3 secrets for setting and achieving goals

Goals aren't something new, we all encounter this term quite often in our life. I was introduced to this process of goal setting a decade ago at the start of my professional career. Every year, I would come up with one or more short term or long term goals during my appraisal cycle. The goals would mostly be focused either on the onsite trip or a role change. I looked at these goals as a way to communicate my desires to my manager; it had very less to do on what should I focus my efforts on. After achieving those said goals, I would feel happy and contented for a certain period but then would feel directionless and would end up repeating the same vicious cycle.

                          Fast-forwarding a decade, here I am working as an independent consultant trying to come up with my own goals when no one really demands one from me. But, this time, I wanted the goals to be genuine, to motivate me on an everyday basis and have a holistic purpose.

Here are 3 secrets which I found to be effective in setting and achieving the desired goals:


1. Align your goals with a Personal Mission Statement:

                        Stephen R. Covey talks about the significance of Personal Mission statement in his immensely influential book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It is a fruit of the paradigm "Beginning with the end in mind". Covey explains that one should create a Personal Mission statement by picturing his/her own funeral. Visualising one's own funeral and what he/she wants their loved ones to talk about them, of the values they stood by, makes one understand what really is important in life. It is sometimes harder to come up with a personal mission statement, I used this link to write mine. Once you have a purpose, the end goal in mind, then it would be significantly easier to come up with goals in harmony with the Personal Mission Statement. I create my goals in a staggering fashion - Long-term (5-7 years), short-term (yearly) and weekly goals.

Example:

Personal Mission Statement: Take every problem with the kids as an opportunity to understand and work with them to improve it.

My 5-year-old kid had a small speech problem where people were not able to understand his speech very clearly. I came up with the goals as below to address it:

Short Term Goal(Yearly): To work with my kid and help him to talk Tamil clearly by the end of the year so that grandparents can understand it better.

Weekly goals: To work with my kid on words that stress more on 'Ra' (Theriyathu, Theriyum, Theriyalai) every week.

            

Above goals also stick to SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Result-Oriented and Timely goal setting principles which sometimes helps us know whether we have really achieved our goal.

2. Writing down and tracking your goals: The act of writing down your goals physically with a pen and paper enables a higher probability of reaching your goal than just having it in your mind. The act of writing helps keep your sub-conscious mind aware of your goals. 

Robert Cialdini, in his book Influence, states that

"Active commitments to your goals by writing it helps shape your self-image which then shapes future action, which then solidifies the new self-image"

             It gives you a commitment to your goals and also helps to see your progress and celebrate it. I have been writing and keeping track of my goals in my personal journal on a weekly basis and I have been seeing some positive impacts because of it.

3. Publicising your goals: 

     "If I put my goals down in writing and make them known to the world, I am committed to achieving them" - Fred DeLuca, Founder of Subway

    The last secret which has proven to produce results consistently is publicising the goals. By publicising your goals in social media or blog or just on a board in your living room thereby keeping yourself accountable. It also gives you a visual reminder to keep you on the right direction.

I would like to quote one of my experiences here, I have been writing my weekly goals on a small blackboard in my living room. One of the goals written on it was to publish my second blog. A couple of weeks ago, when a guest visited our house, she started talking about her experience in writing her blog on seeing my weekly goal. She also went on to inform me about a Stanford online course on technical writing which she found really useful. I would have had no opportunity to get those inputs if I hadn't published my goals.

"Goals create motivation; motivation creates energy; 

energy helps make your dream a reality, 

Set your goals today!"- Zig Ziglar