now, no signup required!
What’s your ultimate goal in life?” a job interviewer asked Raghu soon after he got his law degree.
“I want to become a legal consultant and open my own consultancy someday,” Raghu responded.
The interviewer immediately followed up with, “Okay… but is this what you really want? What do you want out of life?”
Raghu paused and then responded, “I hope to achieve happiness in life by chasing my passion.”
The interviewer nodded and smiled.
Quite often, we tend to confuse our personal and professional goals. While professional goals are important to have a successful career, personal goals are equally important. Our personal goals reflect our values and desires. They guide how we will live our lives. Our professional goals are often based on our larger personal goals.
In other words, personal goal setting is a prerequisite to professional goal setting.
What are personal goals?
Personal goals, as the name suggests, are self goals that help you become a better version of yourself. You set personal goals in life because you strive for self-development. In other words, self goals are targets you set for yourself to enhance your personal growth.
Personal goals can help you put your potential to the best use. Setting personal goals in life means actively honing your skills and expanding your capacities.
The power of personal goal setting is such that it helps improve professional growth too. Some personal goals examples include going to therapy after professional burnout or taking art classes to break the monotony of daily life.
Personal goals vary from person to person. Remember, different people want different things out of their lives.
What are personal development goals?
Personal development goals are self goals that help you grow intellectually and emotionally. They give you a way of utilizing your knowledge while efficiently managing your time and resources.
What is personal goal setting?
Having personal goals in life means streamlining your life and becoming the person you’ve always wanted to be. Personal goal setting helps you direct and drive your self goals to success.
Here are a few steps for setting personal goals in life:
1. Having a vision:
The first step in setting personal development goals is to create a realistic and time-bound vision. Identify what you truly want to achieve and set your personal goals accordingly.
Examples of goals that help to envision plans include wanting to earn a Master’s degree before the age of 25 years or planning to get married after landing your dream job.
2. Developing a plan:
Simply having a vision isn’t enough. You also need a plan to pursue your personal goals in life. Once you have defined your path to success, you know how to achieve your personal goals. Plans can be short-term or long-term, but they must articulate your objectives. Planning to get an MFA degree after your BFA or planning a trip to Bhutan are some examples of goals with a plan.
3. Tracking your progress:
Self goals are unique for every individual and scenario. Similarly, the time it takes to achieve goals can vary significantly. Some personal goals in life are achieved in the blink of an eye, while others can be very time-consuming.
No matter how long or short the journey of your personal goals is, it’s important to keep measuring your progress.
4. Revisiting and Reviewing:
To determine whether the path you’re on is relevant to your goal or not, you must keep revisiting and reviewing your personal goals.. When you review your goal you will be able to think of new ways to achieve it. You may even find different, faster, or more efficient paths to your goal! Revisiting and reviewing your goals from time to time helps you learn how to adjust to setbacks and obstacles.
Some examples of goal revision include schools conducting classes online because of a global pandemic or someone exercising at home because their gym shut down.
Personal goals for work
Personal goals in life help in instituting personal goals for work. This means that when you work on your self-development, it can benefit you in the workplace too. Here are some personal goal examples for professional growth:
1. Building resilience helps deal with rejections, challenges, and setbacks in the workplace.
2. Active listening goals go a long way in building trust and communicating effectively with coworkers.
3. Improving time management skills increases productivity and efficiency at work.
4. Learning new things or picking up new skills helps stay relevant and updated at the workplace.
5. Learning to network opens new doors of the industry.
Harappa Education’s online Leading Self course is designed to help you recognize your true potential. This course will help you learn to identify the obstacles to your growth, which are known as Interferences.
The course teaches you how to identify and manage external interferences as well as internal interferences. Internal interferences are one’s own limiting beliefs while external interferences are present in one’s environment. Learn to use tools and frameworks like the Iceberg Model and the Balcony and Dance Floor Model to limit interferences and achieve your personal goals.
Explore topics such as Importance of Goal Setting, Types of Goals, SMART Goals, How to Set Goals in Life & Goal Setting Process from our Harappa Diaries section and lead on a path of self-development.
