What is a goal?

The object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.

defined by google

Did you know not all goals are created equal?

 
While many of us set goals in various areas of our life – for business, personal, relationships, financial and more. We often fail to achieve these goals we set for ourselves due to the quality of our goal setting process.

Think about the next two sentences.

1. I want to lose weight this year.

VS

2. I want to lose 5kg by September, 2021 to improve my health and allow me to play sport with my children at the park. I will frequently engage in exercise 3x per week and track my calories to achieve this.

Which goal sounds better to you?

You may have heard of SMART goals

S = specific

M = measurable

A = achievable

R = realistic

T = timely

Now the first goal misses all these key points, the 2^nd goal hits all these SMART key points and more.

Smart goals in my opinion are not perfect, they miss a crucial step for us achieving our goals. That is the how behind achieving our goal/s.

This is what separates success from failure. A plan.

In the second goal to achieve the 5kg weight loss, the person has identified how they are going to achieve this. They will engage in regular exercise and track their calories. You can take this and break it down into many more steps but the jist of this point is that you need to be clear on how to actually reach your goal.

WHY?

Do you ever question why you do the things you do?

The person who has set the above goal of losing weight in scenario one, just wants to lose weight, we don’t have much context as to why that is. The second person shares they’re ‘WHY’ relating to improving their health outcomes for their family.

The second person is much more likely to achieve their goals, they have a clear goal, they have a plan and an idea of why they want to achieve this goal.

Now ask yourself this, have you failed goals due to missing one of more of the above key steps?