Give Yourself Realistic Achievable Goals By Mark Yarrobino At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

One of the most common hurdles that I’ve seen people face when trying to make positive changes in their lives is the tendency to set unrealistic goals for themselves. Goals that aren’t really achievable in the amount of time that they’ve allotted.

And that often leads to frustration and a feeling of failure, and eventually, giving up.

In a previous article, I talked about the need to view your personal development in steps, rather than as one huge task to accomplish. And how taking that first step can be the hardest thing to do. Well, now I want to talk about all of the steps that come after that first step.

The key is to continue to think of them as small steps to be taken one at a time. And to do that you have to give yourself realistic goals that can be achieved at a realistic pace.

It doesn’t do you any good to expect yourself to finish something in one day if it’s really going to take two or three days. In that case, you need to break the project down into smaller steps that can be completed each day, and then break that down into what can be completed in a few hours, and so on.

Once you start finishing tasks and scratching them off of your list, you’ll start to feel encouraged by what you’ve accomplished, and that positive feeling will keep you going into the next step and the next one after that, and so on. And, believe it or not, you’ll actually get to your desired end much faster this way.

Keep in mind that I’m not trying to get you to spread your work out so far that you hardly ever get anything done. The goal is to be realistic in what you can do in any given amount of time. And it’s going to be different for everyone. So don’t get discouraged if your friend works faster than you do. This isn’t a race. It’s about what’s best for you.

So, as an example, let’s say you want to find a new job. A realistic goal isn’t going to be doubling your income by the end of the week. Instead, a realistic first goal might be to speak to someone at a job placement firm, and setting up an appointment. Then the next step is to go in for your appointment and talk to them about your resume and work experience and what to say during your interviews. Then maybe redoing your resume, if needed. Then going on some interviews. And so on. I’m sure I’m not getting that exactly right, and I’m probably leaving out some steps, but the main point is still there.

It’s great to have a long term goal, such as doubling your income, but you can’t reasonably expect that to happen faster than it’s going to happen. And getting discouraged and frustrated by the time it takes is only going to sabotage your growth and development.

Once again, I can relate this to my own martial arts training. I’ve seen a lot of people leave the school after only a few classes, or maybe a month or so. I know it’s not true of everyone who leaves so quickly, but I think that for a lot of them, they realized that they weren’t going to become a kung fu master by tomorrow. And they didn’t want to put in the hard work, or take any of the incremental steps required to get to that level, so they left, frustrated and disappointed. And now they’re not learning anything.

Their goals were unrealistic. And they sabotaged their own development as a result. If they had stayed with it, they could be very far along in their training by now.

So to get back to my main point, set up a realistic schedule for yourself with realistic goals in a realistic time frame. And let every small bit of positive achievement encourage you to keep working. You’ll get where you need to be before you know it.

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