and get caught up in living on auto-pilot. However, goal setting can really help you to take back control over your life.
By setting goals you’re thinking about what you want from life. Instead of just doing what everyone else wants you to do, you’ll be starting to act more upon what YOU want to achieve.
Helping you to live with intention
Goals are a great way to help you to live with intention. Why is this important? Because living with intention helps you to become more proactive.
When you don’t have goals, you’ll typically find you lead a more reactive lifestyle. That is, you will spend your time reacting to the situations you’re placed in, and the events which occur, rather than controlling them.
They help to keep you focused
When you’ve got a list of goals to work towards, it really helps to keep you focused on your dreams. It’s easy to lose focus when you don’t have a specific goal in mind and you’re just going through the motions day upon day. Goals give you a sense of direction, which in turn focuses the mind.
Keeping you accountable
Setting goals can also make you more accountable. Have you ever noticed at the start of January, gyms get full up pretty quickly? Then, once the end of January comes, they tend to empty out again. This is because the motivation you initially have to achieve your goals does fade pretty quickly.
When you’re determined to meet your goals and provided you set small, measurable goals, it really does help to keep you accountable. You’ll teach your mind to become more focused and to keep going even when that initial motivation has died down. This is a great skill to develop and it all starts with goal setting!
Try this undated printable productivity planner to set your small, specific, and measurable goals and plan your actions: Productivity Planner
Helping you to become successful
All successful people have one thing in common – goal setting. Talk to anyone who has achieved what they want in life and you’ll quickly see it’s all about creating and sticking to your goals. The importance of goal setting is evident.
After all, how can you possibly achieve success if you don’t know what you’re aiming towards? Once you’ve got goals, you’ll be able to measure your progress and make adjustments if required to ensure you meet them.
Allowing you to measure your progress
Goals can really help you to measure your progress. You can see just how far you’ve come, as well as how far you still have left to go to achieve them. This, in turn, can really help to keep those motivation levels up.
This floral planner is designed to help you plan your weeks and days and track what´s important for you. It also helps you reduce stress by becoming more organized and by using the coloring pages to release stress. It will help you introduce healthy habits into your life too.
Helping to boost your motivation
While staying motivated to achieve their goals is something many people struggle with, this is usually down to the fact that they’ve set the goals too big.
When you break down your goals into smaller, more achievable steps, it actually helps to keep you motivated throughout. Every time you tick off a goal that you’ve set, it increases your motivation to aim towards the next one and so on.
Improving your motivation can help you in all areas of your life. So, if you’re looking to improve your motivation, focusing on proper goal setting can really help.
Ensuring you achieve maximum results
It’s pretty tough to get maximum results in life when you don’t have goals to work towards.
When you have a list of goals, you’ll find you push yourself harder to achieve them. You are literally taking the first step to achieving your dreams when you create goals in your life.
As you can see, setting goals is really important in life if you want to turn your dreams into reality. So, if you haven’t created any goals that you want to achieve in life, now is definitely the time to do so.
In my following posts, I will show you what kind of goals you should set and 8 ways to achieve them.
Just a quick reminder from Mel Robbins about the importance of goal setting and that you should set your goals high:
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