Teens Meet Outreach

Every successful person sets goals to help direct and give them a focus in life. As a teenager, it is important to set goals as it helps you see what you want to achieve and work towards achieving it.

A goal refers to a particular desire you have in heart and want to achieve. It could be to attain a certain G.P in your results, to save some amount of money, to read and summarise a book, to attain a level of traffic on your blog, etc. Goal setting is a necessary attribute that every teenager who plans to succeed must possess.

Why?

1. It helps you to be focused

People who do not set goals usually do not have a particular focus, they don’t have something set to be achieved, so they just do whatever they stumble on. A goal setter knows he has to do something at a set time and so he is focused on it and as a result he is not distracted. This brings us to the second point.

2. It helps to avoid distraction

If you have a goal to finish reading a book tonight, you would try to avoid anything that would disturb you from actualizing that goal. Goal setting helps you to take your eyes off any distracting element and tunes your brain to the fact that you have a goal to be accomplished.

3. It helps you to prioritize

Having set goals will you prioritize the important things you need to do and avoid or delay the less important ones. When you set a goal to attain a G.P of 4.5 in a semester, it automatically occurs to your subconscious that you have to study your books more than you watch movies.

4. To examine your progress

Setting goals help you to know how much you have progressed and improved in your endeavours. Setting a goal to write 5 articles in a month helps you to measure and know how many more articles you need to write by the time it’s mid-month.

Now, it is important to know that goals set do not just get achieved without you being intentional about them. For you to achieve your goals, there are certain steps needed to be taken and to be consistent about. Some of them are as follows:

1. Have a plan

A common mistake made by people is mistaking goals for plans; there is a difference between a goal and a plan. A goal as discussed earlier is a desired result aimed at to be achieved, while a plan refers to steps taken to achieve the goal. Mary sets a goal to save #3,000 in June and to achieve this, she plans to save #750 from her weekly allowance. Goals point at what is to be achieved while plans help you achieve them.

2. Discipline

To achieve your goals, you need to be disciplined. If you want to save 3,000 this month, you must be disciplined enough to avoid unnecessary purchase to help you attain your goal. If you aim to finish a book this night, you must be disciplined enough to stop watching TV and start reading the book. Self control is also key.

3. Have an accountability partner

Have someone you account to. Be it a friend, a sibling, your parent, roommate, course mate, whosoever you know to be responsible. Please find someone to always give an account of how far you have gone in achieving your set goals.

4. Be motivated

Motivation fires up our bones, it helps us to want to do more. Motivate yourself by encouraging yourself and looking forward to how much the actualization of your goals would improve you.

5. Pray

As much as you include God in everything concerning your life, you should also include him in the areas of goals setting because in Psalms 127:1

Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

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I hope this encourages you to take goal-setting seriously.
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