06.05.2024

The mastery of setting goals

Goals create a psychological link between a person's present and future selves. Setting goals gives a sense of leading a meaningful and fulfilling life. Among the proven benefits of goal setting is increased self-esteem and a sense of control over what is happening. Challenging goals instill focus and drive and allow distractions to be dealt with.

Not all goals are the same, however. Pursuing different goals requires a different approach.

Types of targets

Personal goals provide strong motivation and make the little daily hassles that everyone faces in their lives seem less important. The placement of priorities and emphasis on important things is of increasing importance.

The pursuit of achievement is about long-term goals related to achieving mastery in a given field. Such goals could be obtaining a university degree or specializing in a particular subject. Other personal achievement aspirations might be successfully completing a marathon.

Another group of goals is the striving for belonging. Such social goals may be to join a meaningful group or to gain recognition from a society of which one is a part.

The quest for power a connection with the achievement of leadership positions and the ambition to climb the hierarchy in the company.

Barriers to their achievement

Each person has a prioritization of goals, as some goals are always more urgent than others. Some require immediate attention, while others are more long-term and are not worked on daily. That's when the urgent tends to supersede the important. More often than not, one chooses to deal first with tasks of less real importance but greater apparent urgency. It should be borne in mind that the implementation of important priorities is more likely to have higher benefits than the small but seemingly urgent problems that arise every day.

Another barrier to achieving the goals is the lack of knowledge on how to approach the topic and begin the implementation of the goal. Losing motivation also hurts a lot, especially with long-term goals where progress is slow and difficult.

Perfectionism is another potential barrier for some people, especially those who set a very high bar for the goals they expect to achieve and how quickly they expect to achieve them.‎ In such cases, an unnecessarily large focus is placed on what went wrong instead of to celebrate the small achievements reached on the way to the goal.

Overcoming the barriers they organize leads to a greater likelihood that the set goals will be achieved more quickly.