Why Goal Setting is Important for Personal Developement

There is no shortcut in the highway to success. We all need to spend time, effort, and make sacrifices to reach our goals. Our habits play an important role in achieving our goals, and hence we need to shape our behavior to align them with our goals. But this cannot be achieved overnight. We need to improve little-by-little, bit-by-bit every single day to bring out a marked difference.

To cut the story short, our behavior determines our habits, and habits lead us to our goal.

Habits are our automatic behavior, which forms the basis of our daily decisions and outcomes. To understand this better, Charles Duhigg, the author of The power of habit: why we do what we do in life and business, explained the process of the creation of habit, which is interesting to the concept we are discussing.

There are three key elements in a habit loop:

Trigger – that initiates a behavior

Routine – that maintains the behavior

Reward – that awards the behavior

When you set a strategic goal, it acts as the first element – the trigger. When you act on your goal, you set a routine, the second element. With a commitment to the first two elements, you are bound to achieve the third element – success as your reward.

For example:

Trigger: You read the benefits of weight-loss in a health magazine and decide to reduce 6 pounds in three months.

Routine – You make and follow a diet plan, spend less on junk food, customize your kitchen, and wake up early and follow the exercise routines judiciously for 2 months.

Reward – The weight scales after 2 months shows you lesser by 6.5 pounds!

Recommended: A Strategic Approach to Building and Breaking Habits

The above process will repeat itself as the reward and trigger for your next goal. Hence, once the above flow begins, it then works in a cyclical manner with each reward for one goal acting as the trigger for your next goal, and so on.

Did you notice how setting a goal triggered the change in your habits? In the course of 2 months, you changed your eating habits, your sleeping habits, your exercise habits, and even your spending habits! If someone sets a goal, the trigger will automatically help him change the habits necessary for achieving his goals.

If you need a tool that can help you set the trigger and establish the routine, then we recommend you to try Habitify. It is a user-friendly app that helps you set daily habits and achieve them seamlessly.

In the end, when you change your habits for the better, you are effectively improving yourself, and getting a long way into the path to successful personal development.

Recommended: Why Tracking Habits is the Key to Building Habits

Learn more at: Why Goal Setting is Important for Personal Development

Source: Habitify