Using Your Values to Set Your Goals

Time to set your goals and make your dream's a reality! 🏆 ✨

What are Goals? Goals help to give your life direction, and the exciting thing about them is that you are in charge of choosing your goals. You get to choose the direction of your life! 🚗 📈

It is normal if you feel daunted or unsure when trying to set your goals. A great way to reduce some of the anxiety you face surrounding identifying and choosing which goals to aim for is to make sure your goals are informed by your values. This can help you to choose goals that help you live a life where you feel happy and content. Because you’re living a life that aligns with your values! 🌟 ✅

There are lots of different types of goals. Some examples of these could include family goals 👪 , career goals👩‍💻, travel goals ✈️ , fitness goals🏋️‍♂️, relationship goals👨‍❤️‍👨, or maybe spiritual goals. Some goals can be short-term and they are able to be attained faster than long-term goals. For example, a short-term goal could be a goal of the day or a 3-month goal. Whereas a long-term goal could be five years from now. Some goals may be far easier or more difficult to achieve than others.

👉 What are some of the benefits of having goals? ✍️ Having clearly defined goals can help you to know exactly where to direct your energy and effort. ✍️ It can make dreams become reality, as instead of wishing for something to happen, you’re taking responsibility and action! ✍️ Having a structured plan of what you are working towards can help you feel like you have a clear purpose. This could improve your mental well-being. ✍️ Once you know what your goals are, you might find yourself more motivated as you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. ✍️ Knowing what your goals are can help you to meet like-minded individuals! (You may even end up helping each other achieve one another's goals quicker). ✍️ Having goals gives you something to celebrate once you achieve them! Even small goals deserve celebrating! ✍️ Setting and achieving your goals, help you to live the life you truly want to be living!

👉 Values and Goals Example: John decided that he wanted to advance to the next level in his career. He set himself the goal of being promoted within the next year. To achieve this goal, John followed the 1% rule and he actively chose to do something each day that would increase his chances of receiving the promotion. Six months later John received great news, he was offered a promotion and he accepted. However, John didn’t feel satisfied. He felt uncertain if he truly wanted the promotion and anxious about his decision to accept it. John didn’t feel motivated to succeed within his new position, he didn’t feel like he was flourishing in life and he was experiencing decreased feelings of self-worth. Although John had done amazing to achieve his goal. He had failed to use his values to inform the identification of his goals. Therefore, he pursued a goal that was not in alignment with his values and how he truly wanted to live his life. This led to him experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Mary spent a lot of time self-reflecting on what it is she truly values. When Mary had finally identified her values, she used these to help her determine what she wants to prioritise in life. This enabled Mary to then begin to set goals that reflected her core values. Mary reduced her feelings of worry and anxiety concerning what her goals should be, as she felt confident in her decisions. This is because she was using her values as her guiding compass when setting her goals. Mary decided one of her values is education. This led to Mary identifying different educational goals. The first of Mary’s goals was to go back into education and be accepted into a university. So, Mary started investigating the different types of courses available and applied to an art course. Creativity was also something Mary valued highly. A few weeks later, Mary received an acceptance email. Mary was over the moon, she didn’t feel stress, worry, or guilt about her decision like John. Mary felt great.

✍️ Goal Exercise: 👉 If you have successfully managed to identify one of your values, then now is time to start applying that knowledge to live in a manner that is aligned with them. This means it’s time to set a goal that allows you to honour your values. 👉 If you are still taking some time to discover what your values truly are, you can still practice setting goals. Perhaps setting short-term goals over long-term goals might be more beneficial while you’re figuring things out. This might reduce the likelihood that you may want to change your goals after you’ve identified your values.

To set your goals, we are going to use the S.M.A.R.T goal and objective technique (Doran, Miller, and Cunningham 1981).

✍️ S = Specific. This is where you are specific about what your goal is. You can ask yourself questions such as, what needs to be achieved? What are the required steps to achieve it? ✍️ M = Measurable. This is where you think about how you can measure your progress. Quantifying your goal helps you to know you are staying on track and also helps you to identify if you're falling behind so you can make useful changes. ✍️ A = Achievable. This step involves you carefully considering if your goal is realistically achievable and if it isn’t then considering changes to make it possible. ✍️ R = Relevant. This is where you think about the reason informing your decision to set this goal. ✍️ T = Timebound. This is where you determine your timeframe and your goal completion date. By applying a set time frame to your goal and the steps to achieve your goal, you are able to track your progress and see yourself getting closer to attaining your goal.

Remember, your goals take hard work and consistency. It is normal to feel unsure of what goals you want to pursue. But, using your values as your guiding compass can help relieve some of that difficulty!! ❇️ 🤗