Sep

Criteria 2: All goals must be challenging.

Hi how are you? I hope you have found my previous post beneficial to you. Today, I am looking at the second criteria in our series for Goals Setting.

Must all goals be challenging?

When setting goals, it will benefit us if we are to set at least 2 main goals, some being an easy goal and at least one challenging goal. The challenging goal is needed as it will stretch us and enable us to do better than what we thought we are capable of doing. You could have several easy goals and several challenging ones but we should limit the number of the challenging goals due at any one time to prevent yourself from being frustrated or overwhelmed. The purpose of having the easy goals is to build good habits of follow-through and reward yourself with quick gratification of achieving some of your goals. The purpose of the challenging ones forces us to stretch and grow. A good mix of the two is ideal.

The other way to look at this is to set 1 challenging goal and break it up into some minor (easy) goals, to be used as stepping stones. After you have achieve the minor (easy) goals, you can then set your eyes on the next easy goal.

Example:

To do a makeover of your room in 5 days. (Challenging Goal)

(1) Day 1: Move out all the furniture in your room, sweep, clean the floor and ceilings. (Minor or Easy Goal 1)

(2) Day 2: Apply a coat of white paint as a underlying coat of paint for your walls and ceiling. Go through your items that have been shifted outside. Throw away things that you do not require anymore. (Minor or Easy Goal 2)

(3) Day 3: Apply a coat of finishing paint (whatever color that you have chosen for your room) on your walls and ceiling. Clean up your furniture focusing on all the hidden corners to ensure that all dust and dirt are cleaned away. (Minor or Easy Goal 3)

(4) Day 4: Bring in all the furniture that you have chosen and arrange the other items into their respective places. (Minor or Easy Goal 4)

(5) Day 5: Take a good look at your room and rearrange whatever items that may be out of place. (Minor or Easy Goal 5)

In the above simple example, can you see how easy it is for you to achieve your challenging goal? Especially if the room is very messy in the first place. By having minor goals (Stepping Stones), they ensure that you are heading towards your challenging goal little by little. It will also give you immediate gratification and satisfaction as each day passed, instead of waiting for 5 days when you have achieved your main goal of a complete makeover of your room. At the same time, it pushes you towards your challenging goal, sometimes even without you knowing it.

I hope you have learnt some pointers today, and helped you in setting good goals for yourself.

Till we meet again in two days’ time.

JUICE!