By Paul Abraham of www.headingonwards.com
Following on from my last article and while still in partial lockdown, you can evaluate what you want to achieve or have achieved by the time we get back to normality.
Why Set Goals?
Top-level athletes, successful business-people and high-achievers in all fields set goals. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It makes you focus to make your dreams and ambitions in life come true.
By setting clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the reaching of your goals, however large or small and this will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognise your own ability in achieving the goals that you’ve set.
“SMART” Goals
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART method. This is the most used technique to create achievable goals. The SMART method is how to set your goals so
S – Specific M – Measurable A – Attainable R – Relevant T – Time-bound
For example, instead of having “I want a new job” as a goal, it’s more powerful to use the SMART goal “I will have started a new job that I enjoy doing by December 31, 2020.”
This gives you a definite target with a date to keep you focused. To break it down further you could use smaller goals to reach your target such as “I will spend an hour per day looking at job recruitment websites” then “I will arrange an interview with a recruitment company by the end of next week”.
Here are some examples of how to create better goals using the SMART technique.
| POOR EXAMPLES “I want to” | GOOD EXAMPLES “I Will” |
| Eat better | Eat two pieces of fruit a day Have 2 chocolate free days a week |
| Go to night school | Enrol in a course on basket making |
| Meet new people | Become a volunteer for a local charity |
| Travel | Spend two weeks in Thailand by Dec 31st 2022 |
| Be less stressed | Learn how to meditate and relaxation techniques |
| Exercise more | Join a health club by the end of this month |
| Spend time with the kids | Organise one family “activity” per week |
| Lose weight | Join a local slimming club by the end of this month |
Read more of Paul Abraham’s weekly mental health tips here.