If you're an adolescent, goal setting can be a helpful way to support and enhance your physical, mental and social growth. You can use goal setting to help you achieve your vision, whether it's getting into the college of your choice, making your high school basketball team or saving for a sumer backpacking trip across Europe. Setting goals should incorporate a feasible plan and milestones to help you chart your course and track your progress, and you should periodically reward yourself for minor victories and successes along the way.
Establishing Realistic Goals
Establishing realistic and manageable goals is an important first step in any process intended to help you achieve your desired aims. It's easy to feel overwhelmed if what you have set out to achieve is too lofty to attain, which can have crippling effects on your motivation and your desire to progress toward your goal. Establishing realistic goals helps you stay motivated and keeps you centered on your path to success. A goal that's attainable will encourage you to find more efficient work methods, and it will be more enjoyable too. While it's crucial to establish realistic goals, it's also important to have big hopes and dreams, states SelfGrowth.com. Having big hopes and dreams challenges you to stretch beyond the limits you have set for yourself, which will help you grow and mature as you achieve your goal.
Focusing on the Process
If you have a deep emotional connection with the goal you have set for yourself, it can be easy to place the majority of your focus on the end result. Many people find that shifting the focus of their goal-setting from an outcome-based approach to a process-based approach allows them to benefit from the whole process, not just the reward that may or may not come at the end of their endeavor. Occasionally, although you have set a seemingly achievable goal, plotted a realistic course and worked tirelessly toward accomplishing what you set out to do, your goal is not realized. In such a scenario, if you haven't found a way to enjoy the process of achieving your goal, you may be left feeling shorted or disappointed in yourself. But if, when pursuing your goal, you place significance and emphasis on your development as a person, or if there are other benefits that stem from striving toward your goal, the psychological effects of not reaching your goal may be blunted.
Rewarding Yourself for Achieving Milestones
After you set your main goal, create a series of smaller goals and place them on a timeline so that you can track your progress. When you reach your milestones, consider rewarding yourself for a job well done. Achieving one of your milestones means that you're advancing toward your principle goal, which is a cause for celebration. Choosing a reward that supports or enhances your creativity and ingenuity is a helpful way to mark your accomplishment. According to Goal-Setting-College.com, before you establish your milestone reward system, you should determine what's reward-worthy, who's administering your reward, whether your reward is aligned with your goals and whether your reward has a high perceived value. Rewarding yourself for achieving your benchmarks can boost your self-esteem and remind you that your ultimate goal is only a series of attainable steps away.
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