When starting a new Self-Care routine or every time you want to improve any aspect of your life is easy to get lost and frustrated if you don’t have a clear objective –or the one you have is not well defined. Keep reading, and we’ll show you how to set goals and achieve them.
Why set goals?
Setting goals gives you a clear picture of what you would like to achieve in life. From short-term to long-term vision, you can focus on the steps to get there. You can see where you are heading, look back, check your progress, re-evaluate if you need to change, and see how far you are from making it.
How to set goals?
1 - Write them down
Writing down your goals will increase your chances of commitment with them. The physical act of writing down makes it tangible instead of being a mere and vague idea. Based on a Harvard Business Study, 3% of graduates from their MBA who wrote their goals ended up earning x10 times as much as the other 97%. Besides that, Writing on a paper effectively activates the "reticular activating system" to filter and focus and process information.
A good tip is to use a positive tone when writing it. Even if it is for yourself, how you perceive your goals will be different. Keep yourself excited about achieving them.
2 - Describe your goals.
Try to make them as specific as possible —the more defined, the better the follow-through. Along the way, you'll see how you make progress on what may have seemed like a long, meaningless journey before. You will also improve your self-confidence as you achieve your own goals.
A helpful tip to create powerful and tangible goals is to make them using the SMART technique.
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable (or Action-Oriented)
R – Rewarding
T – Trackable
After the exercise, you can try to visualize the moment of yourself achieving them. It can help you to decide if that is what you are looking for.
3 - Define a timeline
Think about when you would like to achieve a goal. Is it short, mid, or long-term? This is the difference between them:
- Short-term: one positive part of the short-term goal plan is that you don't have to wait to start. You can take action right now to change anything you like. Don't start too big — just think about next week.
- Mid-term goals: these goals can be achieved after a series of short-term goals. The value of these goals is that you will check your progress and see if you are heading toward success or anything that could change.
- Long-term goals: consider these goals as achievements that can add genuine value and improvements to your life. To accomplish your long-term goals, you need to figure out the short-term actions along the way. It is essential to understand what to focus on.
4 - Define the habit step by step
Define the path by dividing the objective into smaller steps. We use as a recurring phrase Lao Tzu's proverb, "A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step". To do this, we must think about the result and what to start, stop and continue doing. It is not creating new things; it is removing others from your daily life, and if something is not working, review it and think about how to do it differently to reach the goal.
Breaking your goals into smaller steps is critical for mid and long-term goals. This will also be very useful to have described your goals with the SMART technique to set the timing and track them.
5 - Set your reward
It might sound frivolous, but it represents a significant role when it comes to achieving your goals. Creating a habit can be long and hard, so the reward can be an extra push to motivate. Self-rewards lead to development because you will celebrate that goal, and next time, you can think about a tangible reward you achieved in the past. Therefore, it not only help you to maintain your habits but create new ones.
6 - Share it
By sharing your goals with others, you commit with them. In some moments when you don't feel so engaged to keep practicing your habit; having in mind this compromise, you will be more motivated, and consequently, you will have more chances to achieve your goals.
Also, by sharing healthy habits and how you achieved with others, you can make them think about improving their Self-Care. Nice gift, isn't it?
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