Yearly goals are very important. And what I have found in my study and research of successful people is that every important person in this world boasts about having a set of goals they are constantly working on achieving.

This means that the habit of having yearly goals to work on is a premium behavior of high performers.

What this suggests is that if you want to also change your life and join the high performers of this world, you must also get into the habit of setting yearly goals that will help you know what to pay attention to in the course of each year.

Setting yearly goals is important because it helps you to reconcile the changes in your life.  The goals you set in your twenties will most likely be very different from the goals you set in your forties.

And apart from helping you change with the different phases of your life, goals also keep you accountable to yourself while measuring your progress over time.

 Whatever your age doesn’t really matter in the end, as long as you set yearly goals that address the most important dimensions of your existence while focusing on the things that matter to you each time.

 Edward Locke and Gary Latham (1990) are leaders in goal-setting theory. According to their research, goals not only affect behavior as well as job performance, but they also help mobilize energy which leads to a higher effort overall.  This goes ahead to suggest that those who set yearly goals get to improve their efforts and results over time more than those who don’t.

Why is it important to set yealy goals?

Setting yearly smart goals is very important to give you an edge in life.

Here are some very important reasons why you need to set yearly goals…

Focus. Setting yearly goals will help you to be focused on the things that truly matter to you.

This is because if you had done your goal setting right, it will capture the important areas of your life.

This will help make sure that you are feeding every area of your life.

And with this level of attention, your chances of becoming distracted and drawn to things that don’t add up would have been greatly reduced.

Motivation. We all need that flame of motivation to get us started and setting yearly goals helps to make this possible.

This is the main reason why many people are fired up early in the year when their goals are still fresh.

The only problem is that a lot of people don’t build disciplined consistency into their goals to help them push through till the end.

Direction. Yearly goals help you to have personalized direction.

People without goals will go where the crowd goes or where is easy and smooth.

But a person with goals will mostly focus on the direction that will lead him to his destination no matter how uninteresting that might seem to others.

Clarity. Setting yearly goals will help you to have a clear perspective on what you are doing.

The process of goal setting alone helps in the clarification of perspective which in turn directs attention and energy.

Control. Having yearly goals will give you control over your life.

People with goals have a strong internal locus of control which makes them assume self-responsibility for their life choices and outcome.

It is very different for people who don’t have goals.

Such people are more likely to depend on external factors for progress and when things don’t go their way, they blame everyone else but themselves.

With such an attitude, it becomes difficult and almost impossible to course correct when things go out of place.

The 5 smart yearly goals everyone should set

For anyone who is interested in setting smart goals for himself, there are 5 key areas to focus on.

I refer to these areas as the 5 Distinctions of Wealth.

This is because anyone who is truly wealthy in the truest sense of the world has abundance and wholeness in these 5 areas.

Setting yearly goals in these areas avoids trial and error and also ensures that you don’t just work on one or two areas of your life while the rest go ignored and unattended to.

Here are The 5 dimensions everyone should set a smart goal on…

Smart yearly goals 1: Spirituality.

We are first spirits before we are humans and everyone has a spiritual dimension to his existence which helps him stay connected to his mission and purpose here on earth.

Also, there are forces that are bigger than us and the best thing one can do is to properly align with such forces.

When setting spiritual goals, your focus would be on how to build your spirit man up and how to connect better with a force that is bigger than you.

As spirit beings having human experiences, we can’t leave our spirituality to chance.

This means that your goals will include how you are going to create a lifestyle that will help you to connect more to your soul.

It will also be important for you to develop a closer relationship with God or anything else you believe to be bigger than you.

This is because as mortals, we always need that extra power to aid us when all else fails.

So, you must set goals on how you are going to cultivate and nurture the spiritual dimension of your existence.

Smart yearly goals 2: Relationship

Everyone has significant and important others in his life.

Your significant others include your partner, spouse, family members, etc. while your important others include people like your mentors, peers, and mentees.

Your goal must include how you are going to feed these relationships if you have them or how you are going to start creating them if they are currently absent in your life.

If your network determines your net worth, it then means that growing a valuable network should be an intentional practice captured in your yearly goals.

Smart yearly goals 3: Fitness

Your physical and mental health is important.

Your body must be properly fed and maintained just as your mind too.

Your health goals will specify how you intend to nurture your body and mind in the new year.

It will include things like losing weight, gaining weight, taking more vitamins, drinking more water, ditching junk, and the likes.

Your mental fitness goals might include things like going back to school, reading more books, acquiring a new skill, etc.

Anything to keep your body and your mind fit and flourishing falls into this category.

Finance.

Under this category, you will focus on your money and career.

Goals on your career will be more about how you intend to grow in your field of endeavor and expertise.

It could be things like changing jobs, climbing the corporate ladder, bringing in new investors for your business, and the likes.

Money will specifically focus on things like managing your expenses better, learning to budget and save money, investing in the stock market, buying your first home, and the likes.

In the end, the goals you set here are meant to help you grow your bank balance and what you do to make that money in the first place.

Smart yearly goals 5: Wisdom

Wisdom is your ability to discern differences in people and events.

The goals you set here will focus on building yourself a sense of Awareness, getting better at how you reason and handle situations. It might also be a place to set goals on how you work on your social and emotional intelligence.

You might as well set goals that will help give your sense of reasoning a boost.

Our goals give us direction in life. it is with them that we make progress in our finances, career, health, and everywhere else that matters.

If you want to join the league of high achievers, you need not just set goals, but you also need to build the habit of consistently working on them till they become a reality.