Having goals is an important part of life. We work hard because we have goals. Often times, those who do not have at least one goal feel like they have no purpose in life because they are not working toward something of value to them. Almost everything we do in life, we do with a specific goal in mind. For example, I clean my house because my goal is to always have a clean house. I eat right and exercise because I have a goal of being healthy and looking and feeling good. I teach my children certain things because I want them to be good citizens and good people. When I do things with no goal in mind- like lay around the house or veg in front of the tv for hours, I end up feeling worse about myself than when I started. Now, there is nothing wrong with playing video games, surfing the internet, watching tv, or laying down as long as we don't do it too much and it is just a small part of our day rather than it being the majority of what we do with our free time.
So, all of that being said, this page will be devoted to goal setting. I will give you a few templates you can download and print out to write down a goal or goals and keep track of your progress. Often, writing things down and marking them off are good ways to remind us of our goals. I will also share some stories with you of goals I have set and achieved, as well as some I have set and not achieved. I will also share stories of other people who had set and achieved/not achieved goals.
Templates:
Here are a few examples of goal setting worksheets that you can use or modify to your own liking. Some are more detailed than others, depending on how detailed you want to get with your goals. I think that writing down goals is an important step in getting yourself to actually work on them. So, write down your goals, write down some specific details about how you will accomplish those goals, and get going! (On most of these links, click on the small image of the worksheet to either get a preview of it or to actually download it)
Number One
Number Two
Number Three
Number Four
Numer Five (this website has many different templates to choose from)
Here is an example of one goal that I set this year for 2012:
Goal for 2012
1. My goal is:
(State the goal positively)
I want to start learning to play the guitar and have 15 songs completely memorized.
2. I will achieve my goal by: December 31, 2012
3. To achieve my goal, I will:
Practice the guitar at least 20 min., 5 days/week using the website www.justinguitar.com and find 15 songs I want to memorize.
4. Potential roadblocks to reaching my goal:
Finding time to practice bc of other priorities (kids, house cleaning), being too tired
5. Strategies to overcome the roadblocks are:
Practicing guitar instead of doing other things that aren’t as important (watching tv, surfing the internet, being lazy), my kids not allowing me to practice, being tired
6. This goal is important to me because:
I really want to start doing more singing, and I feel like in order to start performing without cheesy karaoke music in the background, I need to learn to play the guitar so that I can accompany myself. Also, I will feel a tremendous amount of achievement.
7. 3 important action steps to reach my goal include:
1) Making time to practice every day
2) Buying the Beginner’s Song Book from Justinguitar.com
3) Don’t give up!!!
8. My goal is both realistic and challenging because:
I have no idea how to play the guitar, so it will be a new experience for me. I don’t have a lot of time to practice, so making time to practice will be difficult. I catch on to musical things quickly, so it shouldn’t be to difficult for me to catch on as long as I continue to practice and don’t give up!!
http://www.worksheetplace.com ©
It's always helpful to me when I read about the success of others who have been working towards a goal and have been able to achieve it - either by just good, hard work or by some miraculous means. So, I wanted to find some good stories to share with you that might help inspire you to set some good goals, work hard at them, and not give up until you've reached them! So, here are some links to some good stories I've found:
"18 Holes in His Mind" - great story about the power of visualizing you goal
"One Year to Live" - don't wait until it's too late to accomplish your goals
Socratres - the great philosopher Socrates teaches one of his students a lesson about success
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Glen Cunningham
Dealing with Adversity - how will you react with things get a little tough?
YouTube story - only watch the first 1:24 if you don't want to see this guy's info on his products for sale
There are TONS of motivational stories out there about setting and achieving goals. You can Google them, check out stories from the library, and get stories lots of other ways. I think it's important for us to find some stories about people that have reached their goals and use them to motivate us to not give up on our own goals. I posted some more motivational stories on the page "Success Stories" on this blog. Head on over there to get some more inspiration!
"One Year to Live" - don't wait until it's too late to accomplish your goals
Socratres - the great philosopher Socrates teaches one of his students a lesson about success
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Glen Cunningham
Dealing with Adversity - how will you react with things get a little tough?
YouTube story - only watch the first 1:24 if you don't want to see this guy's info on his products for sale
There are TONS of motivational stories out there about setting and achieving goals. You can Google them, check out stories from the library, and get stories lots of other ways. I think it's important for us to find some stories about people that have reached their goals and use them to motivate us to not give up on our own goals. I posted some more motivational stories on the page "Success Stories" on this blog. Head on over there to get some more inspiration!
My Own Goal-Setting Stories
I am a list writer, and so I am always writing down things I want to do, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or over multiple years. Subsequently, I have set many, many goals in my life! I definitely haven't accomplished all of those goals, and there are still many goals that I've had since I was a kid or a teenager that I'm still working on today.
I'll start off by talking about a goal that I didn't achieve- mostly because I want to get the sad stuff out of the way first! When I was 21, I was involved in a religious singing group that did a lot of touring around the state of Utah and surrounding states. The girl who was the leader/songwriter/director of the group was rising quickly in popularity in our area (and all over the country and world actually) and she would hold workshops every once in a while so that local artists could come learn about songwriting, recording, etc. from her. I attended one of those workshops and I promised myself that by the time I was 26, I would be doing the same kind of thing that this girl was doing- recording my own songs, performing a lot (at least locally), and becoming well-known quickly. Well, I'm sad to say that I didn't follow through on that promise. I performed a lot with this group. I took some songwriting lessons from this girl. I even led a little break off group for a while, but nothing came of it. I didn't really work very hard at promoting myself, at writing songs, or at performing my own stuff. I gave up on the goal, and I regret it to this day. However, I have recently decided to start again. The thing is, the goal is different now- which isn't a bad thing AT ALL! It's never a bad thing to reevaluate your goals and change the way you do things, as long as you are doing what you want to do and heading in a direction of progression and fulfilling your goals!
Ok, I'm done with that! Now on to some good stuff- goals I HAVE achieved! I'm happy to say that I have achieved some things in my life that, though they may not look like anything major to anyone else, they were difficult and challenging for me, and accomplishing them has given me a real sense of achievement:
1) I graduated from high school- Ok, so it might sound lame to some of you that I feel like graduating from high school was a huge accomplishment, but for me it really was. Let me explain: I've written in the blog about how difficult it was for me to go to school everyday; how once I hit junior high, I felt like I didn't have any friends and I had a horrible self esteem. Well, once I got into high school, the pressure to be popular was just too much for me, so I convinced my mom to let me leave public school and do correspondence classes through a university. The problem was, my mom was a single, working mother and couldn't stay at home to help me with anything, so I was all on my own as a freshman, having to do school all by myself. I don't know how easy or difficult that sounds to any of you, but to motivate yourself to take high school level classes from a book without anyone to explain anything to you or answer your questions was really difficult. I had to learn high school Algebra, Geometry, English, History, Physical Science, Biology, etc. by myself. It was discouraging and I found little motivation to actually get it done. A couple of years later, I had to get a full-time job to help pay for these classes, which made it even more difficult to finish them. In the middle of what would have been my junior year of high school, I decided to go back to public school and for the last year and a half of high school, I had to take summer school as well as continue to take correspondence classes (as well as working part time after school) while I tried to finish high school. So, needless to say, it was difficult, and it came down to my last quarter of school. I barely finished my last correspondence class before graduation! But I did it! I did it! It felt like such an accomplishment, and I got into the only college I had ever wanted to go to, as well!
2) I graduated from college!- Again, this may not seem like a big deal, but I took TEN YEARS to graduate from college! First of all, after my first semester, I had to drop out for a year to work full time so I could save money to go back. Then, I decided to leave college altogether for about two years to move to Orlando and work full time (more about that later). When I came back from Orlando, I went back to school, but I didn't know what I wanted to study, so I took it one or two classes at a time. After a couple of years of frequent major switching, I got married and started having kids soon after that! I finally decided I wanted to be a secondary education teacher. So, I took full time classes while caring for my little boy. I was blessed to have a couple of great friends and family members who were willing to babysit a lot! I took my last finals three days after my second little boy was born, and I did my student teaching (which included a lot of grading, lesson planning, completing college assignments, etc.). Finally, I did it!
3) I got a job singing in a show at Disney World!- I can't really tell you what show I performed in, but I played a character in one of the shows at Walt Disney World from October 2000-January 2002. The thing was, I almost didn't go to the auditions! I saw an ad for Disney World auditions at my college, and determined I was going to do it! However, I was never very sure of myself, so as the audition got closer, I started to talk myself out of going. Luckily, my sister and my best friend were both able to talk me into it. I did it and I got the job! Not many people in this world can say they got to sing as a major character in a show at Disney World, but I can and if I wouldn't have followed through with my goal of auditioning, I never would have accomplished that goal!
4) My sister- My older sister is a big inspiration to me. When she decides she wants to do something, she does it and doesn't back down until she's accomplished her goals. For instance, she wanted to be a firefighter/paramedic. She's a pretty small girl- 5'1 or something like that with a small body frame. She took all of the classes and made all of the preparations to become a firefighter, but when it came time to taking the final test - breaking through a roof with an axe- she had a bit of a difficult time doing it. She had to take the test a couple of times, but she was finally able to do it, and she ended up becoming the first female firefighter/paramedic in Southern Utah.
My sister decided she wanted to open her own charter school. The work it required to do such a thing and the obstacles she would have to face would have discouraged many people from working toward this goal, but not my sister! It took her 6 years, a lot of people telling her it wouldn't happen, all kinds of paperwork and discouraging news, etc., but her school has been approved and will be opening in the fall of 2012!
My sister has also run three marathons and has the most beautiful backyard that she and her husband designed and landscaped all by themselves! She is a true example of someone who has a goal in mind and doesn't lose sight of it but keeps working until the job is done!
Quotes about Goal Setting
(From http://www.inspirationalspark.com/goal-quotes.html)
"A goal is a dream with a deadline."
- Napoleon Hill
"Never tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon."
- Unknown
"Begin with the end in mind."
- Steven Covey
"If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else."
- Lawrence J. Peter
"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
- T.S. Elliot
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
- Henry Ford
"If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time."
- Unknown
"The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we hit it."
- Michelangelo
"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo, Da vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together."
- Vincent Van Gogh
"The whole world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going."
- Unknown
"Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible."
- Doug Larson
"Goals that are not written down are just wishes."
- Unknown
(Taken from http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/goals1.html)
"The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success."
- Henry Ward Beecher
"The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business--or almost anywhere else for that matter."
- Lee Iacocca
- Francis Bacon
- Victor Cousins
- Vince Lombardi
"Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving."
- Dennis Waitley
- Brian Tracy, Eat that Frog
"The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose."
- Michel de Montaigne
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
- Robert Browning
"The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain."
- Kahlil Gibran
"Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right."
- Aldous Huxley
"If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else."
- Yogi Berra
- Polybius
"Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives."
- Viktor Frankl
"The virtue lies in the struggle, not in the prize."
- Richard Monckton Milnes
"To reach a port, we must sail—Sail, not tie at anchor—Sail, not drift."
- Franklin Roosevelt
"There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something."
- Henry Ford
"Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind."
- Seneca
"It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity; who aims at mediocrity will be far short of it."
- Burmese Saying
"In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia."
- Author Unknown
"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark."
- David Ogilvy
