Set your goals

We all have dreams but how do we get them out of our head and into reality? You know it is possible to live your dream, and setting goals will help you do it.

Setting goals means sitting down for a while and planning what you want to do with your life. Goals help you build your confidence, giving you the zing to aim even higher. Goals motivate you now and give you a map for your future.

First up, you gotta come up with some long term goals, you know the biggies - to be a lawyer, a painter, an Olympic athlete, an actress. If you reckon you can't think of any, ask yourself this, what would you do if you knew you cannot fail?

Once you've decided on a few key long-term goals, you can then build short and medium term goals to help you get there. Let's say it's your secret dream to find a cure for cancer, that is your long-term career goal. OK for that you probably need to become a medical scientist, do a medicine or bio-chemistry degree and then postgraduate research. So to do that you need to do well at school to get into med school. You need to take sciences and maths. Not so good at maths at present? OK, maybe you need to do your homework! You could also get some tutoring.

So your immediate goals could be-
1. to do my maths homework
2. to ask the teacher for help on the hard bits
3. to improve my test scores by 15 percent

Your medium term goal could be-
1. to score well enough in NCEA to get into Med school

Long term goal-
1. to get a research job at a medical science lab researching cancer cures

If you're not sure now what you need to do to achieve your goal, talk to someone who does. Find someone in the position you want to get to and ask how they did it. Use them as a mentor. You can also do some research by getting books out of the library, maybe surf the net.

You can set goals for all areas of your life - creative, career, family, fitness, finances, and fun (a great goal would be to save the money to buy that snowboard and season pass!).

Once you've started thinking of some long term goals, its time to get to the nitty-gritty and WRITE THEM DOWN: "the difference between a goal and a dream is the written word" (Gene Donohue). By writing your goals down, they become more specific and give you focus. The more focused you are, the more likely you are to achieve. So get a notebook and pen, and make your goals SMART:

Specific - write down detailed goals that are positive, positive, positive!
Measurable - make sure you'll know when you get there by being able to measure your progress. Have mini-points on the way to celebrate and keep you motivated.
Achievable - Set goals that you can realistically achieve. It isn't realistic to be an Olympian in two months. Give yourself proper timeframes and targets that you can meet. At the same time, don't set goals that are too easy, there's no satisfaction in that. Revise -

Revise your goals from time to time to keep yourself focused.
Time limit - Give yourself a few deadlines - other wise Mr Pro Crastinator might be round to party.

When planning your goals, make sure that they are really YOU want, not what you think your friends and family might want for you. And do this for yourself - it's about your performance not the outcome. If your goal is to win the school cross country, you might not make it because of something random like bad weather. That would be frustrating. But if your goal is to run your personal best time in the cross country then you can. It's all about you.

Don't be too keen to share your goals with everyone either, sometimes people can be a bit negative when you aim high, better to keep them to yourself and stay super positive.

Does it sound waaay too hard? Just start with a few, you don't need to plan every aspect of your life right away and prioritise. Make sure you give yourself regular rewards - what about your own star chart? Say one of your immediate goals is to do 15 minutes piano practice a day, give yourself a star on the calendar each day you make it. Seeing all those stars plastered all over your calendar is really motivating!

Now that you've got your goals written down, you need to 'visualise' them. They will be super-exciting - they should bring a smile to your face and make you feel awesome when you imagine meeting them!!! Keep your notebook or journal handy so you can look at them at bedtime - in the morning and in the evening. Read what you're going to achieve then close your eyes and see it, imagine yourself finishing the race in that amazing time, graduating from med school, taking a bow before an audience of thousands. or whatever your dream may be.

Write it, read it, see it, DO IT!
RIGHT NOW is the time to start setting some goals and turn your dreams into reality!!!