Goal Setting for Personal Success

Most people involved in competitive sport set goals. Golfers aspire to lower their handicaps, long jumpers set targets for distance jumped and runners aim to reduce their times.

Whilst this seems a natural thing to do for sport, it is rare for people to set goals for their business or personal lives. This is in spite of research that shows that the small percentage of people who set goals and write them down, enjoy far more success than those who do not. You can set goals for each important area of you life such as work, sport and health.

Setting goals is proven to bring results, so any goals are better than none. However, setting goals well is a skill in itself. Make them too far removed from the current reality and you become discouraged. Set them too close to where you are and they don’t provide sufficient challenge to inspire and motivate you. There's a delicate balance to the degree of difficulty that will help you most.

You need both long-term and short-term goals. Short-term goals are set by breaking down the steps that lead towards your ultimate vision. My long-term business goal is based on the working pattern I want; this year for my sport it was to be British Champion (having achieved that, I now set a new goal), with short-term goals based on scores and training levels.

Your long-term goal might be to have the top sales in your company with short-term goals of the numbers of customers you want to win each month. Set dates and go public; it helps to have someone who will monitor your progress to keep you on track.

Write goals down and review them regularly. Do a description of how things will be when you have achieved your goals so that you have a clear vision of success and can measure the outcome against it.

As a coach I can help you: