How to Set Goals in Life: 3 Areas You Should Focus On

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Do you have trouble staying committed to your values? How can you set value-based goals?

One way to commit to living your values is to choose goals that are important to you. Therefore, they’ll feel more meaningful than the goals other people expect from you.

Focus on the following three areas to learn how to set goals in life.

Focus Area 1: Enjoyable Activities

Neil Pasricha (The Happiness Equation) suggests that one way to learn how to set goals in life is to consider what activities you do purely for enjoyment. From there, increase your happiness by brainstorming additional ways to pursue these activities in different contexts or with different people. For example, if you enjoy writing, start a blog or join a writing group to create more opportunities to experience happiness.

Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project) builds on Pasricha’s advice: Once you’ve pinpointed your most enjoyable activities, set an ambitious goal that requires you to actively engage in these activities to succeed. Having goals that tie directly to what you feel passionate about will help you prioritize time spent on your interests and create more opportunities for similar uplifting experiences. For example, Rubin’s love of writing inspired her to set the ambitious goal of completing a 50,000-word novel in one month. Her work on this goal led to a number of opportunities that now allow her to pursue her love of writing as a full-time career.

Focus Area 2: Innate Gifts and Talents

Deepak Chopra (The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success) argues that you have innate gifts and talents that you’re meant to contribute to the world. You should choose goals that align with these natural tendencies because they’ll feel more meaningful and enjoyable to pursue. He claims that aligning your strengths and interests in this way creates the perfect environment for success.

Why Strengths and Interests Translate Into Success

According to research in the area of positive psychology, Chopra’s advice to align your goals with your natural inclinations rather than what you think you should do does indeed improve your chances of successfully achieving these goals: You’re more likely to feel motivated and experience an upward emotional spiral (increased feelings of happiness and satisfaction) when you pursue goals that genuinely interest you. This positive mental state allows you to access the best parts of yourself—your unique strengths and talents—and apply them to successfully achieve your goal.

Focus Area 3: Who You Want to Be

Jay Shetty (Think Like a Monk) suggests another way to create value-based goals: Set intentions for who you want to be as you move through your day. He explains that focusing on who you want to be rather than on what you want to or have to achieve opens you up to experiencing life in a more satisfying way. For example, there are certain work projects that frustrate you. When you consider who you want to be as you complete them (calm, positive, productive), you switch from being frustrated to being calm and positive. This improves the way you experience your work and your ability to both enjoy and achieve what you set out to do.

The Link Between Intention-Setting and Self-Discipline

Research on the topic of intention-setting confirms that when you focus on who you want to be more than on what you have to do, you increase your self-discipline when faced with conflicting choices about how to behave. For example, you usually use brute force to get through your workload. This method rarely works and only serves to increase your feelings of frustration. On the other hand, when you intend to be calm when approaching your work, you switch your focus from how you wish your work would be (satisfying, easy) to how you want to be (calm, capable). As a result, you immediately know how to act when you’re tempted to throw a tantrum at your desk.

How to Set Goals in Life: 3 Areas You Should Focus On