How to set goals and achieve them?

Do you see yourself watching Netflix and having no idea of what you will do in the evening or even in the next few weeks? Ok, it’s now the time to set goals!

Having goals is essential. It’s mandatory if you want to change something in your life: change your career, do more workouts, or do something creative. 

You maybe have too many goals, and you don’t know how to start. Or you have nothing in mind, but you want to have plans to move on in your life. 

I love having new goals. I love fresh starts, and at each new year, I’m really excited. 

There are two periods during the year that I set goals: the new year and my birthday. For my birthday, I make a list of all the things that I want to accomplish a year before my next birthday. And then the second is the first day of January for the new year. I make a list with my best friend (especially when we are a little bit drunk), and we set goals for the new year. Finally, I make these goals SMART to help me to reach them. 

Actually, having goals helps me to go through my quarter-life crisis. At that moment, I wasn’t aware of what was wrong with me. I had no goals or didn’t stick to it. I didn’t want to do anything, and I couldn’t make any decisions about my life. After six months of doing nothing, I decided to get out of this state of mind. 

 

Sit and think

Before anything else, the most important is to think about your goals. When was the last time you sat to think about your life with a notebook? Today is the day! 

Take a notebook and write all the goals that you want to achieve. Write all the desires that you have, all the “things” that you want in your life, all the “It would be great if…”

It could be visiting a foreign country that you want to visit for a long time, learning a new language, or being more healthy. Try to list at least twenty goals! 

On my list, there were several goals: lose weight (finally!), try to go zero waste, and work from home! 

Then, when you have your goal list, rank them according to priority, importance. For me, it’s really important to lose weight and everything that is around weight because it means to have a healthier life, so have more energy to do a lot of things. 

If it’s difficult for you to make a choice, ask yourself these questions : 

• Is this goal a life-changing one? 

• What is your life vision when you will achieve this goal? 
• Is this goal one that you have had for a long time? 

 

Then, keep the first three goals (the other goals on this list will be for later!) that seem the most important for you. Now that you have your three goals, you can go to the next step! 

Think SMART

You maybe already heard about SMART goals. It helps you to be more specific with a goal to achieve it. You will have a vision more precisely about it. 

But what means SMART? 

• S for SPECIFIC : the goal must be the most precise and understandable as possible.
• M for MEASURABLE : the result must be measurable (for example if you want to lose weight)
• A for ACHIEVABLE : it’s possible to attain it. You will have enough time and resources for achieving this goal. 
• R for RELEVANT : your goal must be meaningful for yourself (not something that others think you should do). This goal mustn’t take you more time than a more important goal. 
• T for TIME-BOUND : the goal must have an end, it’s limited in the time. 

For example, be rich and successful isn’t a SMART goal because it’s too vague and has no due date. But I want to win 500,000 dollars by selling a best seller book in 5 years is a SMART goal! 

Now that you know what is a SMART goal, try to be more specific with your goal. Maybe you want to lose XX pounds in 6 months to wear your favorite pair of jeans, by doing workouts and eating less processed food.

Maybe you want to finish your book in 6 months and write at least 5 pages by day. 

Having SMART goals will help you to keep your motivation and to find that your goal is achievable.

 Goals must become plans 

So you have SMART goals now, and you’re excited about them! To reach them, your goals must become plans. 

Take your notebook and write where you want to be in 1 month, three months, and six months for each goal. For example, if you want to lose weight, you want to lose X pounds in one month, XX pounds in three months, and reach your ideal weight six months later. Once you do this, ask yourself how you can reach all these steps. If I take the “lose weight” goal, you will need to go to the gym or work out five times a week and eat no more than XX calories every week. It’s a bit extreme, and you need to personalize this. In the beginning, you will do three workouts per week and then increase this number. 

If you want to start a blog, you will need to create your website, write like 20 blog posts, create content for 2 or 3 social media the first month and do some other things for the next months. 

Don’t be too ambitious; you won’t write a book in 2 days! But don’t give yourself too much time. As I explain to you in this video about time management, if you give yourself too much time, you will finish precisely in the time that you allowed. For example, if you want to do something in 4 hours, you will make 4 hours to do it. If for the same tasks you allow yourself 2 hours, you will finish it in 2 hours. 

Divide your goals into several tasks

You maybe feel overwhelmed with your goals. It seems too much work, and you don’t know how to start. You need to divide these goals into several tasks. 

If you want to lose weight, start with a membership subscription to a gym or a fitness program, or look at the YouTube channel to follow. Then, you have to change your food. So you can choose some recipes from Pinterest and write what you need during your groceries. 

By dividing your goal into multiple tasks, you will be more efficient because you will know exactly what you need to do at which time. You will check your to-do list more easily. You will see results faster!

Let me give you an example: for this video, my goal was to make a video, but when you write it down on your calendar “make the “goal video” it’s unmotivated! If I wrote down this, it’s sure that I didn’t do it. But I divide the “making a video” into several parts: “writing a script,” “filming the video,” “editing the video” and “downloading it on Youtube.” It’s the same for the goals that you have. 

For the more important goals like “create your own business,” you need to have steps before divided into several tasks.

My Goals for 2021

For this new year, I’ve decided to focus my goals on three categories: my health, my career, and my finance. 

So for my health, I want to have energy and to feel good in my body. For that, I’ve decided to eat clean meals and plan for all of my meals. I also decided to start yoga and workout five times a week. 

I don’t know if it would be possible for my career, but by the end of the year, I want to be full time on my business and work from home. 

And finally, last year, even if I thought it wouldn’t be possible, I reached my goal to save 20 000 dollars, so this year, I doubled it, and I want to save 40 000 dollars. 

Tell me in the comments below what are your goals for this year!