Wake Up..

Top of the day to you all. I hope we all are good, happy, still grinding, feeling motivated and are constantly and consistently making the effort to achieve our goals, most especially our goals for 2022. We are in the fourth month of the year and the year is moving and waiting for no one. It then begs the question , how much for ourselves have we achieved? How much of our goals are we currently working on achieving? Progress report? Have we even started doing anything about our goals? Did you even set any goal?

With every new beginning comes expectations we place on ourselves (sometimes society places it on us) and it may require actionable steps to meet such expectations. For some, it could be to finish with a 4.0 GPA by the end of the academic year or to lose or gain a certain amount of weight. Different expectations for different people at different times depending on different needs we may have. In the light of that, we make the decision to set goals and objectives for ourselves to meet these expectations.  We map out different strategies and imagine how we are going to get there. 

All in all, it starts with a desire to want something for ourselves, then we put in the work to achieve it. 

But the thing about setting goals is that they aren't just set like that. A lot of consideration is put into deciding which and which is to be achieved. Take for instance, one sets a goal to gain an extra 200 pounds in one or two days or hope to run 100m in  9.58 seconds in just a week of training. The end points are good and hopefully achievable but the timing is totally off and would it be much of a goal if it is totally unrealistic? Hence, the need for you to even understand what a goal is and how to set  realistic goals that could be met.

A goal, according to Dictionary.com,  is an objective or target that a person is trying to reach or achieve. It could also be target or aim you have in mind to get to. As simple as it sounds, what guides or greatly influence the possibility of success or its achievement is how much the goal aligns with reality. Like I earlier stated above, to achieve what you have in mind, it has to be realistic. One way to achieve this is by attaching realistic time frames to what you intend to achieve.  Like the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day, so things require time to achieve and that should be recognised when setting goals. 

Another thing to be considered is that your goal should be specific. It's not enough for you to decide to gain some weight by the next quarter. You have to include the specific amount, maybe 5kg or 15 pounds etc depending on what you want. What this helps to do is make your goal feel more concrete, achievable and helps to streamline your focus. It's easy to focus on a target that can be seen or perceived. In the animal kingdom when big cats hunt for their food, they do so by focusing on just one game and losing sight of the large number of preys that could be in sight. They see and know what they want and they go for them. 

Last but not the least, which should have been placed above anything is that your goals should be written down somewhere.  For me, I write my goals on paper and paste it on a wall. A lot of times, I type them out on my phone or laptop. For me, this helps me not to forget my goals. I can always go back to monitor my progress.

In conclusion, we all know what will make us happy. To achieve these things,  we need to set realistic, specific, time-conscious and written goals. It takes them from being a mere imagination to a probable possibility of reality.

Thanks for reading.