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Goal Setting Part 6: The "How" and "When" of Goal Setting

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Last time I focused on the importance of visualizing the impact that reaching your goal will have on your life.  When you buy into the end result before you even begin your steps towards it, you’re more likely to stay focused along your journey to attain it. That helps when you run into rough patches along the way.   Visualization alone, however, won’t get you where you’re headed.   Just like you might plan a trip, plotting how you’ll get there and accounting for the time the entire trip will take, you must plan how and by when you want to reach your goal.

Planning the “how” in goal setting means that you are looking not only at necessary steps you may need to take, but also the order in which those steps need to be taken. At this point, you are mapping how to get from your current situation to the desired situation of successfully completing your goal. While you’re planning, you may run across a step that is new to you.  Perhaps you’ve never done anything like it in the past. It’s at this point that you may need to add additional steps, listed prior to that one, that detail how you will go about acquiring the necessary information, money, or resource you need, or possibly even a skill set that you don’t yet have.  Whatever it is that you need but don’t have, proper planning will more than likely bring it into focus.  There’s nothing more frustrating than jumping into action head first, only to realize you don’t have all the things you need to finish the endeavor successfully.  Begin with the end in mind during the visualization step, and then work backwards in your planning to map out the “how.” 

Once you’re comfortable with the planning steps you just enumerated, you will have the information that you need to establish the “when” of your goal.  The “when” relates to the date you have successfully reached your goal. When you look over your “how” planning steps, you may realize that your goal can be accomplished in less time than you originally anticipated.  It may be that you originally underestimated how long it would take.  Be realistic when you set your target “due” date for reaching your goal.  No matter what, though, you must set a target date.  When we don’t set a date on our calendar for something we want to achieve, it doesn’t usually become a reality. If it by some miracle does, it’s much later than we would have liked it to happen.  Having a target due date allows us to work towards something.  It keeps us on track.  Without it, there is one less accountability push.  With it, we run the race with our eyes fixed on the finish line!

-Stephanie Baker

Life in Abundance



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Goal Setting Part 5: The Benefits of Achieving Your Goals

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Last time, I talked about understanding the “WHY” of a goal. I examined the importance of understanding why you feel a particular goal is important to achieve.  I concluded with the concept that if the goal you’re working towards doesn’t really belong to you (i.e., if it’s being imposed on you by someone else, or you’re doing it to please someone else), then you probably won’t experience sustainability with it even if you do reach it momentarily.  Sustainability is what you’re after when you work towards a goal that brings a desired change.

In order to have sustainability, you need to fully embrace and consider how successfully attaining your goal will affect your life.  It’s important to visualize your life as you imagine it will be once you’ve attained the goal.  When you allow yourself to experience what successfully reaching the goal will feel like, you are giving yourself an upfront taste of the change it brings.  Consider what aspects of your life will be different – better – after you’ve realized this goal.  How will you feel?  What are the emotions that come with this?  What will be different about you – what will others see that is different?  How will your life be improved by realizing this goal?  Will you be healthier?  Will you be wealthier?  Will you be happier?  Will you weigh less?  Will you look different?  Will you be more professionally fulfilled? Sometimes a goal you are working towards will impact other people.  If this is the case for your goal, imagine how those other people will feel as well.  What will be different in your relationship with them?  How will their lives be enriched?

When you allow yourself to develop the image and visualize how your life will be after you successfully reach your goal, then you not only have an image but a feeling to carry with you during your journey to get there. You are beginning – as Stephen Covey says – with the “end” in mind.  You are drawing a picture of the end result to put in your pocket and keep with you on your travels to get there. It serves as a constant reminder to you of what you are working towards and why.

So many times, we allow ourselves to get pulled off the road to achieving a goal.  At the first sign of turbulence on the journey, we forget why we wanted to take the trip in the first place.  This happens because we haven’t really bought into the end result before we ever took the first step towards it.  If we can allow ourselves to concentrate on how victory will feel and what it will mean in our lives and possibly the lives of others, then we are more apt to “stay the course” when the road to it gets bumpy. 

by Stephanie Baker  Life in Abundance

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