Do you want a happy life?
You need personal goals. But you need more than that – you actually need to achieve them!
But the good news is that this secret ingredient to happiness is much easier than it seems.
As a certified happiness life coach, I help people set and achieve their personal goals all the time – and so today I’m going to share how to do it with everyone.
What are Personal Goals?
A personal goal is any goal you want to achieve for yourself.
It’s a broad definition, but it has to be because these goals can span any aspect of your life.
You could have fitness goals, financial goals, personal development goals, life goals, and they all fall under the umbrella of personal goals.
What’s NOT a Personal Goal?
Knowing what’s not a personal goal is just as vital as knowing what one is.
Anything that someone else sets for you is not a personal goal. Did your boss give you a quota? Not a personal goal. Do your parents have some secret dream life in store for you? Also not a personal goal.
But those are the easy ones.
It’s harder to define “not a personal goal” when it comes to things you maybe want but don’t care that much about, and things you can’t control.
Dreams and Wishes
We all have lofty dreams and ethereal wishes.
I dream of being an archaeologist like Indiana Jones, living a life of action and adventure and saving the world from the forces of evil. I wish I were a millionaire.
Sometimes I want to pack up my life in an RV and travel the US; other times I want to live in Europe.
Are those personal goals?
They could be – but that doesn’t mean they are. Right now, the only one I’m actively working towards is becoming a millionaire, so that could count, but the others are currently just random musings of what could be. They aren’t personal goals.
Things You Can’t Control
A harsh truth about life is that we can’t control everything. You can’t force other people to agree with you, make yourself taller, or predict the future.
We all want things to be different, but if it’s something we can’t actually change, it’s not a personal goal, because goals are things that we can do.
Some things just are, and we need to work within that framework.
How to Set Personal Goals
Now that we understand what personal goals are (and aren’t!), we can learn how to set them.
And the best part is, it’s the same process for setting any goal!
To set personal goals, you must:
- Identify what you want
- Define what it really means
- Decide where to focus your energy
- Transform them into SMART Goals
- Break big goals down
- Focus on things you can control
- Determine what type of goal
- Process
- Performance
- Outcome
I’ve already gone into massive detail on these steps in our article about goal setting in general, so I won’t rehash everything here, but I do want to highlight a few crucial aspects.
What You Want and What It Means
The first and second steps are critical. You can not set a personal goal if you don’t know what you want. You can be a little abstract in the first step, but in the second, you have to really figure out what achieving the goal would look like.
Remember how I said I wanted to quit my job and travel the world in an RV? That’s a first step goal. But when I got to the second step, I realized I didn’t really want that at all.
RV life would mean sacrificing my income, downsizing, and handling all sorts of problems on the road that I’m not really prepared for.
Step two is vital because it’s where you can separate those fun dreams from actual goals.
SMART Goals
I’m sorry, but we can not ever have an article about goals without defining SMART goals. Dems da rules.
SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Based.
Now that you’ve got a goal in mind, you must transform it so that it meets all the criteria of a SMART goal.
Let’s use my millionaire example. One million dollars is specific, and it’s measurable. Is it achievable? Who knows? What about relevancy? Why do I want a million dollars? There’s also no time attached to it, so I could maybe become a millionaire at age 81 – would that help me at all?
Let’s transform it into a SMART goal. I will build a net worth of one million dollars by the time I reach age 65 by investing 5% in my 401K with every paycheck so I can retire.
That’s specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. It’s a SMART goal.
Tips for Achieving Your Goals
Setting your goals is half the battle. Achieving them is the other half.
The infographic above highlighted the best tips for doing just that:
- Identify your obstacles
- Create a plan
- Do the thing
- Hold yourself accountable
- Review
The two most crucial pieces of the puzzle are creating a plan and doing the thing.
Create a Plan
I love plans. They’re basically templates telling you exactly what you’re supposed to do. And the best plans also leave wiggle room for changes or account for variables that could throw wrenches into the whole thing.
But planning is also one of the hardest things to do.
There’s an app for that. Well, not an app, but a printable action plan template we created to help you create an action plan for any goal.
For less than five bucks, you get 17 pages of planning templates helping you:
✔ Clarify what you actually want (and why)
✔ Turn vague goals into realistic, achievable plans
✔ Break big goals into manageable steps
✔ Track progress and momentum at a glance
✔ Decide what to do next—every time
✔ Stay aligned with your values as life evolves
You’ll find worksheets for defining big-picture goals, four different action plan templates, and a three-page detailed action plan template.
Planning how you will achieve your personal goals has never been easier.
Do The Thing
I’m not going to lie, I like planning how I’m going to do the thing more than I actually like doing the thing.
A lot of people also get stuck in the planning phase, trying to make things perfect, and never actually follow through on the action.
If you want to achieve your personal goals, at some point you need to stop planning and start doing. The action plan template should help – you just have to take that first step and do whatever action you planned to do.
What if I Don’t Have Any Personal Goals?
If happiness comes from achieving personal goals, what should you do if you don’t have any?
I don’t think it’s true that you have zero goals. Everyone has something they want to strive for. I get that sometimes our crazy lives leave us no energy to even think about our goals, much less pursue them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there, lingering just out of reach.
What you really need is time and space to consider them.
Lean into self-care. Take time for yourself to focus on your needs, whether it be indulging in a bath, reading a favorite book, or embracing simple pleasures. When you are well-rested, you’ll be better able to think about what you really want out of life (i.e – your goals!).
If that doesn’t help, think about the things you’re passionate about. What do you love to do? How can you do it better? What would you like to learn more about?
Next, look towards self-improvement. Don’t tell me you’re perfect – nobody is. We all have areas in our lives we can improve. Perhaps you need to read more, work out more, eat healthier, or ditch a bad habit. Maybe you want to learn a new skill or try a new hobby.
Finally, consider all the other types of goals. Maybe you have a retirement goal, savings target, or other financial goal. Perhaps you have a life goal to travel to all sorts of places, or a career goal like getting a specific job.
Those could all be personal goals.
Nope, Still Nothing
If after all of that, you’ve still got nothing, you might want to seek therapy. You may not even realize you don’t have interest in anything; you’re just going through the motions but can’t think of anything you really want to strive for. A therapist can help you too.
Loss of interest in life is a major sign of depression, and a therapist can help you navigate those feelings of emptiness.
Achieving Personal Goals Brings Happiness
Setting and achieving personal goals is one of the best tips for living a happy life. Even if you don’t fully succeed – you’ll be a happier, more well-rounded person just for trying.
So think about what you want, make your plan to achieve it, and go out and do great things.
I believe in you 😊.