As human beings, we are designed to be goal-seeking creatures. We set everyday goals such as getting to work on time, beating traffic, finishing that presentation, closing that deal, losing that weight and so on.

But how about the aspirational and ambitious goals that can change the course of our lives – the things we really wish to accomplish? How do we wet such goals and how do we ensure that we achieve them?

As Charles de Gaulle put it, nothing great will ever be achieved without great mean, and men are great only if they are determined to be so. Consequently, to set great goals, one needs to do the following:

 Write down the Goal – the process of writing down a goal subconsciously creates a far greater sense of commitment than simply "thinking" of the goal. Once your goals are written down, they become more concrete and real and this sometimes makes the goals appear more achievable than simply having the goal in your mind.

 Be Bold – don’t allow self-limiting beliefs to stifle how much you can dream. Have bold goals. Have big dreams. The greater your goals, the greater your efforts will be and the greater your results.

A large amount of research work conducted on goal setting reveal one powerful insight and this is that given an adequate level of ability and commitment by individual, harder and specific goals will tend to elicit greater effort and performance compared to easier non-specific goals.

For example, research work conducted by Wood, Mento and Locke showed that 175 of the 192 laboratory and experimental field results found complete or partial support of the direct relationship that exists between harder goals and greater human performance (Task complexity as a moderator of goal effects: A Meta-Analysis, Journal of Applied Psychology, 1987).

Their research result supports the simple but powerful fact that - provided one is committed to achieving a goal and one has the ability to achieve the goal, one’s performance will increase in line with the level of difficulty of the goal. So be bold and don’t allow limiting beliefs to hinder you.

 Have Milestones – The fastest way to achieving any single goal is breaking the goal down into milestones with deadlines. Having sub-goals not only allow one to approach the goal stage by stage (thus making the process far less daunting), but using this approach also allows one to get feedback on progress and challenges.

By using your sub-goals as your milestones, you get to know what’s working quickly, what you need to change and what you need to do more of. On the other hand, just having one overall goal that’s not broken down into stages can become overwhelming and frustrating and is far more difficult to get feedback regarding how you are progressing towards the goal.

 Action steps – brainstorm all the necessary actions you will need to take to make your dream a reality. Write everything down as these will form the foundation of the daily action you will need to take in order to propel you closer to your goal. Once you have written down your goals then prioritise them in order of what to do first, second, third and so on.

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