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Goal Setting for Happiness
Sanjiv Sahay
Goals are the key to achieving anything in life and so it is
with achieving happiness. Happiness comes from a steady progress
towards meaningful goals which are highly desirable to the
individual. Overall goals need to be broken up into specific
goals for each aspect of your life e.g. health, career,
relationships etc. Goals must be realistic and achievable, but
at the same time they should be attractive enough to excite you
and make you enthusiastic about achieving them. The key to
understanding your real goals is to ask yourself these three
questions. * What would I want to do if I had only six months to
live? * What would I want to have or do if an angel had granted
me one wish which would be fulfilled instantly? * Would I be
truly happy if I actually got whatever I thought I most deeply
wanted and what would I do with it? To clarify these questions -
assume that a doctor told you today that you had only six months
more to live. What would be the things you would like to do
during those six months? These things would be your true
priorities. If there were no obstacles to your doing or
possessing anything you wanted - what would that be? You will
have think beyond your self imposed limitations and express your
true desires. Is what you think you want most, really what you
want most? What are you going to do with it and will that make
you truly happy? Say you thought your most ardent wish was to
have a million dollars - what would you do with it? Would doing
that make you truly happy? Think of some other millionaires and
consider if they are truly happy in the way that you want to be.
Identify goals for all the aspects of your life that impact your
happiness. These include relationships, financials, career,
health, attitude etc. Then you can prioritize these goals so you
work on the most important ones first. Once you know the goals
most desired by you, develop the sub goals which will need to be
achieved in order to achieve the primary goals e.g. if the
primary goal is to develop strong family relationships, then one
of the sub goals could be to develop reasonable financial
security so as to afford more free time with the family. For
each area you also need to develop intermediate goals - what you
will achieve in five years/one year/six months/one month. These
goals need to be specific and written down. To simplify the task
of setting your goals you can follow the process given in "Ways
to Happiness" at http://www.myhappiness.com . Next you need to
assess your present status on each one of the areas where you
have defined goals e.g. if your financial goal is to have a
hundred thousand dollars in five years and twenty thousand
dollars in one year, then you need to assess what you have now.
If you total up your savings and find that you have ten thousand
dollars today, then you need to save ten thousand dollars more
in the next twelve months. If that is totally impossible in
today's circumstances, then see if you can change your
circumstances e.g. get a second job, or learn a new skill and
get a higher paying job or reduce some non critical expenses. If
even this is not feasible then revise your goals to make them
achievable within the constraints you define for yourself. It is
important to get in the habit of achieving your goals. You can
revise them upwards after you get more confidence in your
abilities. You must be totally convinced that you can achieve
your goals. At the end of this exercise you will have a set of
achievable goals which are highly desirable to you. Visualize
yourself achieving the goals - having a loving spouse, being
rich and famous etc. Then draw up a specific and time bound plan
to achieve the goals and fix benchmarks to measure your
progress. Since these goals are achievable and also highly
desirable to you, you will discover that a deep sense of
satisfaction and lasting happiness will come merely by making
steady progress towards your goals.
Copyright © My Happiness 2005-2006- All Rights Reserved.
About the author:
Sanjiv Sahay is the editor of My Happiness-Making Life Happier
http://www.myhappiness.com , a website that helps you to find
your own path to sustained happiness by using Happiness
Information, Directory of Resources, online tools and the help
of an online community of your peers. He can be contacted at
editor@myhappiness.com .
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