Setting Personal Goals, The What, Why and How of Goal Setting

What, Why and How of Goal Setting

I learned about goal setting very early on in my sales and management career. Sales training, sales managers and business owners taught me how to create business goals. I was told how important it was to write my sales goals down on a sales board, and that there was nothing worse in my career than defunct goals. I adopted the art of business goal setting early on and it has had a tremendous impact on my sales career. I don’t remember hearing much taught about setting personal goals.

There are 3 basic questions you can ask yourself in order to achieve your personal goals: What? Why? and How?. Simply knowing the answers to these questions will help you make the most out of your life and will bring balance to your personal and work life. Without personal goals, life can be an aimless journey without much direction.

At age 23, I was running a successful residential sales organization. The focus of my life was on my sales career. I never took the time to write my short and long term personal goals down on paper, the way I had for my business goals. As a result, my business life was busy, yet my personal life was a mess, at least according to my standards. I wanted lots of things, like a happy marriage, a home, kids and plenty of money in the bank, yet I wasn’t mature enough for the responsibility. A certain level of maturity is needed in order to know what it is that you really want to achieve in life. To get the things you want from life, at some point, you’re going to need to ask yourself,

"What do I want from my life?"

It is a new career, a sense of purpose, a creative hobby, a physical challenge, better education, a romantic relationship, a family, better health, or more money in the bank? A helpful exercise might be to write down the categories of your life on paper. For example, Family, Health, Career, Education, Financial, Recreation, Community. Take a look at each category and think about which areas are most important to you and your life. Write 2 or 3 things in those categories that you would like to see happen, regardless of their time frame. Think about how acheiving these things will affect your life. Will it have a positive impact?

What ever your personal goals may be, writing them down is the very first step. When you have the ability to evaluate your life and decide what it is you want, it’s time to ask why.

"Why do I want this for my life?"

When you assess your life’s goals by asking yourself why, you are able to choose goals that have meaning and importance to you in your particular stage in life. Those are the goals that you will intrinsicly work hard to achieve. As you get better at goal setting, or your life circumstances change, you can re-evaluate it to see if what you want is really important to you, or just a distraction. Finding goals that are truly meaningful to you and your life will bring you greater success.

"How can I get it?"

Asking yourself this question will help you take action and identify what resources are needed, which people in your life can help, and what steps need to be taken to reach your goal Using an action plan will help you break your actions down into small, easy to accomplish steps, with smaller time-lines and an easy way to measure your progress.

Picture of Personal Climbing Ladder Much like climbing up a ladder, each little step taken toward your personal goals is progress. Any of life's circumstances can have an affect on your movement. As your situations and priorities in life change, your goals may change too. Be smart enough to know the difference between necessary adjustments that need to be made to your goals from distractions that take you away from them. By keeping in tune with the "What" and "Why" of goal setting, your "How" will always be easy to redefine.

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