7 Tips to Help You Reach Your Goals ...

Many people find it difficult to reach their goals and they get discouraged because they haven’t really thought about what they want to accomplish. They see someone else do something cool, and immediately say, “Oooh! I want to do that! That’s my new goal,” and when they don’t reach it they get upset. It’s important to think about what you want to accomplish and why. To be internally motivated, you have to have a good reason for yourself rather than you think it looks or sounds cool. The reason you choose your goal has to be motivation enough for you to stick to it. If you want to learn French and your reasoning is that you want to travel to France, or live in Quebec for a year, or teach it, or even become an interpreter, those reasons will more than likely motivate you and keep you motivated in the hard times. Thinking long and hard about your goals is the first and one of the most important tips to help you reach your goals.

When you’re specific with what you want to accomplish, it’ll be a lot easier to reach your goals. You have to ask yourself who is involved, what it is you want to accomplish, what are the requirements, when do you want to accomplish it, and where will you accomplish it. When you keep the details specific, it’ll help you keep your goals organized and realistic.

A reason why many people don’t reach their goals is because they’re not measurable. When establishing your goals, you have to ask yourself, “How will I know when I’ve completed my goal?” Continuing with the learning a language example, if your goal is to learn French, how will you know when you’ve learned it? What does the word “learn” mean to you? To make it measurable, you could say, “I will say 25 sentences in French without referring to the dictionary, with a minimum of 2 mistakes.” Now that’s really specific, but it’s definitely measurable. You will be able to count 25 sentences, as well as how many times you use a reference and make mistakes. When you establish goals, be sure that you’re able to track your progress.

When establishing goals, make sure they’re actually attainable. You can’t learn and be 100% fluent in a foreign language in 2 weeks time. It’s not going to happen! Your goals need to challenge you, however, they also need to be humanly possible.

Along with being attainable, you have to be realistic. You have to look at yourself, your attitude, and your willingness to accomplish that goal, and determine if it’s possible for yourself. If you know you hate reading, and you only read one book every two years, don’t create a goal requiring you to read ten books in two months. You may want to do it, but will you? For goals that aren’t realistic for you at the time, that doesn’t mean you can’t work up to it. Start small, and then work your way up to bigger challenges.

If you don’t explicitly state a time limit for your goals, the default word that will follow every one of your goals is “eventually.” “I will write a novel, eventually,” “I will learn a language, eventually,” “I will get fit, eventually.” Giving yourself a deadline holds you accountable and makes it easier to measure and reach your goals. Be careful not to set your times too close or too far away. Times too close become unrealistic, times too far away get put off. Remember that!

Write your goals down! It’s hard to make specific, realistic, and measurable goals when they're not written down. It’ll be easy to forget or put them off as well. Write your goals down in your journal or get them laminated or framed to give you a boost of motivation. To reach your goals they have to be in sight and in mind.

It’s difficult to reach your goals when you don’t know where to start, how to track your progress, or how to know when you’ve completed them. Did you find these tips helpful? Want to try it out? Using the tips above, give it a shot and tell us some of your goals!