How Creating and Revising Personal Goals Can Change Your Life

Setting goals is an important part of operating a business, whether an Internet business or an off-line one. Without goals, any business can flounder when poor planning leads to such problems such as insufficient funds to cover cash flow, employing inexperienced staff, lack of sales and having no way to measure success.

But have you thought to apply the same planning process to your personal life? If not, now would be a good time to start. Why? Because it is well documented that the most successful people in any field you'd like to name, always had a clear picture of what they wanted to achieve long before they actually achieved it. Not only did they know where they were going, they had many of the steps mapped out to lead them to where they wanted to go.

So decide now on some of the things you would like to achieve. Take them one at a time and work out a time frame for them; is this a goal for today, this week, six months, a year, five years or even ten. Start from the end result and write down what you would need to know or do to accomplish that particular goal. You may need more knowledge, more money, more time or perhaps a formal qualification of some sort. Think of ways to get what you would need.

If something seems impossible at first, instead of saying that you "couldn't do that", ask yourself how you could do it. By opening your mind to possibilities, you will be amazed at some of the ideas that pop into your head and some of the opportunities that will come your way. To take back control over your own life, you have to believe you can do it. Your thoughts and your attitude will play a large part in determining your success.

If you still are not sure how to start, choose something that you know you could achieve if you really wanted to, perhaps a small task you have been putting off, perhaps decide that you will smile at ten strangers walking down the street or maybe speak to someone at work you don't know very well. Choose a task that is challenging, but not so hard that you will put it off and then just do it.

Once you have accomplished the task you set yourself, analyze how it went. How did you feel before you started, were you nervous, shy, scared, sweaty or relaxed? How did you feel afterwards, calm, excited, pleased with yourself, still nervous maybe? The sense of achievement you gain whenever you complete a challenge successfully is what encourages you to try again with another challenge until eventually you build the belief that you can change things in your life for the better if you choose to.

This probably won't happen overnight. Think of weight loss. It would be great if you could lose 20kg in a week and still look good, wouldn't it? Everybody knows that this isn't likely to occur without something drastic happening and that the best way to lose weight and keep it off is to lose a little at a time.

Well, improvement in any area of your life, whether it be personal or business, comes from consistently taking many, many small steps. The process is always the same. Identify a task, make a plan and then carry it out. There are very few overnight successes in personal life or in business either; so-called overnight successes are usually the result of many years hard work by people who didn't give up!

Not giving up is very, very important. It takes time and effort but believing in yourself and being in control of your own life will bring many rewards. It will be very easy to see how one thing builds on what has come before and leads to something better. If you feel you are off track, go back and start again from where you knew you were on track. There aren't really any wrong decisions, just different choices that have different consequences and there is always something to learn from every one of them when you look for it.

As important as initial planning is, evaluating progress and making improvements is just as important. It doesn't make sense, does it, to keep doing something the same way over and over if it isn't working? You might laugh and say that no business would survive if it did that, but how many people do it in their personal life? Analyses your results and utilize feedback from others. Could something be done a better way? Is a new way feasible? Again, open your mind to new possibilities.

If you find on assessment that a goal seems too hard, or doesn't seem relevant any more, put it to one side and concentrate on another. You may never go back to that one, or you might, it doesn't matter. The main thing is to keep taking small steps every day along the path to being where you want to be and achieving the things you want to achieve. These small steps taken consistently will lead you to bigger and better results.

Live your life with you in control. See in your mind what you want to achieve and where you want to be at various times in the future. Map out a rough path of how you might get there and break the plan down into small manageable steps. Assess your progress at regular intervals and make changes if they are needed. Do something small in one of your goal areas every day, whether it is self improvement or business. Believe you can do it and you will be successful.

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