Goal setting is such a great part of achieving success in every area of your life. Goals help you to focus your energy, enthusiasm, thinking and action and can help give this focus direction.
How do you know what to do if you don’t know what you want!
Goals help us be proactive rather than reactive to events that happen in our lives. If you want to set goals there are a couple of models you can use to help with the process. One of these I’ve learned recently is the GROW model. This stands for Goal, Reality, Options and Way forward.
Goal:
If you can brainstorm a number of goals you would like to achieve with no limits to what’s possible this starts the Goal setting phase. Ask yourself powerful questions like “If you knew you couldn’t fail what would you do?” and other powerful questions that help you overlook any possible limits. When this goal is really specific we can move the next stage, the Reality of the goal.
Reality:
The reality of the goal is the starting point, where you’re at right now, and helps to test this goal. Having a coach to work through these stages will help a lot as the coach will help to see clearly the situation at the moment. With this understanding and awareness, this perception shifts to see possibilities, where there didn’t appear to be any before.
Options:
Next stage is coming up with a list of possibilities of things you can do. This is like a brainstorming session. For example, if your goal is to lose weight an option might be to go for a walk every morning before you go to work. Again the more options you come up with give you the most power as you have more things to choose from. When this list is focused to a smaller number to focus on we can move to the next stage, the Way forward.
Way forward:
Way forward stage is once the options have been selected from the clarifying stage the next course of action is to come up with an action plan – what you’re going to do now towards your goal. At this stage you must be committed to your goal.
Use a model like the SMART model to focus these goals i.e. – making the goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Bound.
Next we go out and put in place this plan and achieve our goals!
Let me know what goals you’ve achieved from using a model like this!
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