Decision-making Step 2: Goal Setting

While there are no hard and fast rules for decision-making, following the 5-step decision-making process will help you make tough decisions better and faster. The purpose of the decision-making process is ultimately to achieve certain outcomes, to satisfy a need, or to solve a problem. When you’ve completed the self-assessment in step 1, you should be ready to move along the decision-making process and set your goal for the ideal future. When it comes down to it, at the end of the day, every major decision in our professional or personal life is an opportunity to push ourselves harder and to set a goal to change things for the better.
   
When faced with big decisions, we need to set big goals. They are crucial to accomplishing great things. Making an important decision should be within the context of our career and life planning; each decision needs to align to the framework for our life blueprint. Setting goals is the way to keep our long-term vision in our line of sight and fuel our motivation to take the necessary actions in the short-term. It helps us manage our resources to make the most with what we have. In every decision we make, we need to consider our Most Important Goal (MIG); that one goal that when achieved, makes all the difference in our life.

When you set any goal, make sure it motivates you. Make sure you focus on the passion, the vision, and the meaning of the goal to you. If the outcome is not meaningful or relevant given the big picture, it’s not likely you’d stay committed and put in the work to make things happen. Every goal needs to align to your values and priorities. Without clear focus as to why you are doing what you are doing, it’d be hard for you to muster the sense of urgency to take action. When you don’t have the right motivation, you won’t be able to fully commit to your goal. You’ll wind up putting things off and avoiding the tasks that you need to accomplish to make the goal a reality, which in turn will result in disappointment. Ultimately you’d find yourself sliding down that slippery slope of self-negativity, which inevitably weakens self-confident, performance, and the chances of success.

Setting a goal is essentially inspiring yourself to aim for things you never thought possible. But a MIG requires daily commitment to take the steps and see the progress towards achieving it. Goals are like stories: they have a beginning and an ending. But their power is in the plot in between. When you make a decision to change and set your goal, you start your journey to a new destination. There are many paths to the top of the mountain and many ways to walk those paths. The trail is long and winding with many forks along the way. The beauty of the story lies in the journey; what we learn to appreciate is the steep climb up to the top of the mountain. Success is not in reaching the goal but rather in becoming the person who climbed all the way up.

Goals should be set in writing. The physical act of writing down a goal makes it real. Your MIG is your hope for the best. Then it needs to be broken into smaller, achievable milestones. By specifying the individual steps, you can track your progress towards your MIG. Do something every day to get closer to achieving your MIG. Hitting the smaller milestones will keep you motivated to get to the finish line. Here’s how:

1. Write down your MIG
2. Write down the actions you commit to take daily.
3. Create your mid-term milestones 

Most likely, this isn’t the first time you’ve heard someone talk about SMART Goals, and it’s definitely not going to be the last: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely. But I’d like to propose a new perspective. Choose SMART goals that are - 

Scary: if you are not scared, your goal is not important or big enough.
Motivating: if you are not buzzing with enthusiasm, your goal is not meaningful enough.
Actionable: if you don’t create daily action steps, your goal is not enticing enough.
Rewarding: if you don’t care about the consequences, your goal is not beneficial enough.
True: if you are not true to yourself, nothing ever will be enough.

To successfully complete step 2, create your SMART goals. A quick Google search should yield many different templates for your goals. There’s no right or wrong template to use. Choose one based on your personal preference. The following two have been found useful by my clients over the years:

Goal setting Basics offers more than 20 Free Goal Setting Worksheets by www.goalsettingbasics.com
 
Smart Goals Guide offers 8 Free Goal Setting Templates www.smart-goals-guide.com
 
Goal-setting is a crucial step in the decision-making and any planning process. When you complete this step, you should be ready to move on to step 3 and explore your options.