This page tells about the importance of goals and how to effectively set goals.
Goals are a powerful tools that can yield large returns in all areas of a student's life. The Wellness Card "Health Promotion Contract" helps students establish goals. The process of setting goals and targets allows students to choose where students want to go in life. By knowing what they want to achieve, they know what they have to concentrate on and improve, and what is merely a distraction. Goal setting gives students long-term vision and short-term motivation.
Having sharp, clearly defined goals, students can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. They can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind.
By setting goals students can:
People who use goal-setting effectively:
By setting goals, and measuring their achievements, students are able to see what they have done and what they are capable of. The process of achieving goals and seeing their results gives the confidence and self-belief that they need to be able to achieve higher and more difficult goals.
The follow guidelines apply to setting effective goals on the Health Promotion Contract:
Positive Statement: express goals positively: "To execute this technique perfectly" is a much better goal than 'don't make this stupid mistake'
Be Precise: if students set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that achievement can be measured, then they know the exact goal to be achieved, and can take complete satisfaction from having completely achieved it.
Set Priorities: where students have several goals, give each a priority. This helps students to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct their attention to the most important ones.
Write goals down to avoid confusion and give them more force.
Keep Operational Goals Small: Strongly urge the students to keep the goals they will work towards immediately (i.e. in this session) small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Today's goals should be derived from larger goals.
Set Performance, not Outcome Goals. This is very important. Students should take care to set goals over which they have as much control as possible - there is nothing as dispiriting as failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond the students control such as a family crisis or just plain bad luck. Goals based on outcomes are extremely vulnerable to things beyond our control.
Set specific measurable goals. If students achieve all conditions of a measurable goal, then students can be confident and comfortable in its achievement. If students consistently fail to meet a measurable goal, then they can adjust it or analyze the reason for failure and take appropriate action to improve skills.
Set Realistic Goals. Goals may be set unrealistically high for the following reasons:
Other people:
Other people (parents, friends) can set unrealistic goals for
the student, based on what they want. Often this will be done
in ignorance of the students goals and training programs, values,
viewpoints, and preferences.
Insufficient information: Learn more. If the student does not have a clear, realistic understanding of the goal's topic (i.e., nutrition labels, food pyramid) and of the techniques and performance to be mastered, it is difficult to set effective and realistic goals.
Always expecting a best performance: Many people base their goals on their best performance, however long ago that was. This ignores the inevitable plateaus that can occur for good reasons, and ignores the factors that led to that best performance. It is better to set goals that raise your average performance and make it more consistent. Lack of respect for self: If students do not respect their right to rest, relaxation and pleasure in life then they risk burnout.
Goals can be set too low due to:
Fear of failure: If you are frightened of failure you will not take the risks needed for optimum performance. As you apply goal setting and see the achievement of goals, your self- confidence should increase, helping you to take bigger risks. Know that failure is a positive thing: it shows you areas where you can improve your skills and performance.
Taking it too easy: It is easy to take the reasons for not setting goals unrealistically high as an excuse to set them too low. If they are not prepared to stretch themselves and work hard, then they are extremely unlikely to achieve anything of any real worth.
Set goals so that they are slightly out of immediate grasp, but not so far that there is no hope of achieving them: none of us will put serious effort into achieving a goal that they believe is unrealistic. However, remember that the belief that a goal is unrealistic may be incorrect. Such a belief can be changed by effective use of visioning (see the pages in Vision).
Go to the description of the development of the Healthy People 2010 Goals and Objectives .
Go to the Student Health Services Health Promotion Goals.
Learn more about goals from this web page, http://www.psych-web.com/mtsite/goalsett.html.
Check out the Lifeplan shareware to download and use to set goals from this web page: http://www.mindtools.com/lpdownld.html
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