What kind of goals do you have right now? What would you like to happen in the important relationships in your life? What do you want to achieve in your career? What do you want to accomplish just for yourself?
What kind of goals do you have for the next week or so? How about the next few months? And the next few years?
Having life goals - big and small, in the near future and ones that last a lifetime - can feel amazing. Goals are a great way to bring direction to your life, to revitalize your motivation and to nurture your sense of purpose.
More than this, defining your goals can be an amazing way of nourishing relationships with others.
When you talk about your goals with someone you trust and care about - and they share theirs in turn - you can build deep levels of empathy and connection.
And, of course, some of the most rewarding goals we achieve in life are those that we accomplish together with loved ones - sustaining a compassionate relationship, nurturing a fun, loving home, bringing a new life into the world.
Yet just as our life goals can give us the opportunity for great happiness and success, they can sometimes feel a little daunting. After all, the higher you set your goals, the more challenging they tend to be.
So how do you sustain a great positive attitude towards the goals you have set for yourself? How do you ensure that you rebound from any setbacks with your motivation revitalized?
Read on to find out more.
The tips in this article can help you feel great about your goals. See how much more positive you can feel about what you'll accomplish in your life when you explore this new approach to your life goals.
Think of some of your life goals now - any goal, big or small - and explore the steps below.
Ways You Can Flourish
1. Acknowledge Just How Great It Is That You Have Life Goals
It may sound obvious, but one of the easiest ways to re-energize your enthusiasm for your goals is to recognize that you have them in the first place. After all, it's sometimes easy to get used to the resources, skills and accomplishments we acquire through life. Each success can blend into the natural landscape of our lives, unless we take a moment now and again to remind ourselves what we have achieved.
And creating your own life goals to work towards is a success in itself - you've given yourself direction, motivation and purpose.
So give yourself a few moments to acknowledge that simply generating your own life goals is a great achievement in itself.
2. Focus On Your Outcome
Our most rewarding goals are often our biggest, and therefore the ones that can sometimes feel far away. You can revitalize your motivation by releasing any thoughts of how you will get there, the steps you will take, the decisions you will make - and simply relax for a few moments to focus on what it will feel like when you have accomplished your goal.
How will you feel different compared to now?
What will achieving this goal do for your confidence?
How will achieving this goal affect your important relationships?
3. Focus On Progress By Focusing On The Closest Steps
For goals that sometimes feel daunting or far away, remind yourself of the simple formula for success - if you are making progress towards your goal, your goal is getting closer, and if your goal keeps getting closer, it's only a matter of time before you achieve it.
You can do this easily by focusing on two things - the step you have achieved, and the step you are about to achieve. Think about them now, and the steady pattern of successful progress that these steps represent.
4. Remind Yourself Who You Are Doing This For
Any goal will be easier to achieve when you are clear about why you are doing it. And a big part about being clear is knowing who this goal is for - you.
You have chosen this goal because it will make a tangible positive difference to your life. Of course, because of the important relationships in your life, successfully achieving your goal will also positively affect many other people, but it's important to acknowledge that success comes more easily when you are clear about why this is the right goal for you.
5. Celebrate The Uncertainty Of Having Your Own Life Goals
Like any aspect of life which has yet to occur, life goals come with inherent uncertainty. Are they the right goals? Will you achieve them? Will achieving them be all that you wished for? What will you aim for next?
Rather than attempting to disregard this sense of uncertainty, why not embrace it? After all, as fulfilling as it is to achieve your goals, success also represents a kind of finality.
Uncertainty is simply an opportunity for you to make choices, and in doing so express who you are. And isn't that kind of positive uncertainty just another name for excitement?
6. Share Your Goals
A shared journey can make any potential obstacle surmountable, and make you feel like you can rebound from any setback. So share your goals with the people in your life. You will forge stronger bonds of empathy as they share their goals, you will find your motivation revitalized and the people who know you best will be able to help you to acknowledge your core skills and resources, and even give you tips for the way forward.
7. Remind Yourself That You Can Change Your Goals If You Want To
We all define our goals based on what we know at the time. Yet the world and our own lives never stand still. Things evolve. And your goals can evolve too.
It's important not to confuse purpose and resolve for stubbornness. If you feel that a goal you have been working towards is genuinely no longer right for you, maybe it's time to take a fresh look at things. After all, you can be sure that your unconscious mind will become aware of this kind of unease very quickly, and make it increasingly difficult for you to achieve goals that you are not wholeheartedly committed to.
The ability to change your mind and refine your goals in response to a changing world and your evolving life is a sign of strength, not of weakness. Just as you can embrace the sense of uncertainty that having life goals brings, you can look on each new day as an opportunity to positively reassess your goals.
8. Give Yourself Plenty Of Life Goal 'Rest Stops'
If you were embarking on a thousand mile road trip, you wouldn't attempt to do this on your own in one go, would you?
So apply the same principle to your life goals - which, after all, are an important kind of journey in themselves. Schedule regular intervals when you will free yourself from all aspects of your life goals. This means that, during these times, you will not only not actively work on your goals, but you free yourself from even thinking about them.
The duration of your life goals 'rest stops' are up to you, but you can experiment with scheduling a particular hour off during the day, or any time after 9pm, as well as longer rest stops like a whole week every month or so.
Notice how revitalized you are when you return to focus on your life goals after one of your 'rest stops'. You'll see the opportunity for fresh perspectives and novel solutions that you may have missed before.
9. Remember That You are More Than Your Goals
Goals are important for a full and fulfilling life. Achieving your goals can be one of the most amazing feelings. Yet you will always be more than your goals. When you remember this, you will ensure that your happiness comes from more than your goals, too.
10. We All Encounter Setbacks But Only Some People Choose To Have Failures
A setback is simply a 'check in progress'. Something didn't work out the way you expected. Your outcome was not as positive as you'd hoped. The important thing to remember about setbacks is that everybody experiences them.
Yet what transforms a setback into a failure is how you respond. If people instantly respond - or react - to a setback with a sense of doom and gloom, a feeling that things are suddenly out of their control, then they are setting themselves on course for failure.
If you recognize a setback simply for what it is - that you have only been 'set back' a little, you will see opportunities to revise your approach and get back on the road to success.
As you come to master this distinction between setbacks and failures, you'll have mastered one of the most important skills for flourishing.
Happy flourishing. Dan. Providing useful self development, self empowerment and self esteem tips and reviews online.
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