In November 2005, I set a personal goal (amongst many others) to become healthier.   I started off with little goals and then pushed through the boundaries and made each goal harder and more challenging!  In November 2007, I had lost a whopping 52 kilos....... Remember nothing is easy and you set the standard for yourself!!!! Remember to push through even when you want to give in or give up!  When you are on your road, other obstacles will be there with you!  You may take a different route to get to your goal, that doesn’t matter!! When you set your first goal you make many others, so if one of those other goals comes into your life before your “due date”, don’t fret, embrace it and accept it – you never know it may be love (another story later on about that)... If you need help – ask for it ~ you are more likely to give up if you don’t ask!

Here are some of the steps I used to help me with my personal weight loss goal! 

Goal setting is a process for personal planning. By setting goals on a routine basis you decide what you want to achieve, and then move step-by-step towards the achievement of these goals. The process of setting goals and targets allows you to choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on to do it. You also need to know what a distraction is.

Goal setting is a standard technique used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. It gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge and helps you to organise your resources.

By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognise your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set. The process of achieving goals and seeing this achievement gives you confidence that you will be able to achieve higher and more difficult goals.

Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you decide what you want to do with your life and what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working towards achieving it.

Setting Personal Goals

It starts with your lifetime goals, and then works through a series of lower level plans culminating in a daily to-do list. By setting up this structure of plans you can break even the biggest life goal down into a number of small tasks that you need to do each day to reach the lifetime goals.

Your Lifetime Goals

The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime, as setting Lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.

To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some or all of the following categories:

Artistic

Attitude

Career

Education

Family

Financial

Physical

Pleasure

Public Service

These are just some categories and obviously not in any order!  You choose what categories are right for you!

Once you have decided your goals in these categories, assign a priority to them. Then review the goals and re-prioritise until you are satisfied that they reflect the shape of the life that you want to lead. Also ensure that the goals that you have set are the goals that you want to achieve, not what your parents, spouse, family, or employers want them to be.

How to Start to Achieve Your Lifetime Goals

Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5-year plan, 1-year plan, 6-month plan and a 1-month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.

Finally set a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.

Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.

Staying on Course

Once you have decided your first set of plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.

Setting Goals Effectively

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: When 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 crystallises 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.

Achieving Goals

When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately.

With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:

If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder;

If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier;

If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so;

If while achieving the goal you noticed a deficit in your skills, decide whether to set goals to fix this.

Failure to meet goals does not matter as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal-setting program.

Remember too that your goals will change as you mature. Adjust them regularly to reflect this growth in your personality. If goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go. Goal setting is your servant, not your master. It should bring you real pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

Remember the key points:-

- Decide what is important for you to achieve in your life

- Separate what is important from what is irrelevant

- Motivate yourself to achievement

- Build your self-confidence based on measured achievement of goals

- Allow yourself to enjoy the achievement of goals and reward yourself appropriately.

- Draw lessons where appropriate, and feed these back into future performance.

Now the fun part!  I want you to draw a vision board!!! Use crayons, colours, pictures whatever you like and make a board.  Draw, stick, and paste whatever you have set as goals in writing onto your board. The board is done by imagining you are already there in that space! You have everything you set goals to do! It’s a fun exercise!! .  Hang your vision board where you can see it!!!  If you do change a goal, then draw another vision board, although keep the original vision board!

I am only human also and at times I found things very hard – but that wasn’t because of my goal that is because of my ego!  After a year working towards my goal, I didn’t even realise I was working towards anything I had set! It just came naturally and my strength to continue with it (and I still am) has given me the results I wanted! 

Good Luck on your Journey and I hope you achieve all of your dreams!