The Power of Goal Setting

It’s easy enough to have a dream. To think in the abstract about what you wish your life would be. Going through a million what if’s and if only’s in your mind. What’s much harder is to actually implement a plan to execute this dream, to bring it from the realm of fantasy to the realm of reality.

That’s where goal setting comes in. By setting a goal, you are encouraging yourself to foster a love of lifelong learning. You are improving and utilizing your critical thinking skills, and you are engaging your cognitive abilities at a deeper level.

When you set a goal, you increase your focus and your clarity on what you want. By breaking a goal down into steps, you can see a real, measurable way to get to where you want to go.

Having a goal also enhances your motivation. When a dream is a nebulous thing, you might wonder what you should do to achieve it but it’s all in the abstract. With a goal, you have a tangible focus on which to build the foundation, step by step, until you reach your goal.

In breaking down a goal into its component parts, you also allow yourself to see measurable progress. It also enables you to celebrate the small milestones as you hit them on your way to your main goal.

Sometimes, it’s best to keep your goal to yourself but other times, in sharing what your goal is, you create greater accountability for yourself, as well as greater motivation for achieving what you set out to do. When you know someone is watching, you are less likely to make an excuse as to why this or that isn’t possible.

If you don’t want to share your goal, you could write it down. There is something about putting pen to paper that makes the goal feel more real than when it just exists in your head. It also allows you to track your progress, seeing where you started and how far you’ve come at each stage, as it can be discouraging when the goal is larger and will take time to accomplish.

When it comes to goals, it’s good to have both personal and professional learning goals. Whatever your job is, and whether you think of it as a career, you can set goals so that you can gain more skills and elevate your experiences. Personal goals, to me, are even better because they focus on the core of who you are and what you want in your life. For me, this keeps my engagement with my goal high.

Another thing to consider when setting a goal is whether it’s a long-term or short-term goal and the according adjustment. A short-term goal might not need to be broken down very far, or even at all, and you can easily celebrate its achievement. It’s easy to see the endline and therefore to keep motivation high.

Long-term goals, on the other hand, are harder because they take longer. These goals you must break into smaller parts or it can be completely overwhelming to tackle them. Since it will take longer to achieve as well, those smaller component steps also allow for breather periods. Celebrating small victories is also important, maybe even more so than reaching the end of a long-term goal.

No matter what type of a goal you are setting, it’s important to revisit it often and adapt and change them as needed. While this is important with both short and long-term goals, this will be more felt in the long-term goals as sometimes they can take years to achieve. You may need to pivot half-way through, you may need an even bigger change, or maybe you just want to verify that you are still on the best path for yourself. Either way, a review is important to ensure that you are on the right path. There is no shame in changing a goal or revamping the way to get there, if that’s what’s needed, and if that’s what better represents who you are becoming on your journey.

One way to keep on task with your goal is to visualize achieving it. What will your life look like once you achieve your goal? What kind of person will you be once you achieve your goal? You might think it’s silly, and you might even feel silly the first few times you try to visualize your goal, but it’s a beautiful way to emphasize your goal to yourself and to put positivity out into the world. It’s a way to create positive self-talk because you can’t visualize success while telling yourself that you won’t ever make it. Focus on the visualization, everything else will follow when it comes to staying positive toward achieving your goal.

Many people will have heard of SMART goals though I’ve never been a fan of how that’s been presented to me. However, when I break it down into its component parts, as I understand them, it starts to make more sense. I recommend this approach for your goals as well. Make goal setting work for you and do it in a way that makes sense to you.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time. To me, that always seemed too nebulous. Then I broke it down into smaller components with regards to learning Japanese.

Learning Japanese is too big and too nebulous. I need to be more specific. So, I changed it to learning Japanese to be able to take the JLPT Level N5 test. With this specificity, I can narrow down the words and kanji needed to take this test and then level up after that.

By virtue of being a test, and having specific study goals within it, I have also created a measurable goal. I know how many and which kanji I need to learn, and I can track that easily as I learn them. N5 is the easiest level so it’s definitely achievable. And it’s relevant to me because I want to learn Japanese.

The test is only given once a year and usually at the same time. This gives me a specific date to work toward with regards to completing my goal. Now that I have a SMART goal, I can divvy up the study portions into the time allotted and then I know what I need to do each week to achieve it.

Remember to practice self-compassion as you go for your goal, regardless of its size. Information overload is real and can lead you to quit completely. It can also lead to procrastination when the goal and its components are too big and overwhelming. If you feel like you are procrastinating, then break down your goal further until you feel like it’s so easy you might as well do it.

What goal are you currently working toward?