Goals Setting: Reflective Essay

One time, I was talking to my students and they said: “Mrs. Jumana you always find ways to be optimistic about the future and that’s so beautiful but the reality is different, life is so hard! We’re living in a bad situation, we are surrounded by social and political crisis…... Look all around you, everything is a disaster and no one cares!”. At that moment, I was wondering. Who said life is easy? And why do we focus on the empty part of the glass and forget the water inside? Why are we used to exaggerate the situations, complain about the circumstances? Why don’t we focus on ourselves? On our qualities? Why are we always trying to change others and forget to focus on our inner potential that is responsible to make the change in our lives and as a result the change will reach the whole community? After reading a lot of books and reaching the ‘Setting Goals’ module I’ve got the answers to all the questions above.

Eleanor Roosevelt said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your own consent”. Yes! We are responsible to choose the way we live, we just need to respect our mind and give it the freedom to think, investigate, search and discover the solutions. If we invest in ourselves, we will gain confidence in our abilities, we will improve our skills, education, and experience and we will challenge our limits. As long as we believe in ourselves, others’ opinions shouldn’t matter. There is a quote that says: 'If you want love, give love. If you want the truth, be truthful. If you want respect, give respect”, and I add “If you want a successful life, work hard”. I believe that we are a perfect reflection of our hard work or our lack of work we put in. Working hard doesn’t mean to sacrifice what we love and live in pain. It means to enjoy each moment we work and celebrate our achievements when we meet our goals and solve our life problems using a continuous learning process.

Do you think that Bill Gates started Microsoft feeling comfortable about it? Bill Gates worked for ten years straight without taking a Day off to become what he is today. Weak people want to be great and move to the next level but, unfortunately, their actions don’t match their words. They work on upgrading their technology by having the newest version of cell phones and the newest apps and they forget to upgrade their mindset. They are so concerned about staying comfortable instead of growing and reaching higher because they don’t want to move behind their limitations. I met students who succeeded to create excuses for everything and failed to go beyond their expectations to challenge their limiting beliefs. I met lazy students and students that basked in that euphoria that everything is going to be ok. I met students that have only dreams and wishes and don’t have the tools to turn their dreams into goals. Thomas Carlyle said, “A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder”. The goal is a dream ready to occur. It’s what we want to achieve. It’s the light that brightens the darkness and helps us to meet our expectations.

Why People Don’t Set Clear Goals?

The first reason is ‘fear’ which is the biggest enemy. People may fear the failure, the unknown future, and the rejection or even they may fear the success that may lead to pain later on. Zig Ziglar says, “Fears have two meanings: forget everything and run or face everything and rise”. So, why people don’t learn how to face fear and stay stuck in a world of low self-esteem? Franklin Roosevelt says: “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith”. The second reason is how people see themselves. Low self-esteem is reflected by the way we talk, we wear, we behave, and we build relationships. It leads us to a feeling that we are not enough and the success cannot be ours it’s only for others. But the good news is that Low self- esteem is acquired thus it is changeable. But if we don’t change it, we will not see the value of setting goals even we won’t try it. The third reason is the delay. When we postpone something needed for today to do it on tomorrow or after tomorrow, we train our mind to be lazy until we never achieve any single goal. The fourth reason is our belief. Some people believe that setting a goal is a waste of time. Maybe there are some successful people who don’t set goals in their life but they face problems more than the ones who know exactly their goals. William Shakespeare says: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. The way you think about setting goals is the reason to live with or without them. The fifth reason is the lack of knowledge. That’s why 97% of the people don’t have action plans. Most of them want to set goals and so excited to do it but they don’t know exactly how. Therefore, they don’t take any step to move forward.

What Is the Importance of Having a Goal?

1. Self-control. When you have a specified plan of your goals, you will have a controlled life. So, whatever happens, you will manage it because it’s only you who knows the time you need to reach your goal then, you can face any obstacle.
2. Self-confidence. It will excel when you know more how to control your life. You will trust more your achievements and you will believe more in yourself and no one can stop you!
3. Self-esteem. Every experience will raise your self-esteem and helps you to be an open-minded person because you keep trying using new ideas then you will never decide to come back to use your previous habits.
4. Time-management. In your way to reach your goal, your focus will raise if you put a time frame to achieve it. The more you want to achieve your goals the more you have to be accurate using your time.
5. Enjoy a better life. When you do have an accurate plan and clear goals you will focus more on achieving them thus your passion will increase, you will feel happy and you will enjoy the journey. Franklin Roosevelt said: “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort”.

How Can a Coach Help the Client?

Coaching is about supporting the client, empowering their creativity to come up with the needed solutions to achieve their personal and professional goals easily. An effective coach helps the coachee to elicit their life purpose and maintain a balanced life by tackling the following subjects: health, personal life, personal development, the financial part, spiritual part. D. Peter G. Hanson tells us in his book ‘The Joy of Stress’ that the success is about giving the maximum effort to excel in all parts of life and the failure in any of the parts will influence our whole life. In order to be happy, you have to be sure that the balance of these parts is reached. So, how can a coach help the client to maintain this balance and discover his life purpose?

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The first is awareness raising. Sometimes people do things without thinking and don’t really notice their actions. Harry Lorayne (the memory techniques expert) said: 'In similar situations, it is called the non-presence of mind because we don’t observe and don’t pay enough attention”. Sometimes if we are working all day long, we don’t take care of ourselves even we don’t care about our family. The observation and attention are the first steps toward a balanced life. An effective coach uses their intuition to test where the client loses their focus.

Asking the right questions is very important. ‘Where are you now?’. The answer to this question will help the client to notice where the gap in their life is right now. What do you want? This question will identify many ways to balance their lives. ‘How do you have to perform to reach what you want?’. This question pushes the client to start thinking about the options to reach their goal. Like thinking about an online course, taking the family on a vacation or thinking about a friends’ gathering. Whatever was the option, they will be on the right track. 'What can you do right now to reach your goal?'. In this phase, the client is ready to act to reach their goal.

Determination of goals is very important but putting them in action is most important. So, the coach uses coaching techniques to encourage the client to start from today and act from this moment. What is the most important thing to you right now? The answer to this question will clarify the client’ values. By prioritizing their goals first, they have to build their values and determine what the most important thing to them is in every single sector of their life.

The coach must be able to help the client maintain the balance of their life and help them to set goals with respect to their values to live the happiness in life. If there is no alignment between your goals and your values, the negative vibes will fill your mind and heart. The client must also understand the difference between a goal that has an ending point and a continuous goal. The goal with an endpoint is like to lose 10 kg or find a job. These types of goals finish once they achieve them but the continuous goal is like planning for their lifestyle and draw the future of their relationships or to be in continuous progress which are goals that never end. The client must be aware to keep continuous goals.

Main Types of Goals

• Short-term goal: this goal needs between 15mn to 1 year like making a research, a plan for a meeting, a project, a course you want to attend or even clothes to buy. They are excellent tools to develop the goal setting.
• Intermediate goals: 1 year to 5 years like getting a certification, working on your professional development, change your car. They are an excellent continuation for the short-term goals and they help you to be committed to achieving your goals
• Long-term goals: they are kind of goals to live with like your relationships or how to maintain a healthy life.

The Most Important Concepts to Achieve a Goal

Goals are very important and won’t be achieved unless you want that. With goals you will live a purposeful life, you can live your dreams and face all the challenges. The greatest minds have goals and others have only desires. The coach helps the client to search for goals, plan for them and don’t give up unless they achieve them. After working on how to maintain balance in a client’s life based on their values and knowing all the three types of goals, the coach must be aware of the most important concepts to achieve a goal:

1. Client’s needs. The coach must help the client to know what they need in order to achieve a goal.
2. Set SMART goals. The coach helps the client to set specific, measurable, clear, agreed, realistic and time-framed goals. A goal without a limited time to achieve is nothing other than a desire. The more your goals are smart the more you are committed and excited to achieve them. Charles J. Givens said: “The more specific and measurable your goal, the more quickly you will be able to identify, locate, create and implement the use of the necessary resources for its achievement”.
3. Strong desire. The coach helps the client to unleash their passion since the passion and the desire must be very strong at a degree that no one can stop them to make it even themselves.
4. Visualization. A coach helps the client to visualize their dreams: Once they have a clear idea about what they want and a very high desire to achieve it then they need to transmit the message to their unconscious mind. The imagination is the link between the conscious and the unconscious mind. The more they imagine themselves clearly achieving their goal the more it will be stuck in the subconscious mind and becomes stronger. When you see yourself achieving your goal you will attract people, situations and opportunities which help you to reach your goal.
5. Making decisions. The coach will help the client to make decisions since they know exactly what do they want and they set smart goals that deserve to be achievable and have a strong desire to fulfill them in their subconscious mind.
6. Written goals. The coach encourages the client to write their goals which is an important step to achieve them. Brian Tracy says: «The more time you take to think and plan on paper the better results you will get and the faster you will get those results”. When you sit to write your goals, you used the physical strength and the brain concentration thus you focus on your goals and your subconscious mind repeats it. It’s another way to prove to yourself that you need them and it’s possible to achieve them.
7. Empowerment. The coach’s role is to empower their clients to discover their potential, capacities, and skills that can support them in their long journey to find solutions in advance and be ready with a strong defense system to face any obstacle. It’s not important how many times you fall down what matters is the number of times you get up.
8. Take action. To plan is very beautiful and to know exactly what you want is very powerful but if you don’t take action, you won’t reach your goal. Dreams are important but the way you put them in action will precise whether they will come true or not. Thomas Edison says: «You can’t realize your dreams unless you have one, to begin with”. The coach will help the client to take action and encourage them to accept the results in order to learn from mistakes and keep moving forward.
9. Plan evaluation. After the client takes action, the coach helps them to evaluate their plan and change it if changes are needed instead of being disappointed at the end.
10. Commitment. The client must be sure that the way of success and happiness always full of challenges. Walt Disney was committed to his goal and that was the reason behind his dreamland, Thomas Edison was committed and that was the reason behind the success of the electric lamp. The clients will understand that without commitment, they cannot have depth in anything in life.

Conclusion

In the end, it’s a closed circle, commitment means discipline and hard work which was the starting point of my setting goals essay. Setting goals is a way to fuel our life purpose and it’s not just about creating a plan and being committed to, it’s also about the inspiration to achieve things we never thought possible to achieve.