5 Effective Ways How To Set Up Goals And Design Your Future
How to set up goals? Are you disappointed in setting goals that you always fail to hit them?
In this coming week, I will be going to release a series of blog posts about effective goal setting that can help you turn your long-term personal goals into life.
PART 1: Effective Ways How To Set Up Goals (you’re reading it now)
PART 2: Goals of Life Setting Process That You Should Know
And, PART 3: The Ultimate Smart Action Plan To Organize Your Life
But here’s what most people do, and where they fail to achieve their life goals: when they write their new year resolution, they are enthusiastic about it, but after few months, they stop working towards it, and, as a consequence, they stop achieving their dreams.
But the true beauty of goal setting process is you can literally attain anything that you want with proper planning.
One of the life goals I set several years ago that comes into life is to travel the world with my family (which is what I currently do now from borrowing my lifestyle to traveling & working at my own pace without any fancy office).
Because that’s true goals to set that come into life, how to set up goals effectively that you will learn on these 3 part blog series.
To be able for you to set up your long-term personal goals effectively, and design your future, I’m going to use this post to take you through a few steps to achieve goals (smart goals).
But first, don’t forget that everything you need to write and plan your goals can be found in my Design Your Year Goal-Setting Kit below:
Also please keep in mind that this goal-setting kit, I designed it myself to share my journey through planner printable! I recommend this goal-setting kit if you want to write and plan your long-term personal goals effectively.
You can instantly download this in PDF format. But here is how I do it:
Let’s dive right into it as I’ll take you through everything you need to know about how to set up goals to help you create the life that you deserve.
5 Effective Techniques How To Set Up Goals
Instead of having a vague goal of “to retire comfortably” make your goals specific — something like, “pay my home mortgage & debts before I reach 60’s, so I can travel the world at least once a year with no debt.”
Understand that it’s hard to recognize where you are at reaching your goal if you have no way of measuring where you are with it.
To do that, I’ve put together 5 strategies that you can use how to set up goals that are useful if you want to successfully attain them.
Once you implement these goal-setting techniques, you can literally apply them to anything. Whether to retire comfortably, starting a business, get out of debt, save money, and for almost anything, just like you dreamed.
Because yes – it’s possible!
1. How to set up goals: Knowing what you want
FOR EXAMPLE:
2. Know where you are
Next, you need to know where you are because you wouldn’t go to the airport and take a flight without knowing your destination.
Ever since we were a child, we were told to set goals, strive, and attain them. Like, go to school. Get a good job. Have a family. Secure your future.
You have to understand that the moment you set goals, you already know what you want and must learn to view your actions from an objective point of view.
Whether it’s about your general finance, health, career, marriage, spirituality, business, mindset, or life in general.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Living in New York comes with a notoriously high cost of living.
ACTION: My husband and I decided to move back to the Philippines to lower our cost of living and start living within our means
3. Focus on smaller goals first
Writing your long-term and short-term goals make you accountable for achieving them.
Even if you follow items 1 & 2, without defining them clearly and putting your bigger goals into smaller chunks, it’s easy for these bigger goals to fall to the wayside.
Understand that small goals are easier to achieve on a daily basis, which means we can set them more often and constantly see ourselves getting better.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Instead of focusing to pay our $17,000 credit card debt, we break this amount into smaller chunks.
SMALLER GOAL: Pay first the visa card with the smallest remaining balance of $2,513 in 24 months. Each month will set aside $100 to pay off that debt.
4. Be committed to your goals
It’s easy to set and write bigger goals, but sticking with it? That’s a whole other story.
Many other people love to set massive goals, but the problem with bigger goals is the commitment to achieving them.
We build them up so huge that we can’t even attain them and give up. I know that small goals aren’t as exciting to talk about, but the power of hitting smaller goals gradually is much easier to stick with and see real results from.
When setting short-term goals, start by looking at your long-term goals because short-term goals will be directly connected to your long-term goals.
Steps on how to break your long-term goals into short-term goals:
- Clearly define your top long-term goals (goals that you want to accomplish in 10 years or more)
- Identify the means on how to realize these goals
- Look at those goals that you plan to accomplish within 5 years
- Determine what portion of those goals you can accomplish in 2-3 years
- Work on those portion of those goals you can accomplish in 6-12 months
- Look at those goals that you plan to accomplish on a daily basis
FOR EXAMPLE:
HOW TO BREAK A LONG-TERM GOAL INTO SHORT-TERM GOALS:
LONG TERM GOAL: Retire comfortably at 60 without debts to travel the world at least once a year and enjoy life.
MEANS: Move to another place with a low cost of living and start living within our means by carrying cash instead of using credit card.
GOAL TO ACCOMPLISH WITHIN 5 YEARS: Get a good job, lower our monthly budget to pay off our $17,000 debt in 5 years or less.
GOAL TO ACCOMPLISH WITHIN 2-3 YEARS: Pay Visa credit card balance of $2,513 in 24 months.
THE GOAL TO ACCOMPLISH WITHIN 6-12 MONTHS: Start saving $10,000 a year from salary and invest.
GOAL TO ACCOMPLISH ON A DAILY BASIS: Managing personal finances by monitoring the ins & outs of our money, adding another source of income to generate an extra $1,000/month as passive income in building wealth before retirement age.
Do you see that these short-term goals are all interconnected to my long-term goal?
Before I even reach my 60’s (now that I’m 53 while I’m writing this post) – I am already free of debt and I’m so blessed to even celebrate my 50th birthday in New York!
So with a properly executed goal-setting system, you will be amazed by the magic to crush your goals both long-term and short-term goals.
Design it and it will come to you!
5. Make your goals visible
When your goals are displayed somewhere, it enables you to make progress in achieving them. It’s a way of making your goals real and holding yourself accountable for achieving them.
Writing down our goals helps us filter great opportunities. My husband and I wrote this check so we cannot deny the existence of what is on this frame right in front of us every time we woke up each morning.
Our goals are meant to serve us towards life progress. This check gives us a sense of direction.
Having this hanging on our bedroom wall and by carrying this from Vietnam to Thailand, Philippines, and to China. It helps us to move not only from just dreaming but into actually doing.
Making our goal visible gives us greater control of our future.
Final thoughts
No matter what goals you are trying to accomplish, it’s crucial to think about your goals in terms of the big picture. Over the long-term, what do you want?
Once you’re clear about your big-picture goals and know where you want to be, you need to create the path to get there.
Break them down into short-term goals.
This is where you answer the question, “How will I reach my goals?”.
If you’re committed to reaching your goals, you need to become unstoppable. Too often, we don’t achieve our goals because we get sucked into shiny objects around us. When we do, we sacrifice our own goals.
These 5 effective techniques only scratch the surface when it comes to how to set up goals.
For the past 25 years, I’ve been perfecting my own goal-setting process, and I’ve captured it all in my goal-setting system – Design Your Year Kit.
Use the code “BEYOUROWNBOSS” upon check out if necessary and get 50% off today! It’s time you get serious about setting goals – and this goal-setting planner printable can help you do that.
But regardless of if you choose to download or now, I know that setting up goals can be a great way to bring your dreams into life and design your future. So I want to encourage you to go for it!
And I hope you took away some actionable tips from this blog post series and make sure to stay tuned to PART 2: Goals of Life Setting Process That You Should Know.
Effective Ways How To Set Up Goals
PART 1: Effective Ways How To Set Up Goals (you’re reading it now)
PART 2: Goals of Life Setting Process That You Should Know
And, PART 3: The Ultimate Smart Action Plan To Organize Your Life
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About Jeng Cua
After borrowing her lifestyle living paycheck to paycheck, this work from anywhere mom wouldn’t let anything stop her from chasing her dreams. Now, Jeng has achieved more than she ever imagined. Her mission is pretty simple – to help you love your life and family using her four distinct life systems.