Creating Goals for Success | Psychology Today

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The Greek Philosopher Aristotle defined a successful life as living in a way that aligns with your purpose. If this definition resonates with you, then you get to decide what you want out of life, what your personal values are, and what success looks like for you. Once you’ve identified what success means to you, you can implement some reliable strategies to help create this reality.

Here are a few tips:

Visualize It

Visualization is an effective strategy that has been used in therapeutic contexts for decades to enhance cognitive, emotional, and behavioral change (Blackwell, 2019). When we visualize a particular action, our brains are essentially rehearsing that action. For example, neuroscience studies using brain imaging techniques have shown that when we imagine making a movement, our brains are activated in the same way that they would be if we were actually making that movement (Pearson et al., 2015). In the same way that imagining an action is a sort of mental rehearsal, we can use mental imagery to identify the discrepancies between our current selves and our ideal future selves, which can help inform the behavioral changes we need to make to succeed in our goals (Murphy et al., 2015).

Create Goals

Success is predominantly achieved by taking several incremental steps toward a goal. For example, if your goal is to be an ultra-marathon runner, you might work toward this goal by setting sub-goals like training every day and eating more healthful and nutrient-dense foods.

Research has shown that structuring a goal into a set of subgoals makes it easier to work toward your goal, enhances your self-efficacy, or your belief that you are capable of achieving your goal, and provides positive reinforcement, which improves motivation and persistence (Latham & Seijts, 1999).

Unfortunately, our internal research (drawn from our well-being quiz) shows that most people set very short-term goals. This prevents them from creating the outcomes they might desire.

Source: Berkeley Well-Being Institute

Set Deadlines

Research shows that one of the best ways for us to achieve success is to set deadlines for when we can accomplish each of our identified subgoals. People commonly underestimate how long it will take them to complete a task, a phenomenon known as the planning fallacy. Being as specific and detailed as possible when creating your sub-goals (and sub-subgoals when necessary) is the best way to achieve your goals within the timeframe you set (Kruger & Evans, 2004). It can sometimes be hard to identify every subcomponent of a task in advance, so don’t get discouraged if a task ends up taking you longer than anticipated. It’s far better to just adjust your deadlines as needed than to scrap the whole plan.

Track Your Progress

Tracking your progress toward your goals and subgoals is an extremely effective strategy for helping you succeed in life (Harkin et al., 2016). There are two major benefits to tracking your progress:

1. Provides an accurate perception of effort: One benefit of tracking your progress is that it provides a more accurate perception of how much effort you’re actually putting in and how consistently you’re sticking to your plan. We often hold inaccurate perceptions of our behaviors. For example, we might think we aren’t working hard enough when in reality we are putting in more than enough time and effort. On the other hand, we might think we are consistently doing the most when we are missing the mark by a substantial amount.
2. It’s motivating: Checking off completed subgoals and being able to see the progress we are making can be rewarding and can promote a sense of competence. The positive emotions that come from progress tracking can help promote sustained motivation, which increases our chances of success.