The Power of Setting Goals

To create a fabulous new reality with solid foundations, take time to focus, clarify and specify your goals.

If you have ideas and thoughts and dreams, and do nothing about pursuing them or making them a reality, they may in the course of time happen, but they may also run adrift. You may find yourself at a crossroads in your life, not really sure what you want to achieve, but knowing that you want to gain some clarity and find focus to discover what you want to do. 

So your first goal is to find out what your goals are and what you want to do to make your life feel more purposeful. 

As we explore and drill down further, you will be able to identify what you want to achieve – a new job in a different environment within the next two months, for example. Suddenly, a specific goal has been set with a timescale in place. With the goal established, you can then work towards achieving it by exploring in even more detail what you want to do.

Suffice it to say, goal setting is powerful and helps you make your dreams your reality. And while the focus of this course is on jobs and careers, goal setting is a technique that stretches beyond your career, as you can use it in every aspect of your life.

When we have bigger plans of action that we want to achieve, that’s when the magic of goal setting really comes into its own and can turn your dreams into your reality. The goal setting techniques I am about to describe can be used in relation to your education, personal life, family, hobbies – you name it, goal setting can be used across the whole spectrum of your life. 

Why do we need to set goals? 

If we want to achieve something, setting a clearly defined and specific goal that has timescales in place is a vital ingredient to make your dreams your reality within a set time frame. Working with the techniques I am about to describe really helps make them happen! 

So, how do you set a goal?

The way you go about setting goals will depend very much on you as a person, and the stage you’re at in your life. Many of you will have some goals in place, and you will have known for a while what you want to achieve to some degree, but you just haven’t pursued them.

It really comes down to how serious you are about achieving things and making your dreams your reality. If you really want something to happen, make it your reality – and start setting some realistic goals to get the ball rolling!

Exercise

Consider the following questions and jot down your immediate thoughts in your notebook or on the three documents that are available here for you to download (one for each question). Take time to describe what comes into your mind.

• If you had the opportunity to change your life with immediate effect, what would your life look like and what would you be doing? 
• How would it feel if a dream suddenly became your reality?
• What impact would the changes have on your life?  

If you’ve never had a burning desire to do something different, don’t worry. These things come to us all at different times in our lives if they’re meant to happen. If you are happy doing what you’re doing, and your main focus is finding a new job with a company that is an easy commute from home, where you’ll be valued, then that’s great too. It’s still a goal that needs thinking about in more detail to help you to achieve it.

However, if you do feel that something is missing but you don’t have a clue what it is as yet, ask yourself:

• What do I enjoy doing?
• Would I love to be able to do this all the time?
• What would I give up my weekend for?

Start to explore the possibilities, follow your intuition and see where it leads you. By that, I mean if you get offered the opportunity to try something new that sounds exciting but you’re just not sure, go for it and see what materialises. Each time you try new things, and say yes instead of no (within reason of course!), you get to learn and understand more about yourself, which in turn helps to shape your life. This will inspire you to create dreams and goals for the future right here in the present. It’s exciting!

There are a couple of useful and straightforward coaching techniques that I want to share with you, as they have been designed with setting and achieving goals in mind. While I can’t take any credit for them, they are tried and tested and widely used within coaching to help clients achieve goals. They are the GROW model and the SMART technique, the latter being used a lot within the business community, both of which we will explore in the following section.