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The way you go about setting goals can heavily impact the end result. It’s crazy to say that the way you make your goals could be a huge part in the results but I know first hand that it can. Of course, this is going to be different for everyone. What works for me might not work for you and what works for you might not work for your friend. I’ve set many goals in my life, specifically, fitness-related goals that either never got met or took much longer than what my goal was to make. This time around, I took a different approach and I truthfully think it has been one of the biggest factors of my success thus far.
This time, instead of just creating a goal willy nilly, I took the time to dive deep into the goals I made. I thought hard about the goal in general, why I wanted to meet said goal, and what would happen if I did or did not meet it. I think this was the most important thing I could have done for myself. The second most important being that I decided to only set three main goals for the year, two of which went hand in hand.
Brainstorm
The first thing you should do when you sit down to start setting your goals is to think up multiple goals. I’m sure the first couple will come easy as most of the time you already have some things in mind that you want to strive for. I urge you to continue thinking even after you think you’ve got all you want to do down. This is going to force you to start thinking deeper into what you want your life to look like and, who knows, you might end up coming across a goal you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.
Prioritize
Once you’ve thought up some goals, it’s time to start picking out which ones you want to focus on. Instead of focusing on how many goals you want to set right off the bat, start looking through your list of goals and prioritizing them. Think about what you want your life to look like and then start thinking about which of these goals are the most important in getting to that goal.
While you’re doing this, start digging deeper into the goals and thinking about why you want to do it. Maybe it’s for a promotion at work or finally getting to that project you’ve always wanted to do or maybe it’s simply because you want to be able to say you did it. It may be helpful to jot down the thoughts you have about this goal so you can easily refer to them as you go.
This step may take a while and that’s okay. Depending on where you’re at in your life and where you want to go, you might have a lot of thinking to do on what is going to be most effective to start with. Or maybe it took you no time at all to and that’s okay, too. Sometimes you just know what needs to be done and sometimes it takes more thought.
Narrow it Down
This year was the first time I told myself I would only focus on a couple of things at a time and go from there. This has helped me tremendously. I don’t know about you but when I all the sudden have all these things on my plate, I end up dropping it and doing nothing at all.
This is where your order of priority will come into play. Look at the top couple goals and evaluate how daunting they are. If it’s something that is going to take a lot, then it might be worth it to only focus on that one thing. If it’s something that might not take as much effort, grab the next goal or two and add them on.
The most important thing to remember in this step is to be completely honest about the goal and how difficult it is going to be to accomplish. If you’re unsure, start with just the first one and see how it goes. If you think you can take on another one, then grab your second priority and integrate it.
Setting the Goal
At this point, you know what you want to accomplish, where the goals rank against themselves, and which ones you want to start with. Now it’s time to actually set your goals. Personally, I like the S.M.A.R.T. goals approach to goal setting. It’s simple, effective, and it gets you thinking about more of the details.
- Specific
- Who?
- Is anyone else going to be doing this goal with you?
- Who is going to help keep you accountable along each step of the way?
- What?
- What exactly is your goal?
- How are you going to accomplish this goal?
- Where?
- Think of the places involved.
- Are you going to study in the library? Run at a gym or around the block? Where are you going to submit your application?
- When?
- What time are you going to work out? What are your study hours? How often are you going to read/paint/draw?
- Why?
- You already began to look at why you wanted to meet this goal, now it’s time to look deeper and truly think about why you want this.
- Who?
- Measurable
- Are you able to measure your progress? If so, how?
- This could be as simple as being accepted to a job, grades, or recording your started numbers and evaluating along the way.
- Achievable
- Is what you want to do within your realm of possibility?
- Just because you want to be able to run a 10 minute 2-mile doesn’t necessarily mean you can physically do so.
- Timely
- When do you want to achieve your goal?
- Don’t forget, this needs to be achievable. Losing 30lbs in a week isn’t an option. Make sure it’s realistic.
- What is your timeline?
- What are the milestones going to be?
- Break the goal down into smaller goals to be accomplished along the way
- When do you want to achieve your goal?
Remember, this is just one way to make goals, if you already have a system that works for you, use it. If you try it and you don’t like it, find other ways to go about this step.
Motivate the Goal
This is a new step that I did this time around that I think has been the biggest factor in my success. Instead of stopping after I made the goal, I went back to why I wanted to accomplish this goal and dug even deeper.
Let’s take a look at my goals of passing the APFT and height/weight for the military. Sure I knew I wanted to pass both of these so I could be meeting the standards and get my flags removed but what did that really mean for me? Why was meeting the standard important? What was going to happen if I met the standard? What was going to happen if I didn’t?
I knew that I was about a year and a half out from the end of my contract in the military and I knew I wanted to reenlist but I currently can’t do that. Because I’ve failed the APFT and height/weight for so long, I have a bar on my reenlistment which means that once my contract is up, it’s up. I knew that in order to lift that bar, I needed to pass these two things and then I could reenlist. If I didn’t, then I was going to be done after 6 years.
In the past, I stopped there but this time, I kept going. What else did getting my flags removed do for me? It would open up the possibility of countless training opportunities that I have wanted to go to and missed because I wasn’t able to be put on orders for it. I can’t go to any schools or help with events or anything like. I can’t get promoted. I’ve been an E3 for much longer than I should have been. I should have been promoted to E4 years ago, it’s even possible that I could have been promoted to E5 by now. However, my continued failure has made it so I’ve sat the majority of my military career as an E3.
I thought about stopping there, that was a solid bit of motivation but then I remembered that I had stopped at promotions may times before and look where that’s gotten me. There had to be something else that would knock it out of the park. What else would happen if I did or didn’t meet this goal?
Well, for starters, it’s possible I could get kicked out sometime in the next year if I didn’t start making progress. If that happened, I wouldn’t finish out my 6-year contract which meant to I would miss out on things like VA loans which are something that I need if I want to be able to buy a house in the next year or two. That has been a big motivator that has proved to be quite effective in not only helping me stray from the path but it also helped pull me back on this past week when I noticed myself starting to fall back into old habits the week before.
I needed more good things, though, so I kept thinking, what else would I be able to do if I achieve these goals? The two things I came up with were being able to get a full-time job in the guard which is something I have recently become very interested in. The second is that I would be able to try to get a secondary MOS, the job you have in the military, in the finance field. Not only would this broaden my scope of full-time guard positions I could fill but it would allow me to get a lot of credits for school taken care of through military training rather than through college. Meaning it would cost me a lot less to get my degree.
Again, this is not the way but it is a way. Creating my goals in a way that they also brought motivation to the table has helped get me to where I am today. I am amazed at how well this has worked for me and if I can help even one person by sharing what I did then it makes this whole blog worth it.