How to Set a Goal to Improve Your Lifestyle

We all have goals in life, it may be to purchase a car, finish school, own a home or countless other things that we want to achieve. Why is it that we don't use that same drive and determination to accomplish our smaller goals in life? You know the things that really are frustrating, creating stress, crunching our time so that we cannot enjoy life anymore.

Somehow, we lose track of what is important because we are trying so hard just to keep up. We don't think of ways to make life simpler and easier for us to manage. Most of us have so many 'have-to's that we are stretched to our limit as far as time, quality of life and stress management goes. We are achieving things that we could be doing in half the time if we just sat back, created a plan, list our needs and prioritize our goals to fit our time frame.

Sure, we all have times that other variables may change our plans, but, if you are organized, you can change with the flow of life. Just HOW do we go about doing this?

The amount of time that you take by planning will help you to get the job done faster, easier and without the stress that you were once accustomed to. We need to start in our home and eliminate all of the time wasters and the stress points that can make or break your day.

Let's start your plan for success;
• List all of the goals that you want to achieve in everyday life. I don't mean buying a house, think simple, think of how nice it would be to have your home organized and be able to find things when you are looking for them. Think of how nice it would be to walk into a clean house occasionally, find the receipt for something by just opening a file drawer or having a home cooked meal ready in about 10 minutes on those days when you are totally dragged out.

• Now go back through your list and prioritize it, by this I mean, number the goals starting with the number 1 at the point of the item that bothers you the most. What is the number one thing in your home that you wished was better and more efficient? This is the item that you will be eliminating, organizing and controlling first and so on down the line.

• If you do only one of these items per night, when can you plan to do it? This has to be a time and date that you are going to really be able to work on it without major interruptions. Remember, it may be, that for the time being, you can only accomplish one goal a week, but isn't that a lot farther than where you are right now? At the end of the month, you will see a significant change in your home and lifestyle and hopefully in your disposition as well. You will have improved four or five things in your life, that before, had become unmanageable and created stress and frustration.

As you are working your way through your list, you will find that you are less up tight, you are actually laughing more, you really look forward to going home and you have more time to do the things that you always wished you could. All of this, just because you took the time to, plan, how to improve your life.

You can use this system for other areas of your life. How about all of those evening activities that you sometimes dread having to attend. Is it possible that you can belong to a group and contribute by working special events instead of weekly meetings? Is it possible for parents to get together and set up a car pool club to get the kids places during the week? Everyone takes there turn on a specific day or week, that helps to free up some more time.

What about in your office?
Can you rearrange things to make them handier, purchase items to help to organize things better or prioritize your work schedule?
Are telephone interruptions bothering you?
Have set times to return calls such as between 10:00 and 11:00 am and 3:00-4:00 p.m., and then make sure that everyone knows that you will be calling at that time.

Just remember we can set a goal for the smallest thing in our life and all we have to do is list, plan and prioritize to achieve it.