Many a book, CD, Blog and article has been written about goals and goal setting. We hear or read about SMART goals that must be Specific, Measurable, Achieveable, Realistic and Time bound; we are told that goals that are not written down are just dreams or wishful thinking. This is all absolutley true.
However, there are still only a limted number of people who set goals (and in my perception, that number is growing) but there is also only a limited number of those people who stick to them and achieve them; so, why is that?
Values
Well, one of the first reasons may be is that when some people set goals, those goals are not relevant to their personal values. For example, if one of your values is spending time with your family, then a goal for a promotion or training that is going to take you away travelling all over the world and never seeing them is not in line with that value. Achieving this would not make you a happy bunny and happinness may be another one of your goals.
One of the processes you must do before you set goals is to take an inventory of your values. What do you like, how do you like living, what is important to you etc.
Then, during the act of making goals, you can then check your values to ensure that those goals will work in line with your values.
Beliefs
Similar to values, your goals must be in line with your beliefs. If your belief is that you need to take responsibilty for reducing the human carbon footprint to zero, setting a goal to own an oil company may not sit well with those beliefs and may be discarded after a short time.
There are many other reasons that you may not keep to or achieve your goals and this is where a Life Coach may help but that is for another time.
However, if you do not have an inventory of your values and beliefs that stand up to your own scrutiny, you may find that the goal you set may not actually be yours but one that just sounded good at the time.
As always, have a great day and make sure that every day, you are making at least a small step to achieve your goals.
Mark.
