Setting Effective Goals is Key in Promoting Our Success

Setting goals helps us move through daily life with purpose and thrive! Studies show that when effectively setting challenging goals we’re more likely to stay motivated and persistent in completing our tasks. Why more challenging goals? Higher goals drive us to step up with our personal best, as determined by Doctors of Industrial Psychology, and cornerstone researchers in goal-setting, Locke and Latham. Their numerous studies conducted over 25 years, contributed groundbreaking developments to help people understand the importance of effective goal setting on productivity and motivation.

A goal properly set is halfway reached.

Zig Ziglar

Setting appropriate goals narrows our attention toward goal-relevant activities, increases our effort, keeps us willing to work through setbacks and helps us make changes to goals of sincere value to us; otherwise, there is no reason to begin in the first place.

As we set our goals of transformation, our best bet for success is to use the SMART goal method. George T. Doran presented a transformative approach to goal setting with an article titled “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives” in the November 1981 issue of Management Review. The article discussed the difficulty and importance of setting objectives and introduces the following criteria of setting SMART goals:

Specific: Precise with a single focus per goal.

Measurable: Can be measured so that you know when you’ve hit them.

Achievable: The goal should stretch you but not be unachievable.

Relevant: The goal needs to matter to you.

Time-Bound: There is a specific deadline by which to complete the goal.

The greater danger for most of us isn’t that our aim is too high and miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it

 Michelangelo

It’s important to remember when trying to learn a new behavior that in the beginning it’s a delicate process, so here are some suggestions for a plan of action to stay committed and consistent. Locke and Latham have 5 principles for goal setting:

• Clarity to know what we need to achieve and a way to know when we achieve it
• Challenging enough but not too much where it discourages us
• Commitment for seeing it through to the end
• Feedback from an honest, trusted source
• Uncomplicated to encourage ease of repetition and promote consistency.

Additionally, it’s important to have reasonable expectations to not sabotage ourselves in the early stages of change and progress, and journaling is a great way to see our overall progress and how far we’ve come from where we started, which can be motivating.

Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.

Pablo Picasso

Bottom line, any time we want to create any change, we’ve first got to value it and then be sure to set SMART goals to increase the likelihood of staying the course and seeing it through to success. We’re created to grow and bloom. Let’s give ourselves a helping hand. ❤

Keep it Simple,

Just Teri

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