7 Exciting Reasons To Set Goals and Smash 2021

"You need a plan to build a house. To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal."– Zig Ziglar

Sometimes we can get comfortable just coasting through life. Life passes you by and you can’t believe another year is gone already. You have this craving for something but you don’t know exactly what. Life just feels stagnant.

You want to work on yourself and feel like you’re working towards something but where do you even start? Or worse, you think - why even bother! I’ll never really change!  

The thing is, we can get by in life doing very little. We can sit and watch tv, scroll and snack all day long and nobody would ever really notice. Psychologically though we are made for more, we are wired to feel a sense of purpose, meaning and contribution to life.

Just like when water stops flowing and gathers in a pool it becomes stagnant and poisonous. Compared to a waterfall or river, the water that moves is clean and clear. Our bodies are 75% water, we are meant to be in the flow of life.

"The Meaning of Life is to Give Life Meaning." - Viktor Frankl

What you’re really lacking when life gets stagnant is a sense of meaning, purpose and direction. In his famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, psychologist and neurologist Viktor Frankl talks about what he observed living in the horrific concentration camps of WWII.

While a prisoner in these camps he noticed that it wasn’t the prisoners who were physically stronger that survived. It was those who found meaning and purpose within the camps. He concluded that it wasn’t pleasure or power that gave meaning to our lives, it was purpose!

We use pleasure and power to fill a void but it’s only ever a short term fix for a deeper problem - lack of meaning!

He also described depression as a person who doesn't see any hope in their future. Obviously this is the extreme end of a lack of meaning and purpose but it gives us a clue as to how important meaning and purpose are to our wellbeing and happiness. His most famous quote was ‘those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how’’.

We chase hits of happiness in the next delivery order, bottle of wine or Netflix binge. Living in a capitalist society, we are so socially conditioned to believe that materialism = happiness. Imagine for a second jumping into your car and driving all day with no end destination in mind. That’s how most of us live our lives!

We’re driving every day but we’ve no idea where we’re headed. We just hop in, fill the car up and hope for the best. This is exactly what life feels like without goals - a little bit pointless, uses all of our time and energy and yet we feel like we’re not really going anywhere.

What are goals?

Goals are simply plans for our future. They are putting an end destination into your GPS and then heading in that direction. They are the map to get us from Point A - where we are now, to Point B - where we would like to go - your dream life! You know where you are going and that fuels you! You head in a straight line instead of taking all the wrong exits and going around in circles! There might be detours along the way but it never changes your end destination, it might take a little longer but you still get there eventually.

Goals help you to get off the hamster wheel and auto-pilot of day to day life and get on the path of happiness, meaning and success. You don’t want to wake up 10 years from now thinking ‘where did that time go?’. You want to wake up and say ‘that was amazing - what’s next?’. No blueprint, however, no house - it’s that simple! Goals are the first steps you take towards having a happier, more meaningful and fulfilling life. They focus your energy in positive directions.

Goals are like your GPS system, they are an internal navigation system that keeps you moving in the direction of a meaningful, fulfilling and happy life. They keep you in the flow of life. You go from the side-lines of your life to jumping into the driver's seat.

7 Exciting Reasons To Set Some Goals Today:

Control: Most people have no vision for their life. They wake up every morning dreading the day ahead and hop on the hamster wheel, going around in circles but getting nowhere. Goals give you back a sense of control over your life. You're not just winging life anymore, you're deciding what happiness and success is for you and setting the goals to get there.

Empowerment: Taking responsibility for your life breeds empowerment. Being in the driver's seat and setting goals gives you such a sense of power. Life is no longer happening to you, it is happening for you. You're not the victim of your circumstances, other people and outside events. You are the creator of your own masterpiece. 

Focus: Your time and energy is now spent doing the things that bring the most meaning and happiness to your life (which definitely beats hours of scrolling every day!). Having goals is like having a map, you know exactly where to go! You become more alive. 

Reward: Measuring your progress and how far you’ve come boosts your self-worth, confidence, motivation and energy. As Zig Ziglar says: if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time! Goals make life more interesting and exciting and the rewards are endless!

Motivation: When you set a deadline to your goal, and share it with others you 10X your motivation to do it. When you give your mind a clear vision of where to go you will be so surprised how much faster you get there. Our brains are so driven by goals and will always find a way to get there. Goals can be a force for change! Feeling excited about the end result will give you the little boost you need on the days you just don’t feel like it.

Confidence: The more you set and achieve goals, the more confident you feel, 100%! You begin to realise your potential and how far you can actually go. You end up getting bolder and better at setting goals as your confidence improves. Confidence is not having a lack of self-doubt or fear. It's feeling all of those feelings and going for it anyway!

Clarity: You become super clear on what you want more of in life, what happiness and success really looks like for you. You begin to make the invisible visible and before you know it your life begins to look a lot like what you once dreamed was possible! So often we wait until we know what we really want before taking action or we wait for some divine inspiration. I spent about two weeks trying to think of a name for my Instagram page when I first started. After creating many lists and getting a lot of advice I went with the ground-breaking self-titled Claire Fealy. Clarity comes from taking action, the more action you take the quicker your path becomes clearer.

"Your life only begins to become a great life when you clearly identify what it is that you want, make a plan to achieve it and then work on that plan every single day."- Brian Tracy

You have to create a compelling future for your life or before you know it another decade has passed and you’re still wondering what’s missing from your life! Goals should be about following your heart and creating consistent feelings like love, happiness and adventure, growth and contribution.

Even small simple goals are better than no goals at all! Start with 10 goals you would love to achieve in the next 12 months. Define what happiness and success looks like for YOU! Pick the top 2 goals, the ones that would have the greatest positive impact in your life. Focus on just those two goals every day for the next 90 days. I truly believe that your only mission in life is to love, grow and enjoy life. Make sure you are living a life that you love every day.