How To Set Goals That You Can Achieve

Personal growth starts with a decision: figure out what you want to be different, then build a plan to get there. The act of deciding does double duty. It forces you to name the parts of your life that aren't working yet. None of this happens overnight. Habits, patterns, and traits that have been with you for years take a while to shift, and reaching the goals behind those shifts usually means working through a handful of steps rather than relying on a burst of willpower.

Begin with yourself. Write down your weaknesses and your strengths, side by side. The weaknesses point to what you'd like to change. The strengths are the tools you already have for doing it, so read the two lists together and ask how one can be used against the other.

Next, decide what the goals actually are. Run through every area of your life as you do this: physical, emotional, spiritual, social, family, financial, and career. List everything you'd want to change in each, and don't skip the tiny stuff just because it feels minor. Some of these goals are things you can hit in a few weeks; others will take years. You want both kinds written down.

Two qualities separate a goal you'll reach from one you won't. The first is that it's realistic. A target set far beyond what you can actually do tends to drain motivation rather than build it, and then nothing happens. The second is that it's specific. Vague intentions drift. Concrete plans, broken into steps with dates attached, give you something to act on.

Take wanting a better job as an example. The goal might be: find a job I enjoy that pays more. The plan underneath it could read something like this. Write a new resume within the next two weeks. Search for openings online, an hour every day. Then start submitting, aiming for five applications a week. Do the same breakdown for each goal on your list, so every one of them comes with its own set of actions and deadlines.

Keep a record of what works. A journal, a running log, marks on a calendar, whatever you'll actually maintain. Watching the wins accumulate, even small ones, is what keeps you going when the novelty wears off.

Think about barriers before you begin, and keep thinking about them as you go. Say you planned to exercise three days a week and suddenly realize you haven't been to the gym in two. Ask why. Were you sick? Did work pile up? Did a run of low motivation feed on itself? Naming the obstacle is the part that lets you plan around it, so once you've spotted one, work out your response.

Set a date in advance to check your progress. If a month in you look at the plan and the goal is still out of reach, dig into the reason. Maybe you aimed too high. Maybe something else is in the way that you hadn't accounted for. And sometimes the review goes the other direction: you've hit the target, and it's time to pick the next one.

Growth doesn't stop at a single win. Clear one goal and another is waiting, which is really the whole point. Committing to your own development means treating it as something you'll keep doing for the rest of your life, naming goals and then following through on the plans behind them.

If you get stuck naming goals or building plans, help is easy to find. Self-help websites post ideas and free worksheets. Workbooks and self-help books are available through Amazon or at your local library. Life coaches look at what you're already good at and help you turn that into real progress on your personal life, your relationships, and your career. And if what's standing in your way is a mental health issue rather than a planning problem, a professional counselor works toward resolving the things that keep getting in the path of your success.

- Kim B.