It’s probably fair to say that just about everyone wants to live an energetic, upbeat and exciting life in one way or another — the kind of everyday approach to things that includes feelings of accomplishment, interest, and more.
When you look at the most popular guides out there for living an energetic and fulfilling life, you’ll tend to come across the concept of goal setting over and over again — and a wide range of different exercises that can help you to come up with ideas for what you want to achieve over a 5 year period, over the next few months, and more.
Your goals could, of course, relate to just about everything, ranging from home decor and design aspirations, to a reflection on what you would like to do with your career going forward.
While certain design features may be relatively easy to make decisions about, such as the fact that Shower Panels Are Perfect For All Bathrooms, other goals can be relatively more tricky and involved.
Unfortunately, for many people, goal setting ends up being significantly more stressful, frustrating, and exhausting than it ultimately should be — and it can even end up being counterproductive, by making it harder to enjoy everyday life, and to move consistently in an upbeat and meaningful direction.
Here are a handful of tips and suggestions on how to make goal setting a fun and uplifting activity that helps you to live the best kind of life you can, as opposed to being something that is ultimately exhausting and frustrating in one sense or another.
Set goals when you’re in an optimistic and empowered state of mind
For your goals to actually be the kinds of things that you find intrinsically motivating, exciting, and fun — and for those goals to not only keep you motivated but to also have the potential to improve your life significantly going forward — you should set goals when you’re in an optimistic and empowered state of mind, as opposed to a frustrated, pessimistic, or nervous one.
If you set yourself goals while you are, in fact, in a pessimistic and negative mindset, those goals will likely tend to be the sorts of things that you will struggle to really believe you can achieve, while simultaneously being pretty underwhelming, too.
This matters in no small part because a lot of what makes goal setting a potentially fun, uplifting and transformative activity is the fact that it helps you to develop excitement and motivation for something significant and engaging.
If, on the other hand, your goals are things like landing a low level job that you don’t really want, in an industry that you don’t really like, it’s hardly a surprise if you find yourself feeling that goal setting is a bit of a drag, all things considered.
So, how do you put yourself in an optimistic and empowered state of mind when setting goals?
For one thing, you could carry a small notepad around with you and jot down goals whenever you find yourself in an excited or upbeat mood, organically.
For another thing, you could try out certain activities and routines that help you to feel energetic, excited and enthusiastic, even just for a short while at a time. These activities and routines might include something as relatively straightforward as having a cup of coffee and dancing around your kitchen while listening to one of your favourite songs — or doing a vigorous workout that leaves you feeling exhilarated and fired up.
Make a good number of your goals “bucket list” experiences
One thing that people often find relatively demotivating when it comes to goal setting, is that they set themselves goals which are all about a long, slow and incremental progress towards a particular desired point. Like, for example, retraining to land a job in a new field.
While these sorts of goals are all very well, one great way of making the process of goal setting more engaging can be to ensure that a good number of your goals are “bucket list” experiences — things like visiting a particular country, singing karaoke, or writing a short story — that you can “achieve” in one go.
Often, these kinds of bucket list items can add a lot of the magic and excitement that you might feel is otherwise missing, when it comes to your more systematic and drawn-out goals.
Choose goals that help you to establish uplifting daily habits
In a pretty direct way, one of the major benefits of setting goals isn’t so much that they give you something to strive towards — although this can, of course, be very significant — but that they help you to fill your daily routine with uplifting habits that steer you in the right direction.
A goal like “I want to participate in an Iron Man event” may mostly be transformative, because of the fact that it can get you engaged in a regular workout routine, where instead of being sedentary, you are engaged experiencing the myriad benefits of being physically active on daily basis.
To get a lot of the most significant benefits from your goals, then, you should make sure that you set yourself plenty of goals that you to establish uplifting daily habits that help you to feel your best in the here and now.
Expand your sense of what’s possible by regularly challenging yourself
One of the great things about setting yourself bold and motivating goals, is that they can give you the nudge you need to regularly challenge yourself and step outside of your comfort zone, and to therefore expand your sense of what’s possible.
All too often in life, we are at risk of allowing ourselves to become completely entrenched in our everyday routines, to the extent that life can end up being lived largely on autopilot.
By setting yourself goals that help you to regularly challenge yourself day by day, however — such as a goal that gets you signing up to an art class or a public speaking class, for example — you can experience a lot more magic and vitality, day after day.