During the course of my career as an ontological and wellness coach, I have come across a few people who don’t really believe in target setting. Perhaps, they are intimidated by the term ‘target setting’ because it can send your brain into a frenzy. It may make one feel overwhelmed about the goals they have to achieve, so they would rather choose to have no set goals and or direction and just go with the flow.
Now this is a natural reaction. Everyone loves to progress; however, we tend to procrastinate where there is fear of failure and the fear of being judged by others. We constantly reel under the apprehensions of ‘what will people think of us?’ or ‘will they laugh at us?’ But it’s so important to first understand and accept that nobody really focuses on these aspects because they’re all involved in their own lives dealing with their own trials and tribulations.
The next important factor is to ensure you have a set of goals and targets and to achieve them you must be ready to reinvent yourself! Become a new, improved version of yourself – call it the smart version 2.0 of you, if you must. This process will entail a great deal of self-discipline, self-confidence and self-belief. If you want to progress and move into leadership roles, possessing these qualities is utterly crucial. Self-discipline plays an important role in leadership development because many forms of personal development require self-discipline. It is instrumental in enabling you to sharpen your willpower and decision making skills along with building several other leadership qualities.
Along with self-discipline, there are several other things you can do to become a smarter version of yourself. Read them in this very insightful piece here.
Setting targets gives you a sense of control. Personally, I would always like to take that pause, take a step back, audit and amend. As you turn to the new, smarter version of yourself, audit your life, audit your habits, analyze how to manage time effectively, how to deal with stress, what is working well, where you can find better opportunities and where you failed. After all failure can be described as an opportunity to learn from and do better. It certainly is a tough lesson and it can come with a big cost, but the brighter side of it is you learn not to make the same mistakes again and the clever part is to accept, understand, move on and embrace change. Of course, dealing with change also takes a lot of effort. But if it’s the right kind of change, it keeps you in that positive space and this positive space is needed for not only progressing in life, trying out new things, or experimenting in life, it also helps you in facing your fears and in dealing with stress. I think it is the best success formula.
Setting targets also gives you a sense of direction. If you do not start with a target or a goal in mind, how do you know where you’re heading? It’s like having a roadmap to your journey. Make sure you make the journey worthwhile and fulfilling because you can be stressed and anxious and still achieve your targets and be deemed as being successful but if you lead a stressful, unhappy life it will definitely affect your lifestyle and your physical and mental well-being.
So if you want to be a smarter version of you, my take would be, to start with a focus a goal in mind. And for that much like you happily do the appraisals that your organization plans for you, do a 360-degree appraisal of yourself. Do it for your professional life, for your personal life, understand how to manage time and how to deal with stress. Rate yourself on a scale from 0 to 10, on where you stand in terms of your eating habits, your physical fitness, how good or bad you are at dealing with problems, dealing with stress and dealing with change. Evaluate what Zen steps or mindfulness activities you are following, rate your relationship with your family – your children, your spouse, your parents, and the people around you – your colleagues, friends, et al. I strongly believe taking time off to introspect will help you form these targets and once you have a target in mind, you can focus on the path ahead. Furthermore, in this path when you construct failures as opportunities, fears as an excitement to try something new, you become more enthusiastic in life, and you suddenly start feeling confident. Honestly, this has nothing to do with you having achieved your targets in real, it just becomes a part of how you are and how you feel – your outlook towards life, work and challenges changes – and that is how you become a new, 2.0 version of yourself.
Once you fixate your mind on transforming yourself into a better, smarter version of yourself, you can grab a read on ‘How to invest one hour of your time to create a successful you’ on my website. This resource will teach you how to use one hour every day to help you manage your energy for the day and bring back the zest in your life.