Setting Attainable Goals for the New Year

In setting goals for the New Year – or any time you want to envision your future success – start with setting attainable goals. For instance, set a goal of losing 10 pounds, not 100 pounds, in the next month or two.

In life, it’s good to be ambitious and set high goals for yourself. Maybe you feel that you are hard-working, innovative with huge potential for achievement but the goals you set for yourself, need to be realistic in case you set yourself up for a monumental failure and disappointment. It’s important that you find a balance between the effort required and the challenge posed. This is important because the reward gained from goal attainment must be worth the effort put in.

Remember past years of best intentions and goals for past new years – and what happened to those goals along the way.

First and foremost, for you to have direction in life, you should set goals. It is far much better to have a small or easy, or not so important goal than having none at all. Goals are like a map as they will direct you where you are going. Once you have direction, it gives you appetite, drive, more energy, and a reason for waking up in the morning. You become more active and confident.

A goal is not a wish, but something into which you will put all your efforts and energy so you can achieve it. One thing you should bear in mind is that a goal does not have to be something big all the time but something that you can attain.

It’s good to always strive to do better than you have previously done. You need to improve yourself each and every time. However, the challenge most people have is that they set goals that do not allow them to reach the levels that they desire. Often, people set goals that are not attainable and at the end of the day, fail to achieve them and completely lose hope of ever doing great things in life.

As mentioned before, setting a goal does not necessarily mean striving for something extraordinary. Even simple goals are no less important than the big ones.
You need to come up with what is popularly known as SMART goals, these are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely goals. As a result, a SMART goal includes all of these criteria to help increase your efforts and consequently the chances of achieving your goal.

A SMART goal must be attainable and achievable. This will assist you to find out ways you can realize that goal and work towards it. Make no mistake, your goal should be stretched to make you feel challenged, but defined well enough that you can actually achieve it. Ask yourself if you have the resources and capabilities to achieve the goal. If not, check what could be missing and find out if others have done it successfully before.

You should set goals that you really feel you can reach and stop switching goals frequently to always search for the next big thing. The habit of always switching goals based on what you feel is most fun and interesting at a particular time, but never actually giving yourself time to accomplish any of those goals is not a good idea. You won’t get anywhere if you continuously change your direction. Focus is the key.

When you have a big goal, break it down into smaller ones. These small goals are more achievable and will help you to build momentum and confidence as well as encourage you to keep hitting target after target. They set up a foundation from which you can start building the life that you wish to have for yourself.

It’s also imperative that you write down your goals as this is another powerful way to speed up the achievement of your goals. You should get a notebook and then create a separate page for each of your goals. You should draft goals that have concrete endpoints and be able to measure your success.

You should be able to break them down into sub-goals if necessary so that you can celebrate every little milestone you have achieved on your way to achieving your final goal. Even if your goals are too small, they will serve their purpose as long they provide you with direction.

Over and above that, you need to be committed to your goals. It is imperative that the goals you set are important and relevant on a personal level, and that you know you are capable of attaining, or at the very least making substantial progress towards achieving them. You need to be optimistic but realistic. Setting unrealistic goals can derail you from doing good things with your life.

In the end, making the Law of Attraction work for you requires focus on your goals. This means not only visualization and affirmations, but concrete actions that move you closer to reaching your goals. Get started today at setting attainable goals and manifest the results in your actual life.