How to grow in life with the correct goal setting and direction

Why is having a goal an important part of our life?  

Are you happy with the way your life is going ahead? Satisfied with the comfort zone and the same routine. Or do you often think about a dream you always had and tell yourself if i would have done this in the past, today’s time would have been different.

At some point of time we all have felt that there is so much to be explored. We have the talent and want to do something. We also made goals but then life happened and we became so busy. Having passion to achieve our dream means we have vision for our life. But converting that vision into the execution and achievement is often the difficult part.

Making Goal is being Human. 

Every Human has needs. Nowadays our need is not food, clothes, shelter because most of the people have it. If they don’t have it for a temporary time they can always arrange for it very easily. But these days our basic needs have changed to Education, Job/ career, then Marriage, Kids and Family, Regular earning etc. For education we need to make goals related to what knowledge we specialize in and what career option we want in future. In career we have to make goals to have certain posts we want, a standard for pay, industry and so on. 

So as individuals or in organizations/ associations we all make goals but we become vulnerable in loosing the track in between. Therefore it’s important for us to make a custom right technique of goal setting which works best for us.  

What is a Goal? 

Goal can be a desired result, an expectation or an objective to fulfill the ambition of a person. I my way i define it as – 

G – Grasping

O – Opportunity

A – As per Ambition

L – of Lifetime

Let vision be your dream home and goals the brick and mortar to construct it. So have the best quality of brick and mortar to construct a sustainable and beautiful home.

Features of goal –  

1.Desires and goals are different – 

We often mix our wants and desires with goals. They both are totally different. Our wants and desires are the purpose of our life for which we live. Our desires are the hope, which when completed gives us happiness and motivation in life.  Goal is an activity that we have to do in order to achieve our desires.  

2. A goal has to be SMART  

• Specific – Being healthy is not a goal but just a wish in our thoughts.  Different people may have different definitions of being healthy. Here we have to understand it deeper that being healthy includes a lot of factors like – within range BMI (Body mass index) , Physical fitness & strength, Weight within standard range which is again on the basis of your age, height, bones, hereditary etc. It depends upon us what standard we choose and how we define our goal. 

• Measurable – If your goal is related to numbers then it is easily measurable.  
  • Measurement in number or quantity –  Lets say your goal is to earn $500 a week, then you can set the same as a target. It can be measured in % or ratings; i.e how much is earned in a week with relation to various factors like total hours of effort you had put. You can also break It Down to sub goals like percentage earned on a daily basis or hourly basis. Here the target is clear and measurable. 
  • Measurement in quality – If the goal is to improve the quality of something then the target is not clear. Because we don’t have a standard where we want to reach. So we can say that the starting point is our current state and the target will be an improved state. 
  • If your goal is a skill improvement which cannot be measured in numbers then you need to first convert it into some quantity, rating , ranking or number.  Why do you need to convert? So that you can compare it over a period of time and analyze whether it has improved or not. 

• Attainable / Achievable – If you are at 50 years of age , you generally would not make a goal to pursue space education and visit the moon. Well, dreams can come at any age. But to make a dream into reality we have to predict its achievability as well with respect to other environmental factors. These factors can be time to complete, minimum education and professional qualification required, rules of getting into some position, market situation etc.

• Relevant/ Realistic – Goals have to be related with your profile or personality. Then They should be connected with your desires. While making our goals we need to define our purpose or objective very clearly. Every goal has to fit in with the time frame , situation and the environment to be relevant. 

• Time Bound – Every goal needs to have a timeline to achieve. If we don’t have a timeline then it is highly possible that we don’t even start doing it and procrastinate it. ‘I want to reduce my weight’ is not a goal. “I want to lose 7 kg of my weight in 3 months’ is a goal. Tip – Give comparatively less time to achieve any goal. I.e. try to make the time deadline short. This makes you think that the clock is ticking and you try to start that task without wasting time thinking about it. 

All the above are easily said but difficult to execute. This happens because many times we are trapped in listening to others. We start living a life that people expect out of us rather than understanding our sole purpose of life and working as per that.  

Let’s do goal setting with the following example – 

Dream – You want to become an english coach for a rural area in a year.

GOAL – To improve your English language communication in 3 months.  

First you would want to make sub goals like below. Where you can define it quarterly.   

In 1^st month – you will work upon these sub goals  

• Correct Your grammar 
• Proper sentence formation without any errors  
• Correct Professional letter/ email writing  

In 2nd month – Your goals can be 

• Learn 400 popular words to improve vocabulary 
  • Further sub goal can be 100 words in a week 
• Learn spellings of above words to improve writing skill  

In 3^rd Month – Improvement will be on 

Communicating with people in english 

Writing half page daily in english   

The above goals are Specific, Relevant, Attainable and Time bound.

Then You can make them measurable by making a standard of each goal and improving around 50-70 % in each. Like in the first week you used to make 10 mistakes in a page in grammar. After 2 weeks you will reduce it to a maximum of 4 mistakes a page.

 3. Set a goal as per your passion and vision for life

It is important to find your passion or interest in life. Our work automatically happens when we follow our interest because its the area where our Will power is already high and supported by passion.

4. Goals are sub tasks of a big dream/ purpose/ desire of life.

Sometimes we get demotivated if we are not able to achieve a goal. This happens because we give more importance to the goal rather than our dream which we want to achieve. Here we lose our sync or direction to achieve our higher purpose or desire. We can understand and link this concept with those inspirational people who fail a lot many times but they dont quit. Basically if they are not able to complete a few goals, they change it or improve it to reach the expected result. But they don’t change their dreams. The day we understand that goal is a sub task , a very small part of a big dream we want to achieve, we will not be affected by failure of a goal. We will take it as a lesson which will not make us quit in between.

5. Goals are flexible

The same goal can change with time, market situations, personal preferences, new technology etc. Therefore we need to have some flexibility in our goal setting which further makes us more futuristic. We need to keep updating our goals as per the environmental factors.

6. Goal completion means we are in right direction but not in complete achievement 

Completing a goal may not give us that satisfaction or it may be temporary. Achieving a desire or fulfillment of a dream gives us ultimate internal happiness. For Example: Let’s say my dream is to have full education in rural parts of an area. Getting 10 teachers appointmented in that area may give me temporary satisfaction that I am going in the right direction and there is progress. But getting teachers there may or may not fulfill my dream.

7. Have Small goals and big dreams

Make small goals. Try to give your goals a shorter deadline and your Dreams a longer deadline than you usually will give. To fulfill a dream, give yourself ample time. This can range from 1 year to 5 year as this is achievable. However when you keep on completing small goals, you progress, which further motivates you. Your deadline to achieve a goal should be short so that you don’t take too much time in the execution. Your focus should be to achieve the higher purpose of your life.