| Key Points |
Setting Goals Effectively
The following guidelines will help you to set effective goals:
State each goal as a positive statement: express your goals positively - 'Execute this
technique well' is a much better goal than 'don't make this stupid mistake'
Be precise: set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can
measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the
goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
Set priorities: where you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to
avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the
most important ones.
Write goals down: this crystallizes them and gives them more force.
Keep operational goals small: keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and
achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress
towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.
Derive today's goals from larger ones.
Set performance goals, not outcome goals: you should take care to set goals over which you
have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to
achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. These could be bad business
environments, poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your
goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your
goals and draw satisfaction from them.
Set realistic goals: it is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of
people (parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do
this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may be naïve in
setting very high goals. You might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or
understand quite how many skills you must master to achieve a particular level of
performance.
Do not set goals too low: just as it is important not to set goals unrealistically high,
do not set them too low. People tend to do this where they are afraid of failure or where
they are lazy! You should set goals so that they are slightly out of your immediate grasp,
but not so far that there is no hope of achieving them. No-one will put serious effort
into achieving a goal that they believe is unrealistic. However, remember that your belief
that a goal is unrealistic may be incorrect. If this could be the case, you can to change
this belief by using imagery effectively.
| There are seven tools of transformation. These tools are: | ||||
last updated 2005 - 02 - 02 |