Main Facts About Goal Setting

• Setting goals and working to meet them is one aspect of achieving overall success. Goals can give direction to your efforts, preventing them from being aimless and nonproductive. The more you understand how to approach goals effectively and how to deal with obstacles, the more likely you are to achieve what you intend.

Specific

• Ideally, you want to set goals that you're going to be able to accomplish. Human beings are more likely to meet goals that are more specific and not vague. For example, "I'm going to become rich" isn't a detailed resolution. Such imprecise terminology doesn't allow you to create a clear enough strategy to achieve that goal. However, a more specific resolution would be to state: "I'm will consistently spend more time at work, invest the extra money that I make over a five-year period and work to earn the capital to start my own business."

Time

• Worthwhile goals often require that you dedicate time to achieve them. Most often, in order to achieve a goal, people need to change their habits. Habits are what we do everyday without thinking about them. It takes time to create new ones and get them to stick, but, if you do them consistently, they'll start to become second nature and will develop into new habits over time. According to KidsHealth.org, "Your brain needs time to get used to the idea that this new thing you're doing is part of your regular routine." Repeating your goals out loud, writing them down and knowing how you plan to achieve them can help. You're training yourself to make these goals occur.

Failure

• Failure is an integral part of meeting a goal and is vital on the road to success. Failure shows that you are making concerted efforts to meet your goals. We can learn from failure, making it fertilizer for future successes, state Rick Pitino and Bill Reynolds, authors of the book, "Success Is a Choice." The more attempts that you make to achieve something will lead to a higher amount of mistakes or failures. However, the more you try, the closer you become to reaching your goal. For example, if you're looking for a new job and you're sending out many resumes to potential employers, then you're putting yourself in a position where you could receive a high amount of rejections. At the same time, the more resumes that you send, the higher your chances are of finding a job.