How I set Effective Goals

Sometimes I get to a point in life where I feel the need to accomplish something bigger or make some changes. I've experienced times when my hopes turn into failures as the goals I had set were not effective. After a while, I got sick of just hoping things would turn out how I wanted them to, so I began to find ways to turn those hopes into actual achievable goals. An example when I had to set clear goals would be when my when I was trying to figure out how to have a career. At first I had gotten an associate's degree and had kind of just hoped a career would fall into my lap. When that didn't happen, I decided to make a plan on how I was going to get one. After doing this, I found I was able to make a lot more progress than before. Below are some ways that I set effective goals.

Create Micro Goals

When a goal seems pretty big and overwhelming, or I am not quite sure what the overall big picture I am working towards is, I create micro goals. With the career goal I am working towards, I felt a little overwhelmed at first and was not sure where to begin. I also was not completely sure what the overall picture of the career goal was. I knew I wanted a job within the field of psychology involving a graduate degree but was not quite sure what was actually going to be realistic. So, to start out, I came up with a bunch of smaller goals that would lead to the accomplishment of the bigger goal I wanted to reach. For my schooling, I had set the goal of enrolling in school. After accomplishing that, there was the goal of signing up for the semester of classes. Then, there were the goals of completing each assignment. Eventually, the goal was to sign up for graduation and then to graduate! By completing each of these smaller goals, I was able to complete my bachelor's degree. By setting smaller goals rather than one big goal, I was able to feel the satisfaction of accomplishing a goal more frequently which gave me the motivation to keep going.

Consider my Passions

Something I came to realize was that a goal is really difficult to accomplish if it is something that I am not really interested in. I am much more likely to give something my all and work hard towards it if it is something that I really care about. For example, if I were to go to school for a major that I do not have much interest in but maybe makes quite a bit of money, I would be less likely to work very hard in making sure I really understand what is being taught because I really would not find it interesting or very valuable. However, going to school for something that I am passionate about, like psychology and helping others, I put the required effort in and more. Because I am passionate about psychology, I read books related to the field that are not assigned by my classes, and I am always looking for opportunities to learn more. For this reason, I am more likely to reach my career goals within the field of psychology than I would have if I had chosen a path for something that I cared very little about.

Believe in Myself

I have found that being confident in myself and my ability to accomplish my goals has been important to following through with them. In the past, I used to set a goal and become excited about it, but then I would start to doubt myself and wonder why I thought I could do it in the first place. Often this would lead to me giving up early on. Now, if I am feeling hesitant about being able to do something, I push those thoughts to the side and go for it anyway. How will I ever know I can do it or not if I never try, right? An example that I can think of is when I wanted to participate in a 5K with my toddler. I had signed us up and was determined to do it without the stroller. At first I started thinking to myself "what am I doing? Who takes a toddler to a 5K without a stroller?!" I dismissed these thoughts and decided that I wanted to do it and so we would be able to do it. We trained for the 5K everyday by walking to the park and back once or twice a day. If my son, "A," got tired, I would carry him. Some days he walked the entire distance and others I carried him the entire way. I knew I would have to carry him for probably a large portion of the race and I was fine with that. As I had expected, A was the youngest participant without a stroller. We ended up finishing pretty close to last. But, we reached our goal! The goal was to finish the race and build up our endurance, and we did both! Things like that help me remember that just because something isn't the norm, doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done.

How do you set effective goals?

• Create micro goals
• Consider your passions
• Believe in yourself
• Other

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