There’s a lot
of articles about the importance of goal-setting, however, most of us don’t
take the time to lay out clear and measurable goals to work toward. Goal
setting will help you stay motivated, determine what’s important to you,
eliminate distractions, and build your self-confidence.

When we get
busy with work and everyday life, we often put our big dreams and goals on the
back burner. Many times that free time doesn’t often come, so it’s important to
find the time to work towards and achieve your dreams. These eight tips can
help you to work towards achieving what you really want, as they have helped
highly successful people for many years.

These practical
tips on goal setting can help make it easier to set and reach goals:

1. Specific, realistic goals work
   best. When it
   comes to making a change, the people who succeed are those who set
   realistic, specific goals. And that makes it easier to stick with.
2. It takes time for a change to
   become an established habit. It
   will probably take a couple of months before any changes — like getting up
   half an hour early to exercise — become a routine part of your life.
   That’s because your brain needs time to get used to the idea that this new
   thing you’re doing is part of your regular routine.
3. Repeating a goal makes it stick. Say your goal out loud each
   morning to remind yourself of what you want and what you’re working for.
   (Writing it down works too.) Every time you remind yourself of your goal,
   you’re training your brain to make it happen.
4. Involve others. It is always good to involve
   others in the process of setting and achieving goals. Take advice when
   necessary. And don’t be rigid. There are people out there who are better
   at this. Their suggestions are always valuable.
5. Make an action plan. So you have set goals, written them
   down and now you are all set to start working towards achieving them.
   First step – make an action plan. There could be more than one method to
   achieve a goal. Which one suits you? Decide on it.
6. Track progress. Extremely important. If you
   don’t track progress, you don’t get an idea if you are going the right way
   and if you would ever achieve it in the time frame you had set in your
   mind. So track your progress everyday. There are various methods and tools
   to track progress and I’ll discuss them in detail in my next article.
7. Roadblocks don’t mean failure. Slip-ups are actually part of
   the learning process as you retrain your brain into a new way of thinking.
   It may take a few tries to reach a goal. But that’s OK — it’s normal to
   mess up or give up a few times when trying to make a change. So remember
   that everyone slips up and don’t beat yourself up about it. Just remind
   yourself to get back on track.
8. Persist. Don’t give up. As I
   mentioned, there could be many paths leading to the same destination. Try
   out different methods. Learn and improve. Be patient. Be persistent.

Enjoy the
journey. Sometimes we are so deeply entrenched in setting and achieving our
goals that it can be easy to get overwhelmed and frustrated. We encourage you
to take a step back, take a deep breath, and relax. Studies show that enjoying
what you do makes you more likely to succeed. When you focus on the process and
not the outcome all of the time, you can enjoy the present moment and improve
at the same time.

Life
continually offers up opportunities that allow for the striving of new goals
and bringing talents forth in new ways.