Setting and meeting goals create a positive energy and motivate you to keep going even when obstacles arise. Goals not only help you to continue to be motivated and that creates momentum.

Part of the reason why goal setting fails is that people don’t understand the different types of goals and how to treat them.

Goals can be divided in two categories.

First category would be based on the priority or importance of goals in life. Before I tell you the type of goals that fall in this category I would like to know what exactly success means to you? Success means different things to different people. But true success is a balance of a number of things. A successful person will be happy, healthy, and reasonably prosperous, secured, have peace of mind enjoy good relationships and will have hope for a better future. Therefore, you need to have goals that will cover every ingredient of success. Based on these, the types of goals are given below:

Career Goals

What is your ambition? Where do you want to be in your career five years from now and next ten years, In what position you see yourself and what you will do to reach there, what kind of value addition you will do to your skills, that will fall under career goals.

Financial Goals

When are you planning your retirement? What kind of car you want to drive? What kind of house you want to live in? Where you want to go for vacation? What kind of education do you want to afford for your children? Answer to all these will depend on you financial planning, and achievement of your financial Goal Setting.

Physical Goals

Health is wealth. These are the goals that are related to your physical well being and health. Better physical and mental fitness will give you an edge over achieving your goals. If you need to loose weight, or improve your physical condition and health in some way, you will need to set these goals.

Self Development & Spiritual Goals

In today’s fast moving world you have to increase you learning curve to make sure you are not falling behind to others. Knowledge is the key to success. So, keep learning, keep growing internally. Set goals for improving your attitude, self image, faith etc. People those who are spiritually higher enjoy better self image, better relationships, and more financial success as they have stronger faith. Spiritual upliftment is an important purpose of all human life and one should set goals in this area of self development.

Relationships & Family Goals

Relationships and your family are one of the biggest assets that you may have. How will you improve your old friendships, and make new ones? What will you do for your spouse, children, parents, greater family, so as to take these relationships to a greater depth? It is worth it to set goals in this area to have a fulfilled life.

Pleasure Goals

After all the hard work you do in your day it is your right to enjoy and have pleasure. Set goals for your enjoyment and how you are going to spend time for yourself. Goals can also be set for entertainment, learning new art or for taking up new hobbies.

Social Goals

More often your success will be measured by what you do for the society rather than your personal achievements. As a human being it is your responsibility to give back to society more than what you receive from it. Any goals that you set for this purpose are Social Goals.

If you look at the above goals carefully you will see that all these goals are actually interdependent. For example how well you will do financially depends on your progression in your career. Similarly your career, relationships will depend on the level of your personal and spiritual development as well as your physical well being. The type of pleasure that you will be able to afford and even some of the relationships that you will enjoy will be dependent on your career and financial situations. Of course you will not want to expand your family if you can not afford it financially.

So, while setting a goal, you should take into consideration different aspects of your life. Then only you will be able to enjoy a balanced success. If you set goals that are only materialistic in nature, such as only career goals and financial goals, while neglecting other goals in life, chances are that you will do well in these two areas, but will be stressed out, burned out, and unhappy at that the end of it.

Second category would be based on the timeline of goals. Based on the timeline goals can be divided into following:

Short-term goal: up to one year

Mid-term goal: one to three years

Long-term goal: up to five years

Long-range goals are concerned with the kind of life you want to live with regard to your career, marriage and life style. It is wise to keep these goals broad and flexible.

Medium-range goals cover the next five years or so and include the type of education you are seeking or the next step in your career or family life. You have more control over these goals. So you can tell how well you are progressing toward them and modify them accordingly.

Short-range goals apply from the next month or so up to one year from now. You can set these goals quite realistically and should try hard to achieve them.

Breaking down the goals in different time line will keep you in track of your achievements.

Advantages of goal setting

• Goal setting helps you plan everyday tasks
• It gives direction and purpose
• It makes decision making easy
• It helps to decide on priorities
• It encourages hard work
• It motivates you
• It inspires followers
• It builds confidence
• It reduces stress
• It gives you positive attitude
• It makes evaluation possible
• It gives real meaning to your activities

So categorize your goals and divide them in different timeline and celebrate your achievements.

What is a Goal?

According to dictionary goal means the state of affairs that a plan is intended to achieve and that (when achieved) terminates behaviour intended to achieve it. Well the truth is that a goal is the first step in making your dreams a reality.

Do you dream of success? Of course you do, who doesn’t? Everyone dreams of success but not everybody find it. Why so? Why doesn’t everyone make their dreams come to reality? What makes successful people success? Goals are the answers to all these questions.

Have you seen a football match? There are twenty two people running after a ball. But each of them has a sense of direction, a sense of purpose. What will happen if we remove the goal posts? Yes, it could be anything but football. Every sport in this world has a goal, a target, a finish line, a boundary.

When are we called successful in our life? Surely, when we achieve! What will you achieve if you have not set targets, when you have no aim or in other words you have no Goals in life?

Why goal setting is important?

Goals keep you in the track of your success. The difference between a dream and a goal is that a dream is simply a fantasy, something you daydream about, but never actively pursue. A goal, on the other hand, is a concrete thing in which you set into motion the steps in which to obtain it. Without a goal, we are just dreamers. A goal takes you towards the fulfilment of your dream. Life has lot of pressures and circumstances that may take us away from our dream. These Goals serves as the check points and keep us moving in the right direction.

Goals have always been a part of our life. Knowingly or unknowingly goals have always been with us. The difference is that either you will be setting your own goals or someone else will do it for you. It will be your parents to begin with, then your teachers, then professors in college and university then your boss, customers, family. If you are child it is all right for your parents and teachers to set goals for you, as by this they teach to not only goal-setting, but also values of discipline, responsibility and accountability. But as you grow older, the onus of setting goals fall more and more on you. If you do not set your own goals that are focused at fulfilling your dreams, you will be pushed around by people and circumstances to such an extent that you will completely loose the command on your own life. It is painful to see so many people in rut simply because they never set any goals for themselves. Goals keep you in command.

A goal gives sense of accomplishment and keep you motivated

Through goals you keep a track of you achievements, since they are achievable and measurable will give you a sense of accomplishment that will keep you motivated, to achieve yet another goal and getting you one step closer to you dream. The motivation that you get by reaching one goal can be enough to take you through the next goal, so on and so fourth. That is the power of goal setting.