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Setting and Achieving Goals


One thing that is common in the New Year is to set new goals. Many religious bodies encourage their members to write out their goals and bring them to their places of worship on the last day of the year for blessings. For many, only a few goals on their list get achieved.

As 2015 was about to make its exit, I took a look at my 2015 goals (something I did regularly all through last year) and noticed that, while I didn’t achieve 100%, I went past the half mark, which was a first for me in yearly goal setting. But as I sat down on the last day of 2015 to write my 2016 goals, I knew I wanted to achieve 100%. I wrote down the ten most important goals which covered my spiritual life; my personal life as a wife and mother; my business as a writer and publisher; my education as well as my social, entertainment, pleasure and financial life. Taking a look at them, I knew I left nothing out and whatever isn’t included would be met as a result of achieving what I had put down.

The next question was: how do I ensure I achieve these ten goals? I broke them down. I took goal number 1 and wrote out all I must do to achieve it. I did the same with the other nine goals. When I was done, I flipped a new page and from each activity list needed to achieve a goal, I picked out one activity each for the week. Looking it through, I realised that as long as I do not procrastinate, as long as I kept to working on my weekly task, I just might achieve my ten goals before the end of the year. With that, I have been encouraged to work and with each task done, I tick it off my list. Amazingly, I don’t feel pressured - something that one list of ten goals would have done to me!


If like me you want to achieve 100% of your goals for the year, it wouldn’t harm to try breaking down the goals into smaller to-do tasks towards achieving them.