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Updated 24/06/2023

In order to reach your financial autonomy, the setting goals process is the most fundamental concrete action plan, which gives you guidance to navigate over the upcoming obstacles and helps you to achieve your personal goals.

In other words, the success you are going to achieve after a long period of hard work is considered the most meaningful and happiness you will ever achieve.

However, setting just the goal is not good enough to achieve the outcome you desire because you must include a realistic goal-setting process to assist you in achieving the overall result.

In this article, the following list of setting goals process provides a step-by-step action plan to help you increase the chance of achieving your personal goals.

In addition, there are some smart goal examples that you can have an opportunity to learn and can apply directly to your personal goals situation.

Key Takeaways

• Importance of Goal setting: it provides a road map for you to achieve any personal goals and family goals you desire.
• Smart Goal Examples are the best solution to help you learn and achieve any type of goal such as family goals, and personal goals.
• In this post, you will learn the 7 steps on how to set goals and achieve them.

Here are additional reading materials relevant to personal development and side hustles: Continue to read for more information:

> 5 Best Ways to Save Money in 2022: Financial Tips

> Best Business Books to Read for Every Entrepreneur 

1. Visualise what you will achieve after 5 to 10 years

The first stepping stone in setting goals is to visualize your ideal future. At this point, you are going to imagine what you will end up in after 5 to 10 years’ time. It will power the importance of goal setting, which gives you a clear path to work towards your personal goals.

Depending on the types of goals such as short and long-term goals, the time would be varied so that you can measure appropriately to achieve your personal goals or even family goals.

Goals examples include planning for a vacation, starting online businesses, and side hustles, just to name a few.

In addition, setting goals gives you the life you desire by taking action every day to accomplish the smaller tasks, and you will find the meaning of life and happiness after achieving the listed personal goals, which you set for yourself daily, monthly, and yearly.

People’s brains are wired differently, which impact the ways they think, and behave and the types of goals they set to achieve in their life. In other words, depending on an individual’s situation and needs- they may aim for different goals 

For this reason, the smart goals examples can be counted as paying down your home loan, getting your kids to private school, and traveling around the world. Other people may think the goals to achieve are to retire at 45, build a successful company and get a nice car like a Porsche 911.

After you visualize your goals, then the next step is to plan in more detail how you would to achieve those set goals: This goal-setting process is considered the fundamental framework for rolling out the map you are going to navigate to reach your final destination.

2. Be realistic about the goal you want to achieve

The second step is also important for achieving the goal because you have to be realistic about the types of goals you want to achieve in terms of time frame and resources.

Specifically, you must set a goal that aligns with your skill and time requirements, this is because, without the skills necessary or lack of timing, you won’t be able to reach the path of financial freedom.

Smart goal examples are as follows.

• let’s say your goal is to save up $3000 a month, but your monthly income is only around $4000, then you are gonna use $1000 left to cover your living expenses, bills, car insurance, and phone bill. 
• Or you plan for a vacation, and you need to save up $5000 this year for the vacation, your job is to track and eliminate all the big-spending blocks, which impact your saving ability such as cooking more at home, and canceling necessary subscription fees. A budget tool like Truebill is recommended to manage your budget and cancel unnecessary subscriptions.
• For this reason, you have to be realistic with the goal you want to achieve because it will allow you enough time and resources ( skills and knowledge) necessary to complete your desired goals.

3. Break down your goals into more manageable tasks- Importance of goal setting

Let’s move to the third part of the personal goals process, this is the time-setting goals process that must be broken into more manageable tasks, which can be easy to manage, and require you to take actions on a daily basis or weekly basis.

In order words,  this is called marginal improvement as it is a repetitive process in which you put your actions and effort in order to achieve the biggest outcome you desire.

Smart goals examples: when you set a goal to get your body fit- don’t think it only takes one day or a week to get the optimal results. In this case, you need to constantly go to the gym 5 days a week.  It works the same way as the magic of compounding interest because you are determined to get fit by hitting the gym almost every day. After a few months or 6 months, you will notice the outcome on your body.

This simple strategy is to create a small manageable task, which you only require to spend around 30 minutes each day to become a master sometimes after a period of time.

4. Set a deadline for each goal-Setting goals

The next part of the action plan is the deadline for each goal, you can set a specific timeframe with an action plan to achieve each goal.

This is because it will work as a reminder to put more pressure in order that you can feel the heat and take action to achieve the optimal result, otherwise, you will fail by not meeting the deadline you set for each goal.

5. Be flexible and accountable-Setting goals

I still remember Ray Dalio, the author of Principles for Success mentioned ” Almost nothing can stop you if you have flexibility and accountability.” After reading his quotes, I feel determined to work even harder to achieve the goals that I want to live my life.

By having a high level of flexibility and accountability, you will take responsibility for every action plan and goal you want to achieve as this is considered the most powerful aspect of the goal-setting process. This is because, without taking into consideration your flexibility and responsibilities, you won’t be able to move forward to achieve a higher outcome.

6. Take action -Setting Goals

After you have framed all the necessary steps, now is the time to take action around those set goals, where you have created a plan in detail on what actions should be taken to get you closer to those goals.

Through taking daily atomic behavior or actions, you will definitely build your identity in front of people and also be a master in specific skills you want to achieve.

For example, if you set a goal to become a professional tennis player, then you have to take marginal action in order to increase your skill level and have a better chance to win more matches.

This step is considered one of the most powerful because you are going nowhere if you don’t take action. Take action today to create your own identity and a clear future of what you want to achieve later in your life.

7. Review and reflection-Personal goals

The final piece of the action plan is a review and reflection. At this stage, after a period of time, you will take time to review what you have achieved so far and what you haven’t achieved.

By determining your strengths and weaknesses, you will reflect on the reasons and causes of the failure of achieving those goals, and be radically open-minded to fix those mistakes, which allow you to do better next time.

Conclusion

Remember, it doesn’t matter how many times you fail, the matter is how to stay resilient and keep working to overcome obstacles that block you along the way to achieving your goal. That is the difference between highly successful people and average. 

Importantly, books are also the most powerful tool to act as a mentor and they will help you to solve any problem you have. In particular, if you lack confidence then you can find a book that teaches you how to build your confidence. This is because the authors who wrote the books are considered an expert in the field they operate so reach out to the book then you will see plenty of opportunities in front of you.

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By Jiro Nguyen.

The content is only based on the author’s personal opinion and experience. It is for informational purposes only, and it does not rely on as a comprehensive or a substitute for professional advice.