The Guide to Goals

Setting goals for yourself is very important to making any change. When making a change, goals provide us our only insite into whether we are successfull or not. Without them we would have nothing to motivate us to move forward.

Often times, when people fail to make a change, it isn't because they couldn't accomplish the change. Instead they fail because they fail to see the progress they are making toward their goal and get frustrated. Because of this we need to break our big goals into smaller pieces that we can accomplish fairly easily.

For example, if I were building a house, I couldn't build the whole thing at once. First I have to build a foundation, but I can't just drop in a foundation all at once, I can only lay the foundation one block at a time. Once the foundation is done, I could build the frame of the house one board at a time.

In the same way, I can't instantly become comfortable in every social situation I might encounter. I have to break it down into smaller pieces that can be accomplished more easily and break those into smaller pieces that I can accomplish.

I would break the overall goal into smaller ones like saying "Hi" to everyone, approaching people to ask questions, opening more complicated conversations. If I didn't think I could approach someone and say "Hi" the first time, I would break that goal into smaller goals that lead up to it like nodding at the person, beginning to walk in their direction, and finally saying "Hi" as I passed them.

The whole point is to have goals that you can accomplish because accomplishing something is being successfull. If you're contantly failing to accomplish your goals, you will lose motivation, but if you are normally successfull at the smaller goals you will feel more motivated toward and able to accomplish your larger goals.