“If you’re bored with life – you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things – you don’t have enough goals.” –Lou Holtz

Rightly said by Lou Holtz , If you don’t have a burning desire your life would be same as an average living person.

What is Goal Setting?

Goal setting means an action designed to plan, motivate a person or group towards a goal.

BUT Goals are difficult to achieve and we end up increasing performance more for the goals which are not. So here I would like to state 4 Golden Rules for Setting Successful Goals.

1.Set Motivational Goal :

Whenever you set a goal, it is important that the goals which you have set motivate you- Many people from others perspective or likes set their goal, yes it’s true! 

For example, A school/college student diverts his/her mind from setting a goal which suits him and attracts towards what their friends are going for! 

Has this ever happened with you? 

Yes, this is the period where a person who has to focus on his career happens to divert his mind and attract towards other things which he shouldn’t have been ended up!

For this, you have to set a real, actual, genuine goal which Motivates you, Influence you towards what is within you towards achieving that goal.

So all you need to do is :

To make sure that your goal is motivating, write down why it’s valuable and important to you. Ask yourself, “If I were to share my goal with others, what would I tell them to convince them it was a worthwhile goal?” 

2.Use the acronym SMART :

SMART is acronym, giving criteria to guide in the setting of objectives, for example in project management, employee-performance management over here for Goal Setting. The letters SMART generally mean :

• SPECIFIC
• MOTIVATING
• ATTAINABLE
• RELEVANT
• TIME-BOUND

• Specific: target a specific area for improvement and start working on it. You think you are good at Art, go for it! There are people who will say, “ You cannot just paint you have to earn money”, “ What will you do choosing art, go for an engineer, doctor, etc etc……goes on and on…..

But no, you do what is in you.

• Motivating: As explained in the first point, set a goal which really motivated you.

·     Attainable: Include precise amounts, dates, and so on in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. If your goal is simply defined as “To reduce expenses,” how will you know when you have been successful? In one month’s time if you have a 1 per cent reduction then increase your time… Without a way to measure your success, you miss out on the celebration that comes with knowing you have actually done. So here you should be achievable towards your goal.

· Relevant: As given in the previous example Your goal should be genuine. Your Goals is relevant to the direction you want to see your life and career to take.

· Timebound: specify when the result(s) can be achieved. Again, this means your work should have a deadline, you know when to celebrate success.

3. Write it down : 

Make your to-do-list. Each and every day you have some specific goals which you will be doing. Write it down. This will help you to remember that yes today I have to do these following work/ task etc and when you complete it put a tick mark against it and go for another task.

4. Follow It everyday :

This is the most tricky goal. People will follow all 3 rules which I have mentioned, but oh the 4th Rule!

Here some people fail.This shouldn’t happen. Build-in reminders to keep yourself on track, and make regular time-slots available to review your goals and work on it. Stick with your schedule you have created and VOILA you are towards achieving your success!