Realistic Goals and How to Achieve Them
Setting realistic goals is great for long-term success and short-term motivation. Being honest about what you can achieve, and the timeframe in which this can be accomplished, will set you up for success. In today’s blog we’ll talk about what kind of personal goals we can set for ourselves, and how we turn them into SMART attainable realities.
Types of Realistic Goals
There are different types of personal goals that we can set. Before we can break a goal into smaller realistic tasks, we first must determine what categories our goals fall into.
Career
What sort of career do you want to have? Or what level at your job do you want to be at next? Perhaps you’re interested in working for a big company like Google, or even developing your own brand and business.
Financial
This can be related to your career goals, but is more focused on financial literacy and deciding how you want to invest and spend your money.
Education
Perhaps you want to go back to school, or learn a new skill. Gooroo courses is a great place to start: in fact, here are 10 courses to start off your 2021.
Family
This could be as big as starting your own family, or as small (but still impactful) as connecting with your pre-existing family. A realistic step in this goal could be making sure you cook one meal together every week.
Artistic
Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn a musical instrument? Or have a pre-existing talent that want to hone so you become a master?
Attitude
Are you holding yourself back? A realistic goal could be getting into yoga to become more in-tune with your thoughts, or trying mindfulness.
Physical
Perhaps a change in workout routine will help with your attitude goals. You could try a new activity like jump-rope, or biking.
Pleasure
It’s essential to set goals that make you happy and that are solely for you!
Public Service
Lastly, we can set goals that make the world a better place. These can be as realistic as becoming better versed in social issues and terminology.
SMART Goals
Once we’ve decided what are goal is, we should break it down into smaller more-manageable steps. This will make achieving our goal more realistic. We can also use what’s known as the SMART method. SMART stands for: Specific, Meaningful, Action-Oriented, Rewarding, and Trackable.
This means that we should have a specific achievement that adds meaningful value to our life. The steps towards this goal should be action-orientated (and attainable) and should be rewarding. Most importantly, we should be able to track these steps so we know we’re on the right path.
How to Be Realistic
- Create a timeline with “where you are now” on one end, and “your goal”on the other. Determine how long you think it will take you to reach this goal. A year? Five Years? Now think about what you could do in a week to get you closer to your goal. Now a month. Continuing thinking in this way until you’ve reached the end goal. These measurements are the steps you should take.
- Remember to focus on personal performance not outcome goals. What are you in control of? How can you make a realistic difference to your life despite external factors?
- Write your goals down and keep track of their progress.
- Set priorities for each goal and be honest with yourself about what is attainable.
- Be positive about your goals! Aim to “do” something rather than “don’t” do another thing.
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