Setting personal development goals is important since it creates a clear direction of where your life should be heading. Goals encourage you to grow and become the person that you want to be. They help you achieve things that you probably think impossible for you to achieve. If you don’t have your own set of goals, you might spend the rest of your life fulfilling the goals of the people around you.
However, you need to be very careful when setting goals for yourself. If you don’t do it right, it is more likely that you will only be wasting your time and efforts. If you want to create significant changes in your life, you have to avoid the common goal setting mistakes listed below.
1. Not putting your goals in writing. Just like any other things, writing your goals down allows you to remember them easily. It will also help you keep your focus on what you really want instead of the random things that come to your mind every single day. It gives certain clarity on what you have to achieve, allowing you to come up with better strategies for success.
2. Not creating a system for remembering your goals. Although, writing down goals is a good start, you need to have a system for remembering them. You need to be constantly reminded of the things that you have to do. One way of doing this is by writing your goals on a piece of paper. Then, put that paper where you can always see it such as on your bathroom door, work/study table or computer monitor.
3. Not setting specific or clear goals. The rule in effective goal setting is that your goal must be quantifiable or measurable. For example, you want to lose weight. How will you know when you have already reached your goal of losing weight? After you’ve lost 5 or 10 pounds? It would be difficult to track your progress if you are aiming for unspecific goals.
What you should do is include hard numbers to your goals. By doing so, you are creating a finish line for yourself which allows you to say when you have finally succeeded.
4. Not setting realistic goals. So, you now have a set of specific goals. Fantastic! The next thing to do is make sure that they are realistic or attainable. Nothing can kill your motivation faster than unrealistic goals. If you want to lose 5 pounds in a week, that would be a great goal, measurable and realistic. But if you say, you want to lose 5 pounds in a day, that’s called day dreaming. Unrealistic goals are overwhelming and often results to procrastination.
5. Not having a plan. Achieving your goals doesn’t end in just having a goal. Of course, you have to make them happen. You have to create a plan on how to be where you want to be. You may need to do a bit of research before creating a plan. You may search the Internet or ask your friends who have actually been to where you want to be for some advice.
Create a clear, specific and practical plan to achieve your goals. However, be careful of over-planning. Otherwise, you might not get started at all. You also have to remember that when it comes to planning, you have to be very flexible. Make room for the things that might happen unexpectedly.
When things don’t go as planned, you need to be able to adjust your actions based on what is actually happening around you. Analyze the situation and create another plan of action.