Advantages of Setting Life Goals

They say goals are dreams with deadlines. So true in today’s world, where more and more people feel that their years just skipped out of their life. Life is totally dependent on time and happiness is dependent on time management. Many teachers and parents ask their children to set life goals during their teenage years, but this doesn’t help much because the people in question do not understand goals, forget about its importance.

Criteria while Setting Life Goals

It is very important to analyze ourselves before setting our life’s goals. Goals should not be made in terms of money. Write (don’t just think) your strengths, weakness, likes and dislikes on a piece of paper. Take your parent’s or friends’ opinion as well.

Why is Setting Life Goals Important?

Consider this: You have a task at hand of writing a book.

  • The first scenario involves writing when you like where you write in the form for one single book, from first line to the last line.
  • The second option involves dividing the book into a number of chapters (say 20 chapters for a 200 page book) and writing one chapter at a time.

Now even if you don’t take the time taken to complete the book into consideration, which method would you choose if convenience is the factor? Most of us would choose the second option as this way you have delegated a big goal in life into many small goals(steps actually). You can even put some deadlines for each small step.

The first option also works for some, but there is a major chance that your book won’t complete even when you become a senior citizen. That is what happens to a person who doesn’t set goals and goes with the flow. Going with the flow is okay but you stand the risk of getting pulled in many directions at the same time.

Handling Frustration by Setting Life Goals

We become frustrated at some point of life. Why? The reason being we don’t plan properly. Consider this – you want to become a film director. It is obvious that this would take time, so you delegate what you want in small steps.

  • 2 years to learn via a film course for direction
  • 5 years to work as an assistant under a film director
  • 3 years as a backup ( miscellaneous causes)

So the minimum time is 10 years. The reason why people get frustrated is that most of them don’t plan and suddenly after 4 years, they feel lost. A person who knows that a particular thing takes 10 years won’t cry at the end of the 4th year. Hence, our frustrations are connected with planning and setting life goals.

Some tips which would help you while you set goals for your life are mentioned below

  • First things first- analyze yourself to know what you want. This way you don’t have to start all over again after some years.
  • Be patient. The biggest shortcut is the straight road.
  • Analyze your progress and take steps for deviations.
  • Have positive attitude and work with all your heart.
  • Keep role models, analyze their life and get inspired.
  • Remind yourself about your goals and the deadlines. Even if you don’t succeed try again.
  • Learn to dream

Lastly, always remember that your goals are your ladders in the game of snakes and ladder commonly called as life.