Do it now-Goals setting and planning

Setting goals allows you to choose and plan how you want to move through life. Some achievements can take life time to attain, while others can take just a day. Setting and meeting goals leads to feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment. Your goals are not going to get you anywhere if you don’t do something about them. Write your goal down every day to keep you focused and to remind you how much you want it.

Reasons why people don’t set goals

• ·         They have not accepted responsibility of their own lives and the starting point of all greatness is the acceptance of 100% responsibility for your life.
• ·         The other reason why people don’t set goals is the fear of criticism, often during childhood, being discouraged by parents, teachers and adults.
• ·         It is challenging to become goal-oriented in a world that is centered on limitation, because our friends, our colleagues, and our peers easily laugh at us when we talk about doing or becoming something they could not imagine for themselves.
• ·         Another reason people don’t set goals is that they simply don’t know how. They never had formal instructions on how to set, manage and achieving personals goals.

Benefits of setting goals

• ·         Goals are starting blocks of motivation, because they give us the reason to get up and get going.
• ·         Goals can enrich our lives in numbers of ways.
• ·         They foster independence by helping us to take charge of our lives and lead to fulfillment.
• ·         Goals give us direction to an envisaged destination.
• ·         They give us the sense of purpose.
• ·         They are antidote to the most dreaded of all social diseases such as boredom and make our lives more fun-filled, interesting and challenging.

Goals setting guidelines

• ·         Express your goals positively-set clear and concise goals
• ·         Be precise in setting dates and time- there should be a specific time frame in which to achieve a certain goal.
• ·         Breakdown your goals into small, achievable task- to have opportunity to achieve your goals and feel motivated to take on the others.
• ·         Set priorities – so that you know which your goals to focus our attention to and avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals.
• ·         Set realistic goals- the goals you set must be realistic and don’t aim for unrealistic things which you can never achieve.

Nelson Mandela one of the prolific thinkers and statesman of our time was not limited by the prison bars during apartheid era in South Africa. He mapped out his future and that out of South Africa while in prison he was having clear goals and how to attain them.