The Importance of Goal Setting
Goal setting is an important aspect in both your professional and personal lives. Without having goals, you are unable to measure your success or achievements. You cannot improve yourself. Setting goals is also beneficial for your health and wellbeing but what exactly are the benefits of setting goals?
1. Control
By regularly setting goals and achieving them you are taking control of your life. This is important because you are acknowledging that life doesn’t ‘just happen’. There is actually a great deal that you can do to create the life you want and get it moving in the direction you desire.
2. Optimism
Along with the feeling of control when you make goals and plans and then start to achieve them, you will gain a more positive and optimistic outlook. This positivity will prove very powerful as it will help you build resilience. This will help you keep going when things might seem tough or you encounter a block.
Instead of feeling defeat or that you can’t go on, your new found resilience and optimism will ensure that you see that the situation is temporary and that you have the power to find a way to overcome it.
3. Wellbeing
Through goal setting you will have created a plan for your life. In your mind you’ve created a vision of what you want and worked out a way to get there. This sense of purpose gives you a feeling of hope that you can achieve what you want.
These are all positive emotions and have powerful effects on your mental and physical wellbeing. Stress levels will be reduced, as will the likelihood of depression emerging. While you are working towards achieving your goals, you will increase your levels of focus and your ability to use it at will to help you get the results you want.
4. Flow State
The regular setting of meaningful goals ensures that you maximize opportunities to utilize the power of flow. The flow state occurs when:
- you have a meaningful goal
- position yourself away from distractions
- have all the necessary resources at hand
- have matched the task to your abilities so that it contains enough challenge to keep you motivated and engaged but
- not too little so that you become bored and
- immerse yourself in the task completely.
This state not only helps you achieve goals but it increases your productivity, relieves stress and increases happiness. The benefits of the flow state have been recorded by Mihly Cskszentmihlyi, a positive psychologist.
By having goals, you are increasing your chances of success. You are also taking positive steps to creating the life or business that you want.
While it may seem like a lot of effort it really isn’t and the benefits outweigh any time spent creating, monitoring and meeting them. This is because you will find yourself feeling more productive, optimistic, proactive and successful.
Leave a Reply