13 Guaranteed Ways To Set & Reach Your Goals In Life

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #1 Vision board

A vision board is a powerful tool that helps you narrow down your desires through the power of choice. The tool enables you to invest the time and energy to visualize your future and consistently reminds you of your life goals. Visions boards force you to examine your desires and focus on those that truly matter to you (source). In short when you are reminded of your desires and what you want them to be, by seeing your goals every day, then you are quickly reminded to go after those goals.

Your brain will work tirelessly to achieve the statements you give your subconscious mind. And when those statements are the affirmations and images of your goals, you are destined to achieve them! – Jack Canfield

You can read my blog on how to make a vision board the right way to get more tips on using a vision board to achieve your goal. But overall, some things you need to keep in the back of your mind is.

Put things on there that represent you and where you want to be.
Put things on there that you actually want to achieve.
Put things on there that have a purpose and are not shallow. You can have things of luxury but try to have meaningful things of luxury. Not things like you want a cheetah and a diamond leash to walk it. Be for real.
Do not just look at your board, look at your board and actively work toward your board.
Put your vision board in a place that you have to regularly look at it on a daily basis.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #2 Faith without Works Is Dead

A vision board can be a tool that can assist you in reaching your goals, but it should not be your only tool. You can look, wish, hope, and dream at your vision board all day but unless you are actually putting action behind your visions, then you will achieve nothing. There has to be action toward your actual vision board. Faith without works is dead (James 2:14-26). That means that you do not need just to hope it will come true. You must still work at what is on your board to help it come true or put yourself in a position for it to come true. You cannot say that one of your goals is to travel around the world if you do not have a passport or do not even try to save up to get a passport. You are not taking steps to reach your ultimate goal. You have to put action behind what you want.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #3 Come Up With A Plan

And by plan, I mean an actual long-term plan of how you want to do this. You need to come up with your ultimate goals, when you want to achieve these goals, and how you plan to accomplish these goals. The plan can be a year plan, a five-year plan, or even a ten-year plan. If you are not happy where you are or even if you want to be in a specific place by a particular time, then that needs to be mapped out the best way you can.

Do you see yourself in a better job? If so then where? And how do you plan to get there?
Do you see yourself making more money? If so then how and doing what? How much money? How much do you need to make by when?
Do you see yourself moving to another state? If so then why, what you do plan to accomplish there?
Do you see yourself weighing less? If so what do you need to change in your life to do that? How much weight do you need to lose by when?

Whatever it is that you want you need to be able to spell these things down as exact. The more specific you are, the better it will be to come up with your plan. Be sure to be as specific as possible so that you can map out a plan in which you know how you will do it, achieve it, and measurable steps that you will take along the way that will execute your plan. To see more of what I mean click my blog here on how to come up with a long-term plan to reach your goals.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #4 Baby Steps

In the last section, I used the word measurable when setting your goals. In case you do not know what that means, all it really means is that you know exactly what steps you are going to take along the way to reach your big goals. For example, if you want to start your own business. One of the baby steps may to be to take a course on starting a business, another step may be to be to take a grant writing class to figure out how to fund your business, and another step may be to build up your credit so that you can get a loan to start your business. Even though none of these steps are actually starting your business, they are the baby steps that lead up to you actually launching your business. They are measurable steps that lead up to bigger goals.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #5 Work Harder Not Smarter

I once had a friend, and she used to do everything the hard way. And then she wondered why she did not achieve her goals. What I told her is to think about what you are doing. If what you are doing is contributing to your goals, then great you are on the right track. If what you are doing is NOT contributing to your overall goal then don’t do it. You can waste a lot of time doing something that is not conducive to what your goal is. That leads to you feeling like you have spent a lot of time doing nothing. Take the example above, if you are starting your own business, the last thing you want to do is take advice from someone who has 3 failed businesses and waste your time repeating each step that they have given you. WHY? They have failed at three business, and if you follow the steps they have given you, then you will more than likely fail too. Instead, spend your time on things that work and things that will push you closer to your goals. Instead of spending your time on things that do not work. And if they are not pushing you closer to your goals then stop wasting your time doing them.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #6 Make Every day Count

Remember those baby steps that I talked about in tip number 4. You need to do a baby step every day. If you are taking baby steps and knowing that you are doing something to reach your goal every single day, then you know that you are actively moving toward your goal and eventually you will achieve the big goal. Everyday steps prevent you from remaining stagnant and keeps you from procrastination. You cannot be still and procrastinate if you are forced to do something every day.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #7 Reward Yourself

Otherwise known as positive reinforcement. It usually works with other people, but it can work with your own self. Set a reward for yourself if you reach a specific goal reward yourself and if you don’t achieve the goal then do not reward yourself. You will be surprised at how hard you will work if there are a pair of shoes on the line as a reward.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #8 Time Management

I have a friend who has big goals, but she never gets any of them done because she is always running around like a chicken with her head cut off. She spends time doing this, then doing that, and then she runs out of time and forgets to do this, and at the end of the day, she realizes that she did a lot of things but somehow has got nothing done. When really she has lousy time management.

That is why it is crucial to practice time management even have a schedule for yourself that you need to stick to. In the morning write down your goals, and write down a time of when you need to finish each goal by, this helps you practice staying on track and practicing good time management. It also makes sure that you are working on the things you need to be working on and not getting distracted by the things that you don’t need to be working on.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #9 Less Talking More Doing

Have you ever heard of that person who talks about their goals so much, for months, weeks, or even years, and really they never make any progress toward anything? They keep talking about going back to college, getting a better job, or moving to a different city and nothing ever gets done. People like that talk so much about their goals that they actually trick themselves into thinking that them talking about their goals means they are actually doing their goals. Talk less and do more, replace your talking by actions. And never think that because you are telling people about your goals and talking about how you are going to do them, means the same thing as you getting your goals done.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #10 Speak It In Into Existence

When you speak negatively to yourself and say that something cannot happen, it cannot happen to you, or you are not good enough, you are putting limits on what can be done for you. The way that you overcome that is that you choose to speak something into existence. That means that you talk about your goals as if they are going to come true. That means that you do not think negatively about your situation because when you do that then you will act negatively on your situation and your goals will not be achieved.

Ways that you can speak things into existence includes the following:

Speak as if your goals are already happening and they are coming true.
Do not speak negatively into your situation.
Do affirmation each morning saying how successful you are and how you are prospering in your goals.
AND always remember faith without works is dead. Do not get so busy speaking that you forget to do.
Also, check out my blog on how to speak life.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #11 Pray

I am a Christian, and I have seen God do some amazing things. I have seen God move mountains that I could not move on my own and I have seen God give me ideas on how to do something when I did not even know HOW I would get them done. When in doubt pray, when you feel like you are lost then pray when you do not know what to do next then pray, when you need an idea then pray.

Sometimes when there is nothing that you can do in your own power, prayer is the thing that changes the outcome.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #12 Imagination and Visualization

The beautiful thing about us human beings is that we can imagine whatever it is that we want. That is a gift that God gave us, and so you mine as well use it. The daily practice of visualizing your dreams as already complete can rapidly accelerate your achievement of those dreams, goals and ambitions. Using visualization techniques to focus on your goals and desires yields four very important benefits.

It activates your creative subconscious which will start generating creative ideas to achieve your goal.
It programs your brain to more readily perceive and recognize the resources you will need to achieve your dreams.
It builds your internal motivation to take the necessary actions to achieve your dreams.

Visualization is really quite simple. You sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes and imagine — in as vivid detail as you can — what you would be looking at if the dream you have were already realized (source). In short, if you can start to see it in your brain, then you will believe it, and if you believe it then you will live out what you see.

Setting & Reaching Your Goals in Life #13 Write Things Down

According to the Huffington Post, you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals and dreams, simply by writing them down on a regular basis. The likelihood that you’ll transform your desires into reality goes up even further if you share your written goals with a friend who believes in your ability to succeed. Just the act of writing down your dreams and goals ignites an entirely new dimension of consciousness, ideas and productivity to the powerhouse that is your subconscious mind. This simple act also opens your subconscious to “seeing” opportunities that simply can’t be observed if you’re tied up with THINKING about your goals.

Which is why you need to write your goals down. Don’t just write them down but keep writing them down again and again because that will increase the likelihood of you reaching your goals.

These are the top 13 setting life goals tips that you need in your life. Remember, setting goals is one of the best things you can do for your life. And when you set goals in life achieving those goals should be something that you actively set out to do. ~

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Sophia Reed PhD NCCHi. I'm Dr. Reed. Aka Sophia. I am single a mom, Christian, and believe in making lemons into lemonade. I have a Master's degree in marriage and family therapy, I am a National Certified Counselor, and I have a PhD in Human Behavior. I love teaching women how to make boss moves while keeping God first. To get in contact with me, you can email me at sophiareed@sophie-sticatedmom.com