If you feel like you are in a place where you are just going through the motions and letting things happen to you, it might be time to take control of your life. This is where setting goals comes in handy, whether they are small, medium or large goals, or a mix of all three. Setting goals is not just good for success and moving forward in your life, but essential to your overall health and wellness.
Here are some of the health benefits (and other benefits) of setting goals for yourself.
They Help You See Your Mission
When you have a goal that you’re trying to reach, it’s extremely important that you have a clearly defined idea of what you want, because having a vague shadow of what you’re going for will make it difficult to determine what kinds of steps that you’ll need to take. It would be a good idea to write them all down so you can look at the list and make definite choices about which ones are going to be taking the majority of your attention in the next few months or years.
When you do this, it should be on a day where you don’t have a ton of prior engagements. In fact, it might even be better if you carried out this process on a day where you completely and actively avoid interacting with others, or absorbing any kind of media through electronic devices. This will let you be alone with your thoughts so you can make choices without the influence of other people. That way, you can be sure that these are the things that care for your mental wellbeing, and that none of it is coming from some drive to please others.
You’ll Make Better Use of Your Time
Most humans feel the need to be busy to keep themselves distracted from unpleasant thoughts and feelings. Some people use this drive to turn to avoidance through substances, while many others simply absorb themselves in useless pursuits like gossip about others, obsessing over unhealthy situations, continuously moving from unfinished task to unfinished task and so on.
One of the first things that you begin to notice about taking a few moments to organize and prioritize your goals, is that you’ll make a massive improvement in how you utilize your time. Having an order and rank to your goals helps you to pinpoint what kinds of action in a day are wasting your time. After you’ve removed the kinds of deviations from the path that you’ve chosen to follow, you’ll naturally align yourself with the path and motivation that pushes you towards the things you want.
Creates a Better Worldview
When life has piled up around you and you feel as though you can’t get anywhere, it’s hard to have a positive outlook on things. Situations and responsibilities only really pile up when you’ve put some things off. Anyone can tell you that life has sudden snags and issues that set you back quite a bit if you’re not careful, so it’s always better to go ahead and get started instead of putting it off for another day. As those issues deepen, it can make you feel like you’re out of control, or like you have no options.
That kind of thinking can manifest in a lot of negative ways, but it’s better to avoid that completely. Write down some of the smaller things as well, because each achievement should count. As you cross each item off of the list, the weight of the world around you will begin to lessen, and life steadily becomes a world of satisfying conclusions instead of a jumbled mess of dates and times that you keep having to remember at the last minute.
Helps Fight Stress
Life is so full of choices and decisions that need to be made that a lot of other extra noise can really make things difficult. Once you’ve decided to fully commit to setting and achieving goals, the clarity will help you to more clearly define what it is that you want. A lot of people make a serious habit out of writing their goals down so that they have to see and internalize their goals on a daily basis.
While that might seem like overkill to some people, it’s an important part of making sure that you don’t lose sight of the goals that you’ve set out to get. The less of these types of thoughts you have rattling around in your brain, the more brain power that you’ll have left to problems solve and continuously take note of your environment to ensure you are advancing toward your goal as you expected.
Maintaining Helps End Procrastination
Have you ever had a habit of putting things off until the absolute last second? A lot of people who do this are very intelligent people, but they delay themselves for random reasons. Usually because of the drive to seek things they enjoy in the moment rather than put the work behind them. When you’ve fixed your gaze on your goals, you’ll have an easier time getting things out of the way. You will be well acquainted with the fact that waiting can be devastating to deadlines and other time sensitive details of life.
Less Time Wasted Means Quickest Results
Have you ever noticed how much time it takes when people aren’t sure what they’re doing? It’s because they’re unsure about what they should do, so they vacillate. When you have a clear goal that you’re preparing for, then you’re going to feel a lot more sure about what you’re doing. That means that instead of bouncing from one task to another and leaving things unfinished, you’ll have a clear plan of attack that will help you to get straight to your goal. This is another place where having a list really helps. You can identify major moves, and also include a short list of the things you need to do to achieve each goal. That way you’ll know when you have the time to fit those moves into your schedule.