So how do you avoid that? How can you guarantee your success and achieve your goals? Just follow a few simple steps and you're well on your way!

The act of goal setting is a process that begins with clearly defining what is important to you. It is much more than SMART goals or simply writing down a "to do" list on paper. Goal setting is a character development, a utilization of life skills that helps you look into the future. It allows you to decide on a target, develop a specific plan of action and gives you a specific date for completion. It is a map that, when followed precisely, ensures you will reach your destination.

Step one is to make sure that your goal is something that is worthwhile to you, something that you are motivated about, something that you REALLY want to achieve!   This may sound inane, but you'd be surprised how many people set goals that are something other people want them to achieve, are something they have very little interest in, and are hard-pressed to get motivated over. If your goal is going to take some hard graft to achieve over a very long haul, this is a very important point: Make sure that your goal is something that you are really motivated to achieve.

Part of that motivation is going to come from really being able to see clearly in your mind's eye not only what your goal is, but also how it will feel and what it will be like to have achieved it. You have to visualize your goals before you can achieve them. Visualizing your goals involves firstly writing out a clear list of everything that you would like to achieve and then putting a time frame on each of these goals. Then you need to create a vivid image in your mind (and feeling in your heart) of what it will feel like after this goal has been achieved. Many people use either a vision board or a mind-movie to achieve this. You can run a Google search for websites that will help you manifest these and I can assure you that both products are terrific! However, something as simple as a picture cut out of a magazine and pinned to a bulletin board or stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet will work. Again, you are just looking to create a very clear picture in your mind's eye of what it will be like to have achieved your goal and you want to keep that in front of you all the time. The more prominently displayed the better.

Visualize your goals daily: when you visualize you materialize! What you think about you bring about! Visualizing daily will keep you on track with your dreams and goals and fuel the excitement still deep inside you, which in return, will yield success.

But, goal setting is a combination of using the mind and body, mental and physical techniques, thoughts and actions. It is a process. So far, we've mostly utilized the skills of the mind and now it is time to bring the body into play. It's time to write down those all important goals we've been talking about.

Goals or objectives need to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable (and Agreed), Realistic and Time-bound to ensure that results will be achieved in the timescales involved. SMART objectives are challenging, and allow progress and success to be measured against pre-determined benchmarks. If your objectives are not SMART, they can cause confusion and resentment instead of providing motivation and direction. So let's discuss each of these elements briefly, to ensure that we will achieve success in our goal setting venture.

Goals need to be specific. Often we set goals that are so vague, it's nearly impossible to judge whether we hit them. For example, a statement like "I will lose weight" is too obscure. How will you know if and when you've reached your goal? Saying, "I will lose five pounds before the 30^th of this month" is more specific. At the end of the month it will be a simple matter of getting on the scale. 

Additionally, by saying, "I'm going to stop smoking," you could be setting yourself up for a fall. While this goal has the appearance of being specific, it also focuses on the negative, making it very difficult for your subconscious mind to form a target it can aim at. Instead, visualize in your mind's eye what it would be like to be a non-smoker. How does it feel? (I can run and play with my children and not have to struggle for breath.) How does it smell? How does it taste? How does it look? Etc. Involve all of your senses in this exercise. Focus on and clearly visualize the positive benefits you will receive and now formulate your goal statement. Perhaps it may sound something like, "It is January 15^th (or whatever date is 6 weeks from today, for example) and I am healthy and smoke-free. I enjoy playing with my children and my lungs are healthier than ever. I enjoy the rich taste of foods and the vibrant smells of things I haven't experienced in years." Etc. In setting your goals, focus on the benefits, rather than the negative (the weight or the smoking). You are much more likely to strive to achieve something positive than something negative.

The "M" in SMART, stands for measurable. You've seen in the previous examples how we've been putting a date on each of our goals. After all, how would we otherwise know if we had achieved it? Or even had an incentive to achieve it? A goal without measurability is basically a wish. "Someday, I'd like to be rich." Hmmm.. what is rich? It means something different to each individual. And when is someday? I don't see it in my calendar. So, goals need to be measurable. For example, many of us want to increase our number of contacts. But, "making new contacts" is an ambiguous statement. A clearer objective is "I will attend four networking events each month and connect with one person at each." It's a simple, concrete goal. And measurable. This makes it easy for you to know if you hit your target.

Attainable goals should be just that… attainable, achievable. However, they should also be challenging....and streeeeeeeeeeeetch you or your small business.  Man is meant to be stretched. And the only way to do that is to work slightly outside your comfort zone. But if your SMART objectives are too much of a stretch, you will give up, demotivated and morale will suffer. As a result, you will hesitate to set future goals, thinking that they are unachievable anyway, so why bother. The best way to measure achievability is to examine whether this goal will cause you to have to seriously stretch yourself in order to reach it, but not so much that it scares you to death.

Another way to create achievability is to take a very large, and possibly scary, goal and break it down into much smaller, do-able, goals that you can focus on, which once achieved will deliver that much larger elephant of a goal. For example, lets say I've always dreamed of climbing Mount Everest. At this moment in time, I am a lethargic couch potato and if pressed to begin the climb today, would likely be scared of, not only failure, but also death.

However, this does not mean that my goal isn't achievable. If I put a date on it of, say, 5 years from today, I begin to think "Well, maybe it's possible. But I've got a heck of a lot of work to do between now and then to get ready!"

If I then begin to break it down into even smaller goals, like join a fitness program, join a mountaineering group to learn the necessary skills, climb several smaller mountains in the next 2 years, etc., I begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel and think, "Yes I can do this!" As the saying goes, if you're going to eat an elephant, do it one bite at a time.

Use short-range goals to achieve long range plans. Goal setting is much like climbing a mountain. The long range goal of reaching your main goal (the mountain top) requires strategic short-term goal setting.

The other "A" in SMART is "agreed". If your goal involves a team, as it inevitably would if it were a business goal, but may also be if it were a personal goal that required a strong support network, then make sure that goal is agreed with the rest of the team. Many of us can relate to Management having set a goal, but never bothering to check if it is something we can practically achieve or would even want to. We're then left with the demoralizing task of having to carry out the motions of looking like we're trying to achieve an unattainable goal that we have no interest in, in the first place. So, if your goal requires teamwork, make sure that the whole team sits down to discuss the practical realities of what the goal will take to achieve it and that everyone buys into the agreed plan. You will much more assured of success if you pay attention to this one little step.

In this discussion with your team, or in the visualizing and planning stage in your own head, you will inevitably stumble upon the "R" of SMART - realistic.   How realistic is this goal that you wish to set for yourself or your team? When we were children, there was no limit to our imaginations. We believed we could do anything. And if I put my child's hat back on today, I would set myself a goal of establishing colonies on the moon and other planets within my lifetime. If I take the child's hat off, I can see that realistically, technology is getting closer to making this goal a possibility, but that my own practical knowledge of such things is too far under-developed to make this achievable in my own lifetime.  The learning curve, for me, would be way too steep.  Realistically, I am better off leaving this vision to those with more knowledge about such things than I and focusing my own goals on areas that, while stretching me to reach, are more practically do-able for me.

Finally, we come to the "T" in SMART, which refers to time. Have you associated a time-frame with our goals? If not, how will you know when to achieve them? How will you muster up the motivation to carry through the difficult phases if there is no time limit? It would be too easy to adopt a mañana attitude, putting off actions because there is no urgency. Put enough actions off long enough and your goal becomes relegated to pipedream status. So make sure your goals are time bound in order to succeed.

Everyone has dreams. What separates dreamers from achievers is the setting of goals. Making goals is the first step to taking action. And once you start taking action, your dreams become a reality. The major difference between people that are achieving their goals, regardless of the status of the economy, and those who are not, is that the latter haven't effectively applied these steps in a positive, constructive way yet. So follow these steps for goal setting, then take action and watch your dreams become a reality. You can do it!

© 2009, Shelley Dudley, Life Coach and Small Business Consultant