Goal Setting – Best Practices

Jan 1, 2012 // No Comment // Categories: Featured Articles.

Achieving a goal, whether in business or your personal life takes vision, planning, and hard work. Anything worthwhile will be difficult to achieve and at the same time be worthy of pursuing. There are steps you can use to help you achieve your goals. I do not wish you "luck" with obtaining your goals, for I hope you will realize that "luck" has nothing to do with it. Instead, be positive; be persistent, be patient, and persevere!

Goal Setting:

First Step: Do you know where you’re going?
1. Turning a wish into a goal
2. Power of Possibility
3. Don’t be vague – be specific.
  1. Being specific helps define what a good job is.
  2. Difficult is good. Just not impossible. Don’t set the bar too low.
  3. Think big.
  4. Achieving difficult tasks provides high levels of satisfaction
4. The more experience –the better we get.
5. Move from the thought of the “what” to the “why.” – the bigger purpose behind what you’re doing.
6. Power of Positive Thinking
  1. Expectancy Value Theory – believing you can succeed.
  2. Don’t think it will be easy! – Successful people not only have confidence they will succeed but they are equally confident that they will have a tough time getting there.
    1. E.g. if you think an exam is easy – you study less and do worse.
    2. If you think it will be hard – you study more and do better.
7. Write down your goals
  1. i. List positive results of your goals
  2. ii. List the obstacles and how you’ll overcome them.
8. Overview:
  1. Be specific
  2. Make it hard
  3. Think why or what
  4. Consider how desirable and how feasible
  5. Think positive and don’t underestimate
  6. Think about wonderful things that will happen when you succeed and the obstacles to success.
Getting unstuck:
1. Believing you can change
2. You are not destined to your current situation.
3. Positive reinforcement – e.g. Succeed, Work, Teamwork
4. Leaving unconscious reinforcement around you – e.g. fitness magazines, etc.
5. Set up the right environment.
Types of Goals:
1. Be good or get better?
2. Be good to perform well – if road gets rocky – give up too soon.
3. Focus on getting better
  1. Tend to enjoy the process
  2. Take difficulty in stride
  3. More resilient in change – and perform better over time.
  4. Tend to be less depressed
Are you an optimist or pessimist?
1. Ways to structure your goals
2. Optimist – focus on the gain
3. Pessimist – focus on the threat of not doing it.
Who’s goal is it? – Must be your choice – not being imposed on you.
How will the goal make you feel?
How to give yourself a kick in the pants
1. Focus on the “why” – and dream of the result
2. What will happen if you fail?
3. Remember – to keep focused on getting better not just being good.
Helping others with goals
1. Help them make the choice personal
2. Commit in a public way
3. Use the right triggers
4. Frame the picture
5. Goals are contagious!!!
Seize the Moment!!
1. Start right now!
2. Get feedback.
3. Adjust.
4. Avoid distractions – people, places, social circles.
5. Spell out exactly how you’re going to achieve your goal
  1. Instead of eat less – eat no more than 1,500 calories daily.
  2. If – then --- link your behavior to a situation.
6. Self-control is a muscle
  1. Gets tired at the end of the day
  2. One goal at a time.
    1. Smoking and weight loss.
  3. Use it or lose it
  4. Pump it up
  5. Give it a rest if you’re tired
  6. Need a pick me up – get happy, uplifting, or watch someone else achieve.
  7. Something sweet – something with sugar.
  8. Harder to stop once you start – don’t start!
Effort, persistence and planning
Remember some successes from your past – you are capable of achieving results.
Don’t just visualize the result – visualize the process!