SMART Golden Rules of Goal Setting - Five Rules to Set Yourself Up for Success

Ever think about what you want to be doing in five, three, one year’s time, or even in six months?
Are you clear about what your main objective is at the moment, whether personally or professionally?

Do you know what you want to have achieved by the end of today, next week, next month?

If you want to succeed, setting SMART goals not only allows you to take control of your life's direction, it also provides you with a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding or not…

Without any goals you will lack focus and direction. To accomplish your goals, you need to know how to set them. You can't simply state, "I want" and expect it to happen. Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve and ends with a lot of hard work and dedication to actually follow through. In between, there are some very well-defined steps that transcend the specifics of each goal. Knowing these steps will allow you to formulate goals that you can actually accomplish successfully.

Here are five SMART golden rules of goal setting, which aim to set you off in the right direction:

SPECIFIC
Your goal must be clear, concise and well defined. Brief, vague or non-specific goals are not helpful and don't provide enough direction. You need goals to lead the way. Define ‘exactly’ where you want to be.

MEASURABLE
Note down exact amounts, dates, times and so on in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. If your goal is loose and nondescript such as "To get more clients " how will you measure when you have been successful? Without a way to measure your success you won’t be able to measure and celebrate what you have actually achieved.

ACHIEVABLE
Ensure you are actually able to achieve the goals you set. There is no point in setting goals that you are not interested in or have no ambition of achieving, this will only have a negative impact on your confidence and self-esteem.

RELEVANT
Goals you set should always be relevant to where you want to go in both your career and personal life. This way the focus will remain, in order to ‘get ahead’ and to a place you want to be. If you set random, conflicting goals you’ll waste valuable time and will lose sight of the end goal.

TIME-BASED
All goals must have a deadline. Having a time limit or finish line in sight means that you will know when you can celebrate success. Having visibility of that deadline will keep you focussed, determined and will ensure you make it in time!

When setting these SMART goals always ensure that they motivate YOU, you are not doing this for anyone else other than yourself. If you have little interest in these goals or are setting on behalf of someone else, or because ‘they told you to’, these are for all the wrong reasons. Unless you are motivated and they are YOUR goals, you may as well stop right there.

Set goals that are important to YOU and are high priority in your life. Make a note of the goals set and rank them in priority order. This way you will be sure to focus and look at them as individual goals and achieve, rather than looking at them as a whole ‘to do list’ and fumbling and stressing before you’ve even started.

Write your goals down. Spend the time to formulate a plan, really look at the how’s, why’s, when’s. This makes it real, tangible. Write them down, prioritise, stick them up as reminders with deadlines so they are visible.

Have an action plan and stick with it. Whilst you will achieve, these goals will be ongoing. It’s important to be able to stand back and review, whether it’s a week, a month, six months or a year down the line. Look back, review and reflect. It’s so rewarding when you can see what you have achieved over a certain period of time.

Goal setting is much more than simply saying you want something to happen. You need to clearly define exactly what you want, why you want it and when you want it by, in order to be able to set out those goals and start achieving your dream. So many people spend their lives drifting or rushing around trying to get more done but actually accomplishing very little. Setting SMART goals means you can clarify your ideas, focus your efforts, use your time and resources productively and increase your chances of achieving what you want in life.

Happy goal setting!!!

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