Personal Goals And Your Basic Values

• Goal setting requires lots of time and effort.
• Personal goals should be believable and challenging.
• Goal setting should be aligned with your basic values.

Setting personal goals is the key to success. However goal setting requires lots of self discipline and hard work, which is only something only a small percentage of people will discipline themselves to do.

As a result, many people will either never begin the process of goal setting, or give up on their goals before they complete them.

Goal Setting Requires Time & Effort

Setting personal goals requires you to take some timeout and actively think about what you want to accomplish in life. 

Goal setting is therefore not something that you can just read about, or think in your head. Goal setting is something you must physically do.

Setting Goals With Your Basic Values

Your personal goals must be aligned with your basic values. This means that you must set goals that are consistent with what you believe to be good, right and important.

What Are My Basic Values?

If you are unsure of what your basic values are, ask yourself questions such as…

• What do I really believe in?
• What am I passionate about?
• What is most important to me?

The answers to these questions are your basic values. They are the very essence of who you are. You must now align your future actions with these values, through the process of goal setting.

Goal Setting With The Wrong Basic Values

If you align your goals with the wrong values, it will be like working at a job you hate. You will feel drained of energy, demotivated and unhappy.

It’s highly unlikely you will succeed at something you do not enjoy, so take the time to think carefully about your basic values.

Setting Challenging Goals

Your personal goals should be believable, yet challenging. A great example of this are athletes. They are always trying to run faster, jump further or do something better.

By setting goals which challenge them, athletes keep themselves outside the comfort zone, thereby enabling them to grow and progress in life.

Your Goal Setting Benefits

Athletes are strongly motivated by the promise of reward. This can either be the satisfaction of beating a personal best, or the accomplishment of winning a medal.

Like athletes, you must also consider the benefits of accomplishing a goal you set for yourself. The more benefits you can think of, the greater your motivation will become.

Personal Goals Are Personal For A Reason

Make sure that the goals you set for yourself are what you really want and what you believe is possible. What may be a believable goal for one person, may be unbelievable to another.

So make sure your goals are not constrained by other peoples beliefs. A good example of this is the story of the four-minute mile.

The Four-Minute Mile 

In the 1950’s most people believed it was impossible to run a mile in under 4 minutes. One man did not, his name was Roger Banister.

In 1954, Roger Banister broke the 4 minute barrier with a world record time of 3 minutes and 59 seconds. He had achieved a goal nobody thought was possible.

However, after Roger had broken the 4 minute barrier a strange thing happened. People began setting personal goals to run a mile under 4 minutes and were succeeding, whereas previously they had tried and failed.

The moral of the story is, be careful not to let the limiting beliefs of others effect the goals you set. For this reason, it is best to keep personal goals a secret.

Use Goal Setting To Get To Your Destination

Goal setting is simply the process of moving from where you are, to where you want to be.

If you don’t know where you are going you won’t go anywhere. So take some time out and start thinking about what you really want.

Once have have decided upon this, use goal setting to create goals that will motivate you to success.

Remember, these goals should be aligned with your basic values, because if they are not, you are unlikely to see your goals through to completion.