12 Steps on How to Get Crystal Clear Clarity on Your Goals
Setting goals can be a daunting task, especially when the goal is life changing and requires long term commitment for completion.
For most of us, setting long term goals or coming up with New Year resolutions is the fun part, but when you actually have to make short term changes to ultimately achieve the goal, that’s when things start to get tricky.
So to make it easier for you, this list of 12 steps has been prepared, which basically answers the question of how to get clarity on your goals? This essential step will help you pursue specific goals taking you closer to achieving your ultimate dream.
Step 1 : Get a paper and write down
To gain clarity on your goals, let’s begin with the basics. You might feel stuck and wanting to find clarity about where to begin to achieve your goal.
To avoid confusion, grab a pen and paper, sit down on your desk and start writing each and every thought that comes into mind. This will help you overcome your brain fog and find clarity about what your goal can be.
Step 2 : You have to be specific
Once you have written down all the possible thoughts and idea on a paper, you now have a better understanding about where you stand.
Out of these thoughts, you can identify a single specific goal
Make sure that you are specific because research states that when you know exactly what you want, chances of actually achieving it increases rapidly.
For example, instead of setting goals for exercising more, set a specific goal of going out at least once a day for a walk.
Step 3 : Why is it a goal?
If you’ve reached the third step, you need to evaluate your decisions up till now. The way you do this is by asking yourself the simple question ‘why is this goal important to me?’
If you have a credible answer and feel motivated to achieve your goal, then you should go to the next step or else begin again and find a goal that meets your vision.
Ideally, you should be highly pumped about your goal and cannot wait to get started. However, being realistic, it is likely that you will be scared or feel that you are not equipped to achieve the certain goal.
If this happens, still go to the next step because your negative mind set does not mean you cannot attain your dream, it only means you have to work on your mentality as well
Step 4 : Brainstorm for ideas
By this step, you have a goal that you imagine being a stairway to success and are deeply focused on achieving it. Now you brainstorm for ways you can get to the goal
To give you an example, let’s assume you have a career goal in mind.
At this step, you brainstorm ways, you can get a promotion, become a high achiever, show commitment to your workplace and get over any distractions.
But why are we brainstorming? Well research has found that with brainstorming a person can realize their true potential and reflect on their commitment towards a long term goal.
Step 5 : Make it an actionable plan
After you brainstorm, you need to decide your priorities. This means divide your goal into areas, which highlight different aspects of the goal and helps you list down your priorities.
If you have a health goal you want to achieve, you can break it down into physical health, mental health, role of your family, budget your health goals by deciding the amount of money you want to spend and so on.
The purpose of doing so is to divide and conquer your goal, giving you a greater chance of being successful at it.
Step 6 : Set a Deadline
Now that you have your divided short term goals in writing, the clarity helps to specify a timeline for the long term goal.
Give yourself smaller deadlines for each small goal and an overall deadline for the time by which you want to accomplish your goal for a job, business, career, health, family, friends or any other progress.
Setting a deadline will help you pursue your goal without fear of distractions.
Step 7 : Begin with tangible changes
When you think about how to get clarity on your goals, you have to focus on tangible changes that need to be made for you to attain your goals.
Visualize that your goal is towards your relationship with your body and you have to create a body positively in your thinking.
You can make tangible changes by avoiding people that spread negativity, unfollow people on social media and avoid making comparisons
Step 8 : Consult an expert
Up till now we have discussed goals that are feasible to be planned and executed by one’s own self. However, if your goal is in regards to your career or even if your health, then you should be consulting a professional.
A professional will help you breakdown your one goal into smaller ones, they will help you put your energy in a productive manner that effectively aids you in meeting your goals.
With this step, you will make yourself accept that you are not an expert on all things.
Step 9 : Make it a habit
By this step, you have received an answer on how to get clarity on your goals? You have followed all the steps of breaking it down, justifying your goal and becoming specific through short term goals.
This is why, you have gained somewhat of a clarity about what needs to be done.
Therefore, your next step is to gain clarity of habit, by making your goals a part of your life in routine.
If you want to save money, then make a habit of putting a certain amount away as soon as you receive your pay check.
If you have passion for exercise, then make it a habit to go to the gym at least 3 times per week and so on.
Step 10 : Let your loved ones know
Simply put, you work better when you have a healthy support system surrounding you.
Based on a scientific study, it has been found that people who have healthy and supportive loved ones, are more grounded, have an innate confidence in themselves, their self-esteem is high and they have positive relationships with others.
So, if your loved ones play such an important part in your life, why not include them in your goal setting and goals as well?
Start by telling your wife or your girlfriend, if you are younger you can tell your parents or your siblings, then proceed to involve your friends, and in the end you will have a healthy support system.
Even if you forget to meet some short term goal, your support system will then hold you accountable.
Step 11 : Change your mentality
To gain clarity in your goals, it is not only important to be clear and concise in goal setting, but your mentality plays a critical role in allowing you to make any real changes.
If you begin your journey towards a dream goal with negativity and thinking you won’t be able to do it, then it is inevitable that you will fail. Instead, work on your mentality in regards to your goal.
Remind yourself that you are strong enough to make changes and sustain them to reach your goals. As time passes, you will only get better at sticking to your habits and before long you will have achieved your goal.
Step 12 : Review your results
In this final step on how to gain clarity in your goals, it is vital to review and reflect on what you have done. Your review process can be done at the end or you can review your monthly or weekly progress
So as an example, let’s assume that your goal is to perform better at your workplace because you want to gain a promotion.
You can review your performance by going through your routine at work at the end of each week, identifying the errors you made and when your boss looked happy with you.
This will help you overall to gain an insight into your work, making you better equipped to meet your goals.
Conclusion
The total of these 12 steps on how to gain clarity in your goals is meant to serve as a reminder that a part of achieving your goals is to have the motivated mentality to make swift changes and being comfortable with life changes that need to be made in order to accomplish the goal.
Once you have read through these steps, my next suggestion would be to use it as a template, have your goal in mind and then proceed each step and what needs to be done to get your goal.
To make it easier, you can follow the examples that have been given and divide your goal, justify the reason for the goal, set deadlines, do budgeting, work on your mentality, consult a professional, talk to loved ones and finally review your results.
