Staff Personal Articles

Criteria for Effective Goals

Once you have a vision for your life, it is time to start crystallising your dreams and expressing them in terms of specific goals.

First, use the present tense.  Express the goal as if it has already been achieved and not as something that will only occur in the future.  It is important to think of your goals in the present tense as this is what registers with your subconscious mind.  If your subconscious mind believes it is not something that is to happen now, it will not work on it now.  It will deal with it later, when the appropriate time comes.  Of course, for a goal that is expressed in the future tense, the time never comes.

Next, focus on outcome, not performance.  Don’t worry about how you are going to achieve your goal, concentrate only on the outcome.  Focus on your vision for the goal.

Make your goals specific.  If they are fuzzy and ill-defined, you will not be able to internalise them in a way that will allow you to decide on precise actions to take to achieve them.  Also, your subconscious mind won’t perceive them clearly enough to act on them.  Furthermore, you will not know when or if you have achieved them!  An example of a specific goal is “I weigh 80 kilos”, not I will lose weight.

Make your goals realistic.  Whatever you set as a goal must be realistic.  While it should be challenging, it must be something that you can achieve as a result of your own efforts and not something that depends on someone else doing something.  Example: I am self-confident and project this attitude to others.

Make your goals challenging.  While your goals must be realistic, they must also be challenging if you are to gain any real benefit from them.  After all, if you merely set as a goal something you would have achieved anyway - such as that automatic raise next month, what have you really achieved?
Setting goals is important - to decide what it is we really want!