What are Personal Goals?

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Achievement in life comes with setting personal goals. Some goals are more challenging to reach than others, but you can still set a plan of action. Whether you want to improve your lifestyle or school grades, setting personal goals is an essential part of living a happier life.

What are the steps you can take to set goals? There are multiple ways to approach personal goal setting. Reflection, evaluation and a plan of action instruct how you want to outline your personal goals.

1 Personal Goals Definition

Planning your personal goals involves dedication and motivation to accomplish what you set out to do. So, goal setting is an approach to seek ways to achieve it. In reality, you need the steps to establish your goals in the short-term or long-term. As you transition through your goals, you want to reflect in a journal or spreadsheet to keep track of your progress and goal ideas.

The next step of personal goals is to evaluate your achievement. Are your goals realistic and attainable? Academic, career and lifestyle improvement are examples of goal ideas that are realistic and possible. Often, many personal goals are too difficult to obtain because timelines are unrealistic. By developing a positive outlook on your goals within a realistic time-frame, a step-wise progression and a measurable evaluation, will make personal goals more easily accessible.

2 Types of Goals

Examples of goals are subcategories such as lifestyle, academic and career goals. Each subcategory offers you a positive outlook on your goals to lead a more happy life. Lifestyle goals help you achieve a healthier life. Academic goals set you up for success in school and college. Career goals involve different aspects of step-by-step tasks to achieve your dream profession.

Personal goal setting establishes different ways to achievement. For instance, achievement, action, layered and rate goals accomplish the same outlook in different ways. You work toward an achievement goal and know the outcome. Then, you develop the steps you need to take to reach your action goals.

Sometimes, you need to organize these steps according to priority or layered goals. Eventually, the time frame indicates the rate of your goals. Because it suggests your time frame of personal goals, the limit, exclusion and ultimate goals apply to long-term achievements. For example, you need time management to develop limit goals in a realistic time frame.

Exclusion goals allow you to continue to work on a healthy lifestyly by removing distractions. Ultimate goals are difficult to achieve, but they are often the ones that give you passion and drive to accomplish personal goals. There are no limits to ultimate goals; your dreams are limitless.

3 Examples of Goals

Some personal goal ideas that support your accomplishments are resilience, growth mindset and motivation. Living toward your goals consists of learning from others and your own experiences, having confidence in your decisions, listening carefully to others, embracing your fears and eliminating distractions.

While many self-motivation goals indicate a self-discipline approach, you might still want to improve in other areas. For instance, examples of goals may include you wanting to start your day early, learn new material to help you in your goals, seek solutions to problems and compromise with others to achieve your personal goals. As a result, a growth mindset approach helps you realize that negative self-talk hinders your progress. So improve your life outlook by looking at situations differently and positively.

Barbara earned a B. S. in Biochemistry and Chemistry from the Univ. of Houston and the Univ. of Central Florida, respectively. Besides working as a chemist for the pharmaceutical and water industry, she pursued her degree in secondary science teaching. Barbara now writes and researches educational content for blogs and higher-ed sites.

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