By Preston Squire

This is an extrapolation of the first step in the 5 Key Steps To Achieving Goals

Step 1

Clearly Define Your Goals

As we approach the end of the year many of you will be reflecting back on the year that was and asking yourself how it went.   Are you better off than you were a year ago? The same? Worse? Regardless of the answer, you probably want 2010 to be even more productive.   The very first step in ensuring it will be, is to decide how you want it to be different than 2009.

On New Years it's traditional for people to make resolutions on how they are going to improve their life.   It's a wonderful tradition but one that's given mere lip service most of the time.   If you want to make and keep a meaningful resolution then start off by determining what it is you want and setting a real and measurable goal.

Be specific when you set you goal or goals.   'I'm going to lose weight', 'I going to make more money', 'I'm going to quit smoking', 'I'm going to be nicer to people', are all meaningless resolutions.   Why? Because they are too vague and nebulous.    How much weight are you going to lose? How much more money? One dollar or one million dollars? When will you quit smoking? How are you going to measure if your successful in being nicer to people?

If you want your goal to stick be specific in your details, make it measurable, and review and revise as you go along.

Some examples;

Get a baseline

If you want to lose weight, start by measuring how much you weigh now, and measure your waist and other relevant parts.

Set the goal specifically

Next, determine how much you want to lose. How many pounds? How many inches/centimetres? Be specific. Goals should always be measurable so you can see how close (or far) you are to accomplishing it.

Set a firm date.

Without a firm date you will never keep your goal(s). You will, most likely, simply procrastinate endlessly unless something else prompts you into action. When setting a date, be realistic. We all tend to over estimate what we can do in a short period of time and underestimate what we can accomplish over a long period of time. Generally things always take twice as long as we expect, so go ahead and set your aggressive 'Can Do' date. I know you want to. Now double that time frame.

The reason I suggest that is because we all tend to want to see immediate results, but results are not always immediately apparent. If you set too narrow a time frame you will quickly run out of time, see you're falling short and become discouraged. You will then said, 'Oh, well, that wasn't a very realistic goal in the first place.' So instead of discouraging yourself and then giving yourself an guilt free out, set a realistic time frame that you know, for sure, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to achieve those results within that time frame.

Break it Down.

Once you've got your date set, break it down into various 'goal posts'. Little sub-goals to meet along the way. Let's say you want to lose 50 lbs by the end of 2010. That works out to about 2 lbs a months or a half a pound a week. So a good goal post would be to lose one pound every two weeks.

It's very important you have and measure against these goal posts. Most people tend to procrastinate and without intermediate goalposts many of us will wait until near the end of our time frame to even start in earnest. Don't do that to yourself. You're just setting yourself up to fail that way. Set markers to monitor your progress.

Determine Your Measuring Stick

In the case of weight loss this is very straight forward. You would be using a scale and measuring tape to track your progress. A tool like Wii Fit can also be helpful in tracting your progress and encouraging you to continue. However for many goals, the measurement may not be immediately apparent. Take being nicer to people for example. How do you measure that? Don't settle for 'Well, I'll know.' Make it concrete not subjective. In a case like that you could use some tangible measurement like, 'I will engage at least one person a day in pleasant conversation.' or 'At least once a week I will do something nice for someone, anonymously if possible, without any expectation of anything in return.' or you can let others determine your success. This is tricky because you can never control other's peoples behaviours but you can use them to help gauge your progress. 'I will be so nice to people, every day one person will decide to engage me in conversation.'

Some goalposts will remain static such as 1 pound every two weeks and some should progress - Talking to one person a day should gradually increase as you become more practiced at being social.

Set Review Dates

Set dates to review your progress. Your goalposts will tell you if your on track or not but a more indepth review periodically can get to the underlying problems. If you're not hitting your goalposts, list the possible reasons why. Then ask yourself 'What am I going to do about it?' come up with solutions to your challenges. In the case of unforseeable extenuating circumstances that you have no control over, you may want to alter your goal or date to compensate.

Once you have your goals clearly defined the next step is to Commit Yourself.

Preston Squire is an author devoted to providing free positive thinking, inspirational, motivational and success materials. You can find more articles by Preston, Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul) and others at http://www.thecuphalffull.com/