by Denise Ingabire-Smith
Setting goals and achieving them is a common habit of so many successful people. In many cases, we track our progress through our accomplishments. Setting goals however should not be a definite process, making sure that our goals are evolving with our growth is a great way to keep us motivated. Setting goals that are able to evolve with our growth ensures that reaching a goal is not a stopping point. It helps us make sure that our goals are not only attainable but are also in alignment with our current purpose. Having goals that evolve is a very crucial tool to develop especially if one values personal growth in every aspect of life. From personal experience I have found that the following tips will help you to make sure that your goals are evolving alongside you and that they lead you to the intended destination in your life.
- Allow your dreams room to grow. Often time we get too stuck on our old ways of doing things. We evolve as human beings, our life situations change but our goals still follow our old mentality. Life itself is full of lessons, assuming that your goals will stay unchanged for a whole year is a set up for stagnation. Just because at the time we set the goal we knew less than what we know now, we should make sure that our changes and new knowledge are reflected within our goals; allowing our goals to grow with us and keeps them up-to-date to match our evolving selves.
- Welcome new adventures on the way.
Setting goals should not derail you from enjoying the process and learning from it along the way. On many occasions the route we thought was going to lead us to a certain destination ends up being the wrong one. Being flexible in how to reach our main destination can open up a lot of new adventures and successes that we didn’t anticipate. This also help expand our boundaries and enriches our life experiences. - Check up on the purpose of your goals from time to time.
When we set a goal we should always have a reason in mind why we chose this specific goal.
I can’t tell you how many time I jotted down a goal that was to lead me to a predetermined destination in life and halfway down the road my life unexpectedly changed and I found myself still trying hard to accomplish a goal whose purpose didn’t benefit my new destination. The guilt of giving up can sometimes push us to waste our time and energy on unnecessary steps towards our destiny. Knowing the purpose of each goal in the big picture helps us invest our energy and time to things that are building blocks to our dream life. - Establish a system to track your progress. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it” Peter Drucker once said. I agree with this quote when it comes to goal setting and making sure there is a tangible improvement. Once a specific and purposeful goal is in place, it is very important to have some form of system of measurement that tracks our progress. This is very important to track both the process of one’s growth as an individual and the benefit of a certain goal in that personal growth. At the same time this system is also necessary for tracking the progress of your goal toward your destination.
- Constantly revive your drive for excellence.This is the crucial step to growth that involves always challenging yourself. Lifting higher what excellence looks like every time you get closer to reaching it. You know the saying to shoot for the moon and at least land among the stars when you fail? Well my addition to that is to use the stars as a stairwell to the actual moon. Once at the moon, use the moon as a getaway to reaching the sun and beyond. Always learn about what is above your excellence level for now and work towards it, once you know there is a higher excellence, strive for it. We stop living when we stop learning and evolving as individuals.
Denise Ingabire-Smith is a clinical scientist and a public health epidemiologist by academic training, an inspirational and motivational speaker from life experience, a freelance writer by opportunity, a lifestyle blogger by passion and the face behind www.myowntotell.com. Denise is an American immigrant from Rwanda, a wife, a mom of one and a small business owner. She uses her own triumphant stories of overcoming life’s adversities to motivate and inspire people to live their lives to the fullest.
