Goal Setting Strategies Learned from Olympic Champions
When it comes to setting goals for the New Year, have you wondered how Olympic athletes do it? What can we learn from those Olympic champions? World records and Olympic champions are never accidental. The ways and strategies they use to set and accomplish their goals can be very effective and must have really worked for them. In similar ways, they can work for us too.
When we set goals, an important decision is about the size. Is it better to set large goals, or small ones? The idealistic answer to that is “large ones”. Because they bring us maximum result and realize our full potential. That’s also how you get to win gold medals if you are an Olympian.
But those large and lofty goals are usually very difficult to accomplish, so for average people they are rarely realized. On the other hand, smaller goals are often easy to achieve, but may not be significant enough to make any real change in our life.
The best strategy therefore is to aim high and celebrate incremental progress toward our larger goals. It is also a better approach to finding happiness and fulfillment from the goal setting process.
When we watch the Olympics, we usually see teams that ranked 3rd and 4th compete for the bronze medal, while 1st and 2nd fight for the gold. In both finals, the teams who won bronze and gold medals were often jubilant and would dance around in excitement, while the losing teams in both matches were understandably disappointed.
This is all normal, and there is nothing unusual about any of these reactions. But what seems illogical is that the silver medal winners tend to react far less positively than those who won bronze medal, even though one would think placing second is still preferable than being third.
Therefore, psychologically it’s much better to feel like you’ve won, even if it’s an easier goal. There is a great advantage to setting a high goal. It will inspire and motivate you to reach for the stars. But what really works for most people is to break that big goal down to relevant and smaller goals, which you will more easily get to by staying positive and motivated. And once these smaller goals are achieved, the large ones are often very close to reach.
How to Set Goals for Your Business in 2010
If you run or own a business, you may want set some goals for your business at the beginning of the new year. I’ve stumbled upon a very nice video on this topic. The main idea behind the whole talk is originally from Anthony Robbins’ goal setting principles, which include four main steps:
- Know your outcome (goal)
- Take action
- Notice your results
- If necessary, change your approach
I believe this formula also applies to almost any kind of goals you have, not just business goals. Anyway, enjoy the video and hope it gives you some ideas you can work with.
Top 5 Tips for Keeping New Year Resolutions
It’s that time of the year again. Time for New Year’s resolutions! What are your goals for 2010? More money, less weight, more travel, or less work? Whatever your resolutions for the New Year, here are some tips to keep you on track and motivated so that you CAN attain your goals.
- Set realistic goals - If you have created 5 New Year’s resolutions, you are almost certain to fail. Be realistic and pick one or two things you really want to do and be specific. Don’t say just “lose weight”, change that to “lose 10 pounds by June 1st.”
- Break it down - If your goal is to lose 10 pounds or work out 3 days a week, break it down even further. Write down monthly, weekly and daily goals that will help you reach your long-term goal. It can be really hard to lose weight, exercise, save money or stop smoking if you don’t know what steps you are going to take to get there.
- Tell everyone! - You need a support system to help you stay on track. Tell your family and friends what your goals are, and even better, see if you can find a buddy to do it with you. It is great to have someone you are accountable to, and who can share your discouragements and your triumphs.
- Reward yourself - Give yourself a weekly and monthly reward. Don’t be discouraged by setbacks, but if you have a great week, you accomplished your goals, then celebrate! Put a picture on your computer, or create a vision board of something you really want for your reward WHEN you reach your final goal. It will motivate you every day!
- Keep a journal - write down your long-term goals, and break it down into monthly and weekly goals. Then every day, keep track of what you accomplished or did not accomplish for that day to measure your success. Don’t beat yourself up if you messed up, but you may see a pattern of things that may help you or hurt you accomplish your goals.
Look at your goals for the New Year, and put these tips into practice if you have not already. It takes 21 days to create a habit and 6 months for it to become part of your daily life. If you have a slip-up today, remember tomorrow is a new day. You have only failed if you quit…so be realistic, reward yourself for baby steps, and keep on keeping on!
How to Never Quit on Our Goals
The number one reason that people don’t get to accomplish any goal is that we quit. This sounds so obvious but many of us don’t seem to realize it when we set out to achieve a goal. When we set a goal, do we ask ourselves, “Will I quit before the goal is accomplished?”
I think that that is the most important question we can ask ourselves before we set any goals. If our answer is not a 100% no, then we’re really not ready and will most likely to quit. Any worthy goals that we want to accomplish, whether it’s to lose weight, stay in shape, become rich, start new business, etc., they all require some level of discipline and resolution from us. Otherwise it’d be so easy that we wouldn’t need to bother setting goals. If we don’t discipline ourselves and give the necessary level of commitment to a goal, it’s almost certain that we will never get to achieve it. In another words, we’re just not serious enough.
But how do we make sure that we will never quit on our goals? One key method is that we need to understand a simple fact about goal achievement, which is that keep trying IS making progress. Often the most likely time when we decide to quit on a goal is when we don’t see any progress, even though we may be still trying hard to make it happen. If we don’t see much progress, we get frustrated and discouraged, and this can very easily lead to less trying, which results in even less progress, and we get more discouraged. So it turns into a vicious cycle until to a point where we simply give up on a goal.
The way to break this bad pattern is to change our belief and keep in mind that our keep trying is making progress. When looking back on a goal we accomplished before, we often see that at certain point when we were not making much progress on the surface, we still kept at it and we finally came through. Those things that we did that might not seemingly make any progress are indeed part of the entire process, without them we’d never have accomplished that goal. That’s why people say that setbacks and failures are just stepping-stones on the path to the ultimate success.
Therefore, remember that the only requirement for achieving any worthwhile goal is simply to never quit, never give up. We only need to remind ourselves that as long as we are still trying, we ARE making progress. As long as we’re making progress, what goal can’t we achieve?
Setting Goals The Smart Way
I’d like to share with you a very clear and informative PowerPoint presentation that teaches how to set goals in a SMART way, created by Teachers At Risk
How to Choose a Goal Setting System
We all know the importance of setting goals for ourselves, but many people haven’t realized the great value a good goal setting tool can provide. Selecting a right tool or system, not only can help you organize and clarify your goals, but most importantly, it can significantly increase your chance of reaching them more quickly and easily.
Select tools based on your goal types
The first step in deciding on a goal setting tool is to identify what kind of goals you are setting. Is it a personal development goal, a business goal, a career goal, or a health or fitness goal? Different goals call for different goal setting methods, so you will want to select tools that are specially designed for your type of goals. Sometimes it helps to use different tools for goals of different types.
Select tools that are easy to use
Secondly, it’s vital to select a goal setting tool that is easy to use. This can’t be over emphasized. A goal setting tool is to help you focus on your goals, on how you can achieve your results, not on anything else. If a system is too difficult to use, you’d do better without it.
However, “easy to use” does not have to be simple. A lot of people think that a pen and paper based system is easy to use, but they don’t realize it doesn’t support many of the important things required to manage your goals. It may seem easy at first, but it usually becomes very tedious and cumbersome after a while, and can be a major stressor for your goals.
Select tools that help you set SMART goals
A goal that is set based on SMART model (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) has much higher possibility of being accomplished. Choose a system that helps you set goals in a SMART way and you can take advantage of all the benefits this principle provides.
Select tools that support taking actions
Also important is that a good goal setting system must support you in taking massive action. Without action, no matter how smart a goal is set and managed, it will never be achieved. It’s that simple. We must take action, massive action if so required. So make sure your chosen system has great task management features.
Select tools that help you review progress
Another important feature from a good system is the function to help you review your progress and to keep things on track. This is usually accomplished through an integration of goal and task management, and a journal feature. Keeping a journal for your goals is a great way to help you stick to them and also motivate yourself.
Select tools that help you visualize goals
For certain goals, visualization is a great motivator. Whether you believe in “The Laws of Attraction” and “Creative Manifestation” or not, to be able to see your goals’ outcome, and to constantly keep that vision in mind are always helpful in motivating yourself to reach them. Pick a tool that has a vision board function and makes it easier for you to do visualizations.
Select tools that help you build habits
Finally, choose a system or tool that can help you form new habits. Many of our goals require a change in our behavior and thought patterns. This can be done through forming great habits that help make these changes happen more easily.
No matter what goal setting tool you choose, don’t get discouraged if a particular tool doesn’t seem to work for you. Just find and try another tool. It’s all part of the process in ultimately reaching your goal, especially for those hard and difficult ones. The most important thing is to keep trying and never quit, and always know that as long as you don’t quit, you ARE making progress.
How to Build Great Habits to Accomplish Your Goals
Most of goals we set for ourselves require us to follow certain good habits. For any goal to be achieved, there are usually two types of results we get. One is that our status or circumstances are changed in certain way, and the other is that some actions have been taken. Forming good habits can make both results become reality much faster and easier on our part.
For example, to get into a better physical shape, it requires changes in our body mass. By forming good exercising and eating habits, we can accomplish that goal faster. To reach a certain financial goal, we often need to take some actions to make things happen. By building good habits, we can set out to do the required things automatically, without the concerted effort every time we need to do them. Having good habits is a great help for reaching our goals.
Before we set out to build some great habits, first we must find out the existing bad habits we have that are stopping us from achieving what we truly want. Otherwise, they will always be there pulling our legs while we are striving to press forward.
Suppose our goal is to improve our health, now what are the bad habits we have that are sabotaging this goal? Is it eating too much ice cream? Or it is spending 4 or 5 hours per day in front of TV? Or is it that we tend to lose temper too quickly?
Another example, if our goal is to start a home business, what are the things we do that are keeping us away from that goal? Is it the poor spending habits that prevent us from saving the required startup capital? Is it the procrastination habit that stops us from taking needed actions? Or is it the pessimistic thinking habits that drain our confidence in the new business? Once we’ve identified what these habits are, we will then be ready to really attack them.
One of the most effective ways to remove an old habit is to replace it with a new habit. Of course, this new habit must be something that can help us move closer to our goal, or at least not pull us away from it. I used to smoke a lot, and I tried many times to quick, but it never seemed to work, until one day I replaced the habit with drinking coffee. (Of course, if you’re already drinking coffee you may want to find something else to try) The point is, forming a new habit to replace an old one is often easier than to eliminate it independently, in a sort of cold turkey way.
Once we’ve dealt with those old habits, we should begin to find and build some new habits that can boost our motivation and productivity for achieving our goals faster. There are many good habits can help one achieve various kinds of goals. Some are quite obvious, while others may need a little experiment to find out if they’re really helpful or not. But all in all, building great habits is a sure-fire way to increase the chance of accomplishing our goals.
Top 10 Best Ideas For Setting Goals
By Hilton Johnson
You cannot pick up a book or participate in a training program today without the author or instructor teaching the power of goal setting. Yet, most people today spend more time planning a two-week vacation than planning their lives by setting goals. It’s been said that achieving goals is not a problem–it’s SETTING goals that is the problem. People just don’t do it. They leave their lives to chance…and usually end up broke by the time they reach retirement.
I thought that since this is such an important ingredient for developing a successful network marketing business, this was a good time to share with you some of the greatest thoughts about goal setting that I’ve discovered over the years.
So, here goes…The Top 10 Best Ideas For Setting Goals:
1. Make A List Of Your Values
What’s really important to you? Your family? Your religion? Your leisure time? Your hobbies? Decide on what your most important values in life are and then make sure that the goals you set are designed to include and enhance them.
2. Begin With The End In Mind
Tom Watson, the founder of IBM was once asked what he attributed the phenomenal success of IBM to and he said it was three things:
The first thing was that he created a very clear image in his mind of what he wanted his company to look like when it was done. He then asked himself how would a company like that have to act on a day-to-day basis. And then in the very beginning of building his company, he began to act that way.
3. Project Yourself Into The Future
The late, great Earl Nightingale created a whole new industry (self-improvement) after a 20-year study on what made people successful. The bottom-line result of his research was simply, “We Become What We Think About.”
Whatever thoughts dominate our minds most of the time are what we become. That’s why goal setting is so critical in achieving success because it keeps us focused on what’s really important to us. He then said that the easiest way to reach our goals is to pretend that we had ALREADY achieved our goals.
That is, begin to walk, talk and act as though we are already experiencing the success we seek. Then, those things will come to us naturally through the power of the subconscious mind.
4. Write Down The 10 Things You Want This Year
By making a list of the things that are important to you, you begin to create images in your mind. It’s been said that your mind will actually create chaos if necessary to make images become a reality. Because of this, the list of ten things will probably result in you achieving at least eight of them within the year.
5. Create Your Storyboard
Get a piece of poster board and attach it to a wall in your office or home where you will see it often. As you go through magazines, brochures, etc. and you see the pictures of the things you want, cut them out and glue them to your storyboard.
In other words, make yourself a collage of the goals that excite you…knowing full well that as you look at them everyday, they will soon be yours.
6. The Three Most Important Things
Decide on three things that you want to achieve before you die. Then work backwards listing three things you want in the next twenty years, ten years, five years, this year, this month, this week and finally, the three most important things you want to accomplish today.
7. Ask Yourself Good Questions
As you think about your goals, instead of WISHING for them to come true, ask yourself HOW and WHAT CAN YOU DO to make them come true. The subconscious mind will respond to your questions far greater than just making statements or making wishes.
8. Focus On One Project At A Time
One of the greatest mistakes people make in setting goals is trying to work on too many things at one time. There is tremendous power in giving laser beam focused attention to just one idea, one project or one objective at a time.
9. Write Out An “Ideal Scenario”
Pretend that you are a newspaper reporter that has just finished an interview about the outstanding success that you’ve achieved and the article is now in the newspaper. How would it read? What would be the headline? Write the article yourself, projecting yourself into the future as though it had already happened. Describe the activities of your daily routine now that are very successful. Don’t forget the headline. (Example: “Jane Doe Wins Top Network Marketing Award Of The Decade.”)
10. Pray & Meditate
As you get into bed each evening, think about your goal before you drop off to sleep. Get a very clear colorful image in your mind of seeing yourself doing the things you’ll be doing after you’ve reached your major goal. (Remember to include your values.) And then begin to ask and demand for these things through meditation and prayer.
 |
How to Set SMART Goals and Get Things Done Web 2.0 goal setting and task management software. Vision board, DnD todo lists, goals and time trackers, goal journal, and more. |
Interview: Setting Goals - Staying On Track
Here is my recent interview with Catherine Pratt at Life-with-Confidence.com. I talked about setting goals and ways we can stay on track. Check it out:
| http://www.life-with-confidence.com/setting-goals.html |
Why Most People Will Never Reach Their Goals!
by Ken Burgess
It’s sad but true that many people are failing in reaching their goals!
Even though they sit down and ask themselves what they really want in life, write it down, break their goals into small action steps and take action - they won’t achieve most of their goals.
Do you know why they’ll fail? No?
It’s because they forgot to identify the *Benefits* they will gain by reaching their goals!
What does that mean? Let me give you a simple example…
What happens when someone offers you a product? When are you going to buy it? Are you interested in the features of that product?
No, not at all! What you are interested in and influences you in whether or not you are going to buy is to know the *benefits* of this particular product.
You want to know “what is in it for me?” And the same happens to you when you set up your goals. You will not be committed to your goals one hundred percent if you are not clear on the benefits you will gain by reaching them.
When you are not sure of the benefits it’s *very* difficult to maintain the necessary persistence, dedication and enthusiasm!
So, you always have to ask yourself *why* you want to achieve a particular goal. If you are clear on the benefits, you are willing to pay the price. Instead of setting up a goal like “I want to have a successful business,” and then just taking action, you have to identify the benefits.
-Imagine how it will feel like to have a successful business
-Imagine how your family and friends will admire you
-Imagine how you make smart investments
-Imagine taking that long vacation you always wanted
By doing so you will have the necessary momentum that keeps you right on track until your goal is reached. The only difference between those who make it and those who don’t is desire. And benefits and rewards create this desire! Now you have the chance to belong to those who *make it.*
