I set a goal at my last blogging that I want to share with you. My goal is to post a weekly blog. I want to begin this use this time to talk about goal setting. Some, if not most goal-setting gurus will tell you that a goal is to be stated as if it has already happened. Take my goal for instance. If I followed the advice of those of that mindset my goal should be stated as follows: I post on my blog weekly. That is how I have been taught to set a goal. That is how I've always made goals...as if they already took or are taking place. Since becoming a life coach and following the program that Dr. Helmstetter put together I have changed my mind. That method would be more of an affirmation than a goal. There are ten rules to goal setting, according to Dr. Helmstetter, that I would like to share with you here.
Rule # 1. Goal setting is a skill.
Who would have thought? But this is GOOD news. Why? Because a skill is something we learn. Anyone can learn to set a goal. It's a skill to be learned, used and then mastered. Riding a bike, skating, learning to swing, driving a car; these are all skills that we needed to be taught before we could spend the necessary time practicing to become adept. The only difference between someone who knows how to set a goal and meet it and someone who doesn't is that they have been taught the proper way to set a goal.
Rule #2. Small goals are more important than big goals.
Big goals, dream goals were taught to be the ones you needed to set in order to have the motivation to obtain them. Little goals are needed in order to achieve the big ones. It's the small goals you set that matter the most. In fact, Dr. Helmstetter states that a long term goal which he defines as one year, is quite different than a dream goal. Dreams goals are important to have but in order to reach those big goals you must first master the skill of setting small ones. The goals you can reach this month, this week, this day are the ones that will get you to the star in the distance.
Rule #3. All goals MUST be written down.
A goal that is not written down is nothing more than a wish, a hope or a dream. The chances of reaching a goal that isn't written down, according to surveys, is somewhere between 3 and 5 percent. So if you don't write the goal down chances are you will never reach the goal because if it's not written down it is not really a goal in the first place. The moment you write a goal down your chances of reaching it suddenly shoot up to somewhere between 60 and 80 percent. Fewer than 3% of people set goals by writing them down. This certainly explains why there are so many people who go through life thinking they have never reached the horizons they could have, because without writing it down they didn't know what those horizons were. They had no roadmap to follow so they were, in effect, leaving it up to chance which means success falls by the wayside.
Rule #4. Written goals should begin with the word "to".
To loose 10 pounds in a healthy way is a well written goal. Another example could be To Spend More Time With My Children. Goals are percise targets, something that is difined and specific. A goal is something to aim at. When you begin a goal with the word "to" it makes it easier to define and write the goal. One of the reasons people have such a hard time making a goal is they don't know how to state it. When you start the goal with the word "to" it almost writes inself, it is almost automatic.
Rule #5. All goals must be dated.
Such an easy task yet so difficult to do. To date the goal commits us to follow through and that can be a little in intimating, but guess what? The date can always be changed. When I learned that, it was very liberating. I don't look at goal setting in quite the same way. It is also important to make the date specific. Not just the month you want to accomplish the goal but the day. Example: To loose ten pounds. March 31, 2009. If you don't date it...IT'S NOT A GOAL.
Rule #6. Goals should be written to be changed if necessary.
Don't worry if you have to change the goal or the date. Life happens. The people who wrote the rule years ago, the rule that states you can't change the goal, didn't take into consideration the human nature factor. Here's what happens to a lot of folks. They set a goal and the date rolls around and they don't meet that goal, but they really, really want to reach the goal, so once again they set the goal. The average person who sets a goal and doesn't reach it after three tries quits. THEY QUIT. It's human nature. They fail because they think the deadline is the key, when it's actually the objective that counts. There are goals that must be reached by a certain date but we're not talking about those. You can probably think of several things that you wouldn't have if you had to had them the first time you tried. So go easy on yourself. " Your goals are written statements of the choices you are making in your life". What a profound statement made by Dr. Shad Helmstetter. If you want to reach your goals you need to set them with tolerance. People who track and adjust their goals are the people who reach them.
Well that certainly gives us something to chew on. Dr. Helmstetter is well versed in this paticular subject. I will post the remaining goal setting rules in the next few days.
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