Why Is Goal Setting Important?

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• Goal Setting Tips
• Why is Goal Setting Important?

To set an effective goal, make it specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (S.M.A.R.T.).

By going through a goal setting process, it can help you create and organize your personal goals.

But why is goal setting important?

1. Goals help you focus on what is important in your life.

Carefully planned goals can help increase the value of our lives. These goals are often undertaken to protect, preserve, or better our health, physical fitness, or mental capacity.

2. Goals give us direction

We need something to shoot for, even if the something seems a little fuzzy and a ways off in the distance. A goal does not have to necessarily be life changing in its scope. But goals are indeed life changing whenever they give added purpose to our lives.

3. The process of achieving your goal is very rewarding!

Goal setting isn't only important in terms of the final result. We don't always reach all of our goals. But making progress is far better than not trying at all.

If your goal is to run 5 miles a day, you first have to get off from the couch. If you only get to 3 miles a day and can go no further, for whatever reason, it's still far better than remaining on the couch.

4. You will learn more about yourself.

Goal setting isn't always an easy task. Goal setting can be hard work. It often requires careful thought, self-evaluation, and at times considerable planning.

Once that's out of the way, working towards a goal is often fun and rewarding. If one can stay physically fit by walking 3 miles a day, not making it to 5 isn't failure.

Remember that you've probably learned a lot about yourself in reaching the 3 mile intermediate goal.

5. Goals help you use your time effectively

The goal setting process helps you create effective goals that are meaningful in your life and helps you organize them systematically.

This in turn helps you focus more of your time on your important goals in life!

Final Words

I have addressed the question to why is goal setting important, but there's one more thing to remember...

Setting small goals are no less important, as long as they are meaningful to YOU!

Dwight D. Eisenhower had it all. He had a successful military career, rising to the rank of a 5-star general. He was admired and respected by his troops and by his associates, subordinates, and superiors. He was regarded as a war hero, and become President of the United States, a position he held for two terms.

When he left the presidency, he retired to a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for the most part leaving public life behind.

When asked whether he had new worlds to conquer or new goals to achieve, his answer was yes, he had a very important goal in mind. He wanted to take the farm in Gettysburg and leave it a better piece of land once he left it than it was when he bought it.

Eisenhower's goal might seem to be a rather humble goal for such an important and achieving person, but a humble goal is still one that keeps a person believing that he or she doing something valuable in life.

Whether we think about it or not, how we think about ourselves and our value in this world can make all the difference between a good life and an unsatisfactory one.