7 reasons of why we should set goals.
Why should we set goals? What are the benefits of living with well-defined objectives and a plan? In fact, properly defined goals give us lots of advantages, eventually enabling our lives to become more complete and interesting, but the most important is that striving for our dreams, we don’t spend our days for nothing.
“You need a plan to build a house. To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal” — taught Zig Ziglar, an American motivational speaker.
We all can talk about our plans for hours, being caught up in our dreams of the future. Each of us wants to change something in our lives. This can be related to many aspects of our life such as family, career, sports, health, hobbies, travel and much more. All of us one way or another would like to change something, to become better and happier. And so, the first step towards this is setting a goal.
Strange as it may seem, but some people are afraid of making plans and setting clearly defined objectives. Probably, the latter are associated with something new and unexplored, with obstacles to overcome, difficulties in obtaining new knowledge and skills, with a responsibility to themselves and others, with the hard work on error correction, and with the fear of possible defeat and a shame for a failure to achieve their goals.
So, in order to dispel any possible doubts about the usefulness of setting goals, let’s see what benefits we get:
1. Clearly defined objectives enable us to take control of our own life. The goal gives the direction vector, and, like the navigator helps wend our way through life. How are you going to achieve what you want, if you haven’t even set yourself specific tasks? Moreover, striving helps us identify what is a priority for us, and then focus our attention and energy on the most important, and not fume about unnecessary things. If you set a long-term task, an understanding of what you want to come to, will help you on the way to your dream make the right decisions and the right choice. They help avoid things that happened to Alice from the immortal opus of the English writer and mathematician Lewis Carroll:
Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.
Alice: — so long as I get SOMEWHERE.
Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if you only walk long enough.
2. When a person sets goals and pursues them, he feels that his life is meaningful. These days, time is fleeting, especially in big cities. And it’s incredibly easy to get caught in the humdrum routine and lead a life of dull gray. We mustn’t forget that every intention actualized makes us better, it changes our world, gives us something that we have never had before. But the most important is that our way to materialize ideas makes our life more complete, diversifying our days, filling them with new developments. You just can’t imagine what new opportunities and emotions even very simple goals can bring you, like daily jogging, attending a foreign language course or other interesting classes, running off excess fat, increasing performance, and so on.
3. Knowing your goals, you will be more reasonable approaching the tasks and more productive working on them. Instead of just constant talking about your dreams and not doing anything concrete to materialize your desires, you will act because you know what is most important to you. Only defining clearly your tasks, you will be able to see those anchors that make you stay put, and to get rid of them starting movement onward.
4. Goals give confidence and generate enthusiasm. It is very helpful to keep report on the tasks and to build your advance diagrams — it keeps in good shape and enables to sensibly evaluate your progress. When you see, that step by step you are moving forward it is encouraging. For example, when I have a goal, I wake up full of energy and willingness to pursue it. Thinking about everything I should do to get just a little closer to my dreams, doesn’t let me stay in bed long. In setting your goals and developing a plan to achieve them our service SmartProgress can help, and our wonderful community and coaches will energize you with motivation to implement your plans.
What is more, on the basis of the achieved you begin to understand, what you are capable of, and what should still be improved. Thus, you gain self-belief — something that many of us lack. Having achieved a goal, we often get approval of others, and it brings joy and inspires us for new achievements. After the first successful implementation of your plan, you will definitely want to achieve even more, to set new goals and get satisfaction from your dreams fulfillment, self-realization and an understanding of how much progress you have made.
5. The goals and planning help make the impossible achievable. Lots of people dream of success and wealth, without making a single body movement to materialize their dreams. Having set a goal to earn your first million and creating a reasonable plan in which the major challenges are split into smaller tasks, you dramatically increase your chances for success. What previously seemed somewhat unapproachable, will be much clearer and more realistic, and most importantly — you’ll see that your dreams are attainable, you just need a good plan and determination.
6. Various researches prove that people who set goals and reach them, achieve more in life and are much happier with themselves than those who don’t. Your goal can be simple (for example, one of my goals is a daily translation of several thousand characters of text), but having reached it, you always get satisfaction. If you look at goal-setters — you can even take your role models — you’ll probably see their common feature: they are proud of their success and are aimed at achieving even more in life. Take their example and boldly step after.
7. Goals help us fully realize our potential. Without them, our life often goes its customary course — every day we face the same tasks, do the same things, following the path of least resistance. And though it may give us the feeling of comfort and stability, the absence of goals doesn’t induce self-development, self-cognition and self-realization — and these are the important aspects of human happiness.
Working hard to make our dreams a reality, we discover something new, leaving the familiar comfort zone: new places and faces, new contexts and situations — all this contributes to our personal growth, forcing us to learn, adapt, change and exceed ourselves.