CEUs are available at ALLCEUs.com/Goal-CEU
hey everyone and welcome to this video on six common mistakes in goal setting
i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
goals help you get focused they help you create a plan for success and success after all increases
your sense of confidence and self-esteem when you set a goal and you achieve it you're like
i did that sometimes we set goals and we don't necessarily think we're going to reach
them and we reach them when we're like wow i didn't think i could do that but i did that
failure unfortunately often decreases our sense of confidence or increases
our sense of hopelessness and helplessness we may set a goal and fail to achieve it
and then we're like well what happened why can't i do that why can't i recover from my depression
why can't i graduate from college why can't i get an a in this class and it's important to
look at the goals that you're setting and see if you're missing something good goals
are specific measurable achievable relevant and time limited so let's take a look at those
a lot of people make the mistake of setting goals that are too vague it's important
to be able to say how you will know when you've achieved your goal i'll be happier
well what does that look like how am i going to know when i'm happier than now and a lot of
times people find that it's helpful to use what we call a likert scale one to five one i'm miserably
depressed two i'm here i'm not depressed but i'm not happy three i'm content four okay things are
going better five i'm just ecstatic and reading on a day-to-day basis what their mood is that way
they know when they've achieved their goal i'll be a success okay great what does that mean to you
what success means to me may be different than what it means to you so what does it
look like when you've achieved your goal of being a success some people set goals that are too big
is this something you can do within a month there are principles in behavior modification
called behavior strain that basically say that if we don't achieve rewards if we don't receive
rewards for what we're doing then we're going to lose our motivation to do them so it's important
to make sure that you're getting rewards for what you're doing and ideally that you're able
to accomplish something within a month if you're able to accomplish it but it's going to take
four years okay well what can you do within a month or within three months college for
example if your goal was graduating college well that's wonderful however let's make some smaller
goals first you've got to pass this semester and that's a three month goal that's something you can
get through you can check off and go okay i'm one step closer to my ultimate goal
sometimes people set the wrong goal and you may be scratching your head going how could
a goal be wrong sometimes people will do things because they think it's going to make them happier
maybe they decide to go back to school because they hate their job and they think if they get
training in something else they'll be able to get another job and it'll make them happier
ultimately they find out that it's not the job itself that's making them unhappy
it's the work environment and they really don't like working in an office with other people
all right so going to school for two or four years to learn a new new skill was the wrong
goal the goal that would have helped them function in an office environment might be to address what
it is that they find toxic about that office environment sometimes people skip the skills
great goals will fall apart if you don't have the skills and tools to accomplish them if you want
to recover from depression well that's great but if you don't have the ability to identify
and manage your emotions if you don't have effective communication skills if you don't have
people who can support you as you're learning these new skills then you're probably not going
to be very successful so it's important to recognize what skills you need in order to
actually achieve the goal what is it that you need i can want to build a wooden bookshelf i
can be really motivated to build that wooden book bookshelf but if i don't know how to use the tools
that are necessary to cut the wood and put it all together then i'm not going to achieve my goal
so motivation is great but you've also got to have the skills and abilities
or know how to get them and finally not enough time and i call this myopia shortsightedness
because people will set goals and they're like i want to do this and i'm going to do it in a month
well that's great if you've got nothing else going on in your life
but you've also got to remember you need time to sleep you need time to eat you need time to
grocery shop and do laundry and whatever else you do in your life so it's important not to
overestimate how much time you're going to have available to devote to this goal because you want
to make sure that if you say i'm going to get this done in a month that it's something that
actually can be achieved within that month period if not can you break it down further into smaller
chunks into something you can do in a month and still meet all of your other responsibilities
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goal setting is an essential skill whether you're hiking the appalachian trail managing a company
or just changing a behavior goal setting and planning may seem like a waste of time
but it often prevents unnecessary mistakes and wasted time having to do it over again
even the best written goals will sometimes fail so even if you set some great goals
it's still important not to confuse goal failure with being a failure
other videos you might find interesting include goal setting at doc snipes dot com
slash goal setting increasing motivation at doc snipes dot com slash get going
getting unstuck at doc snipes dot com slash unstuck and for counselors out there a ceu class
is available at all ceus.com goal dash ceu links to these other videos are in the show notes below