As individuals, we do not live at the mercy or at the whim of other people. We all have minds given to us because we need it in our daily lives. If you allow yourself to be dictated by chance or by the strong will of other people, they will dominate you. No doubt about that. But if you exercise your will and define for yourself what you truly want, then you can move away from such a dependent relationship and begin the enjoyable process of fulfilling your potentials and living up to your dreams.
Even though you have dreams and they may be as grand as Mt. Everest, if you do not define your personal goals, these dreams will forever remain as a haze in the horizon, barely visible and forever unattainable. Dreams are very abstract and if you do not form and restate them into a meaningful vision and achievable goals, you deprive yourself of the ability to pursue such a dream.
Defining your goals is part of the process of achieving your dreams. Sure it can be boring because it might mean sitting down and asking yourself some difficult questions. But if you do not do this and you start running after your dreams, you may be forced to change your path every now and then. By planning and defining what you truly want, you actually save time.
Dreams are good. In fact, they are necessary if your life were to become enjoyable. However, if you do not sit down and break your dreams down into manageable chunks of personal goals, you will simply meander through life aimlessly holding on to your dreams. Rest assured that if you define your goals, you easily know what you want to achieve and you can have an indication when you have achieved those dreams.
This process of goal setting is a lot like sitting down and plotting the course of your life on a map. As part of this process, you also define where you are right now. How could you move to another place if you are unsure where you're at? With your dreams and your goals, you derive a sense of purpose and you can achieve the things that you have defined for yourself.
These personal goals also help you keep your eyes and your mind focused on your goals. No diversions. No unnecessary right turn or left turn. In no time at all, you will arrive at your planned destination.
The first factor is to choose the correct goal to work on. Most people that I've talked to over the years usually have more then one goal which they want to achieve at any one time. Although it is possible to work on more then one goal at a time, our brains function more efficient if it is focused on doing only one thing at a time. When you multi-task, or in other words, trying to juggle more then one task at a time, most of the time you will tend to do badly in both. Have you tried to compose a document while trying to talk to someone on the phone. Did you find it extremely difficult to concentrate on the conversation and also to finish creating your document ? Similarly, to achieve an optimal level of efficiency, we should only work on one goal at a time. However, this choice has caused many headaches among individuals because they have no idea which one they really want to do first. At this stage, I get the individuals to list down each of their goals and have them score their goals across a number of criterion that are personally important to the individual. They could be comparing their goals against factors like financial benefit, boost to self esteem to name a few. The goal that scores the highest means that is the goal that they should be going after at that particular point in time. One of the common factors that I always tell individuals to include is the desire to have that particular goal. How badly they want to achieve a certain goal carries a lot of weight in the judging criterion because the amount of desire they have for a certain goal is proportional to the amount of motivation they will possess when they are working at that particular goal.
Second factor to consider is the formulation a proper goal statement. Most people who have thought they have set goals in the past but fail to achieve them usually have goals like "I want to get richer" or "I want to be fitter". Goals that have no time frame, no emotions and no action words attached to it will not come true. Compare the latter statement with this one, "I will triumphantly lose 2 inches off my waist in 6 months time by going to the gym after work everyday". Notice how powerful the second statement is ? There is a measuable factor of inches to lose from the waist. There is also a time frame attached to it so it immediately gives our minds something to focus on. There is also an action attached to the desire which is going to the gym everyday after work. Finally, there is emotions and feelings attached to the statement so we can activate our inner motivator, which resides in our subconscious mind to help us achieve our goals.
Alvin Loh has sinced written about articles on various topics from Celebrities, Home Management and Pets. Alvin runs a website at .. Alvin Loh's top article generates over 8100 views. to your Favourites.