Personal Goal SettingI. Achieving More With FocusA

Personal Goal Setting
    Good morning, everyone. Today’s lecture is about Personal Goal Setting.
    Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the future into reality.
    The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You’ll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.
    More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you’ll find that your self-confidence builds fast.
    First, let’s talk about achieving more with focus.
    Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. (1) They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and (2) help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
    By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, (3) you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
    Second, starting to set personal goals.
    Goals are set on a number of different levels; First, you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life, and decide what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.
    We start this process with your lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.
    Third, your lifetime goals.
    The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime, or by a time at least, say, 10 years in the future, as setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.
    To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of these categories, or in categories of your own, where these are important to you:
    Artistic:
    Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what are they?
    Attitudes
    Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
    Career:
    What level do you want to reach in your career?
    Education:
    Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
    Family:
    Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent?
    Financial:
    How much do you want to earn and by what stage?
    Physical:
    Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
    Pleasure:
    How do you want to enjoy yourself? You should ensure that some of your life is for you!
    Public Service:
    Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
    Spend some time brainstorming these, and then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus.
    Fourth, starting to achieve your lifetime goals.
    Once you have set your lifetime goals, (7) set a 25-year-plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5 year plan.l year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.
    Then create a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.
    Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
    Fifth, staying on course.
    Once you have decided your first set of plans, (9) keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.
    Sixth, achieving Goals.
    When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. (10) If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve!
    With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
    If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder.
    If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier.
    If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
    If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
    Failure to meet goals does not matter much, as long as you learn from it.
    Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go.
    If you don’t already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make this technique part of your life, you’ll find your career accelerating, and you’ll wonder how you did without it!
    That’s all.Thank you.