I am a firm believer in goal setting. I think making plans for yourself and learning to stick to them is the only way you can get what you want out of life. This year, I’ve started to develop a more goal centric mindset and it has managed to really help me follow through with my goals in both blogging and life. Goal setting has taught me a lot about how to set goals that work with my schedule yet give me challenge. These are a few things I’ve come to use as parameters for when I set my goals. They’ve been a big help in making sure that what I plan to accomplish over a given period of time is doable.

Is this something I can control?

One thing I’ve come to learn in goal setting is that your goals should only be things that you have total control over. In life, there are a lot of things that we want to exert power over, but ultimately can’t. I’ve definitely struggled to accept the fact that not everything that effects us can be directly influenced by us. Some things are going to happen to us whether we cause them or not. We can’t do anything about them.

This piece of information is critical to the process of goal setting. A lot of the time, people set goals for themselves that are out of their hands. They consider things such as follower count and blog post likes to be sensible goals without remembering that there’s absolutely nothing they can do to influence these numbers. A person’s follower count won’t suddenly spike just because they want it to. So, when people make their goals a certain number of followers or likes, they’re basically putting their goals up to chance.

When your setting a goal, make sure to ask yourself whether or not you have control over the feat you want to accomplish. If you can’t control, don’t make it your goal. If you want to boost your engagement, focus on ways you can improve your blog. Instead of setting a goal of gaining x number of followers, challenge yourself to write x number of posts. You’ll feel a lot better making your goal something that you can achieve on your own rather than something you have to hope and wait for.

Is this goal realistic?

Another thing to ask yourself during the goal setting process is whether or not the thing you want to push yourself to do is realistic. As you’re planning your goals, it’s easy to get swept away by everything you want to get done. Things seem exponentially easier when you’re planning them out, mostly because you’re not thinking about other factors that can suddenly pop up and make them harder. While you may want to do it all, it’s important to be realistic if you ever want to get things done.

If you set your goals too high over a short period of time, chances are you won’t be able to achieve them. Goals should push you and challenge you, but they shouldn’t trample you in stress. It’s okay to admit that you can’t do a million things at once. In fact, it’s healthy to know your limitations. Don’t overwhelm yourself, especially if you’re new to goal setting. You don’t want to give yourself a bad impression of it simply because you tried to do too much at once.

Will this really challenge me?

While you don’t want your goals to overwhelm you with stress, you also shouldn’t make them too easy. Goals should be about improving on things that you already do. They’re supposed to be a bit difficult. Consider what your long-term goals are and ask yourself if your current goals will get you where you want to be. If your goal isn’t going to increase your progress, ask yourself if it’s really a good plan. Keep in mind the things that matter most to you and challenge yourself to improve upon them. This has really helped me in both life and blogging.

Thank you so much for reading! Sorry for the shorter post. I’ve been incredibly busy these past couple of days. I should be back to normal this upcoming week though! Anyways, let me know if you’d like to see more goal-related posts in the future.

Do you like goal setting? 

Sincerely,

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