Achieving Your Personal Goals

What a great feeling it is when you are successful and accomplish your intended goals! There is certainly a process that goes along with being successful. The start of this process is setting realistic goals and developing a timeline for your achievements. First and foremost, it is very important to learn to become punctual. Whether you have date deadlines or time deadlines, it is an extremely important practice to get things done in a timely fashion. Next, determine what steps are necessary to accomplish your goals. For example, if you are a student with an intended major, speak with a counselor or professor in that field to find all of the requirements needed to successfully reach your goal; you need to know what courses you need to take; how many years of school you will need; what your financial status is or will be and whether you will need to apply for scholarships or loans for the entire time you need to be in school, etc. If you have a job and you want to get promoted or be considered for other positions, find out what that process entails; you need to know if taking courses will help in your promotion or position quest; you need to find out if relocating may be beneficial to you, your career choice and job availability, etc. The bottom line is that no matter what your goals are, you must do your homework in order to get started down your successful path. If you do your homework and set realistic goals, your failures and disappointments become minimal.

A very important factor in this process is knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are. It is always good to constantly fine tune the things that you know you are already good at and strengthen the areas that you know you could use improvement. For instance, If you choose a path that will include being knowledgeable in math, but you know you are not a math genius, start with the level of math that you know you can handle and then gradually push yourself to the next level of difficulty. Do not give up on your dreams because you are not great at one piece of the total picture. Be honest with yourself about what YOU want to achieve. Most of us are influenced at an early age to become doctors or lawyers or some super hero athlete. Those are all wonderful expectations, but that is not realistic for everyone. Follow YOUR dreams and expectations.

Even when you take all of the steps necessary to become successful, sometimes you will still be met with adversities. Therefore, you will also need to learn how to deal with set backs. The first thing to do when you are disappointed with an outcome is to ask yourself whether or not you have done everything possible to achieve the goal in question. You have to be absolutely honest with yourself about your achievements because only you know whether you worked hard enough, gave it your all or put your best foot forward and you would only be cheating yourself to not answer those questions sincerely. You have no control over another person’s decision making process, but when you know that you have done your very best, rather than being disappointed in yourself, you will learn to re-assess your accomplishments, be constructively critical of your output, brush yourself off and get back in the race with the same confidence and enthusiasm as you had the first time around. One important lesson to learn is to not blame others for your failures. This is unhealthy behavior simply because if you do not take responsibility for your own life and how you handle its ups and downs, it will be very difficult for you to achieve your goals. If you do not recognize what YOUR faults are, you cannot correct them. Blaming others for your downfalls will definitely keep you from improving and progressing in your life. Remember to always keep a positive attitude, even in the face of adversity.