Goals: Push yourself to the next level!

Goals are difficult to set, let alone accomplish. However, they are what helps us keep moving forward, even when we really don't feel like taking that next step in achieving our goal.

Ever since I could remember I have been setting goals. It would start with dreaming and freely thinking about what do I want and why. I didn't do this thinking alone. My Dad has been influential in helping me learn how to think about what types of goals I wanted and how to achieve them. Still to this day, if I express a goal he will help brainstorm the ideas and find a path towards success. My Mom has also been influential in helping me continue to work towards a goal. She has always been my personal therapist or secretary, helping me through the difficult stages of my goals.

Part of creating solid goals and working towards success is having a great support system. Not all support systems have to be your parents, it could be your co-workers, friends, significant other, etc. A support system allows you to thinking freely about your ideas and helps you create your own path towards success. They will also help challenge your thinking, finding the gaps in which you need to fill before embarking on this particular goal.

Once you have an idea about what you want to do, you need to understand why you want to achieve this goal. What consequences, both positive and negative, will achieving this goal have? When you are working towards something, you are also choosing not to work on something else, some call this opportunity cost.

Laying out the different pathways and options for achieving your goal is the next step. You do not have to know all of the steps towards your final destination; however, you should have a general "map" of how you will complete your goal and how long it will take. Having this "map" gives us a sense of purpose and ability to track progress. Psychologically speaking, we like seeing progression. It gives us that "win" or "reward" feeling. We like to know that we are going somewhere with purpose, it helps us create certainty for ourselves because the goals we make are in our control.

Goals are important to aid you in continuously learning and growing. Growth may be difficult at times, especially to stick with a goal that doesn't always seem like it going somewhere. When this happens you need to re-evaluate your pathway to see what changes to your pathway or even to your original goal that you need to make. Learning what doesn't work is just as important as knowing what does work. This is part of having a growth mindset, being able to change and improve based off new information.

What are your ideas of goals you would like to have? Why? What are you not going to do while moving towards a new goal? How will this help you continue to grow and improve? How are you going to plan for changing your pathway or tweak your goal?

Lastly, remember the journey is the most important part of the goal. The journey is where we learn and experience all of the skills, knowledge, and methods that we gain to achieve the ultimate goal, which leads to a new goal. Keep moving forward and create a new goal for yourself today!