Personal Goal setting

What is your life all about? What is it that you ultimately want to accomplish? The personal goal setting process is a way to give direction and purpose to your life. Having a clear purpose gives you focus for your effort and strong reasons for motivation. Until you really sit down and decide what your goals are for your life, you will drift from one thing to another, probably without accomplishing anything significant.

Without a purpose of your own, it is easy for other people to use you to help achieve their goals (and leave you behind once you are no longer useful to them). A much better route is to first get clarity on what you want to achieve, then find people that you can work with to achieve your goals.

Understanding Personal Goal Setting

When going through a personal goal setting process, it is helpful to put your goals into perspective. One of my goal setting strategies is to classify goals into three general categories.

Top level - Life goal

What is the greatest vision of yourself? If you were utilizing your full potential, acting fearlessly, and able to overcome any obstacle in your way, who would you be? What things would you do? At this level of the personal goal setting process, your life goal gives you inspiration for your other goals. Inside of each of us is a vision of what we are capable of at our finest. It is easy to lose sight of this vision- your daily problems, issues, and needs can become overwhelming. Take the time to rediscover it- just catching a glimpse may be enough to inspire you to start taking action.

Don't make the mistake of settling for less. Don't be satisfied with something mundane or safe. Look beyond your current needs and problems, move past your fears, and see the image of who you could become. This is what you are working towards, realizing this ideal image of yourself. This image becomes your life goal and is a powerful tool for self motivation. Your life goal is what you would accomplish if you were acting at your full capacity. Think about what what would really give your life meaning; what you could and would do if you were using your full potential.

At this level your life goal should be general; it can be fulfilled in a variety of ways. It should be something that you are continually working towards and can achieve in multiple ways. When you are acting in alignment with your life goal you will feel fulfilled, get in the flow state more often, and have a sense of meaning and purpose.

Second level- Expressive goals

It's great once you once you have settled on a life goal, but the next step is to figure out how to actually accomplish it. This second category are the big, concrete goals that are how you actually express your life goal. Once you have the vision of who you could be, what things do you need to do to get there? What changes or improvements would you need to make in order to accomplish your life goal?

Look at your life as it currently is, and think about what immediate changes and long term changes you need to make in order to get closer to your life goal. What career changes would you make, what relationships do you need to make, what resources to you need to acquire?

Make some long term goals that will help you move in the right direction. Focus on one goal at a time, don't try to tackle everything at once. Achieving your goals at this level should help to bring you closer to your ideal self.

Third Level- Foundation and Maintenance goals

These are the basic maintenance and improvement goals. The main purpose of these types of goals are to give you the foundation and ability to accomplish your larger aspirations and dreams. If you have poor health, little money, low energy, few resources, etc., your ability to accomplish the second level goals is diminished.

These types of goals may seem basic, but they form the foundation upon which your higher level goals can be achieved. With these goals, you basically increase your capacity to act. Goals in this tier may include things like diet, exercise, socials skills, personal development, and basic spiritual practices. These goals help you to function better by giving you all the basic resources to achieve your higher goals.

When doing your personal goal setting, don't mistake your lower tier goals for your life purpose. Goals like making money, being in good physical shape, and gaining power are just means for you to achieve greater things.

Don't let them become the sole focus of your life, otherwise you may end up disappointed when you achieve those types goals and find that they were not ultimately fulfilling.

These goal setting strategies can help you to clarify what you really want to accomplish in your life, and then put your goals into perspective. First catch the vision of who you have the potential to be, then create the goals that will help you to achieve your potential.

Here are some additional resources that can help with the personal goal setting process:

• Learn specific goal setting techniques that can be helpful to use while creating goals.

• Understand the five components of setting smart goals

• Learning the theory of goal setting will aid you in creating great goals.

• These two important tips on goal setting can make a huge difference the scope of your goals and help you get what you really want.

• Five additional goal setting activities that help you in setting and achieving goals.

• Think about switching goals to focus on those that will bring long term satisfaction.

• Creating effective goal statements can help you to focus on what you want and improve your chances for success.

Return from Personal Goal Setting to Self Motivation Strategies