#MarchMomentum Part 4 of 6

The first half of the MarchMomentum series focused on managing your emotions. (If you haven’t read it, feel free to check my previous blog posts.) Now we are moving on to the act of goal setting.

Goal-setting is an integral, important part in living out our dreams. Goals can be divided into short-term or long-term. 

​Each goal will have a separate, different purpose, but its main intent and purpose is to achieve something in an organized and structured way.

Begin with home base areas if you need a starting point: education, career, daily personal goals (i.e. wake up, go to the gym, eat at least one green vegetable, the little things that add up), Financial, Relationships, etc.
 
My starting point was finishing high school on time, with an above average GPA. I had a lot of responsibilities while in high school that could have easily taken me off course. I became pregnant in my 9th grade year, and my circumstances at home were unstable. Most of my friends and young girls in my community were also teen mothers who had either dropped out of school or attended infrequently. I didn’t want that to become my story, so I had to set goals and standards in order to avoid going down the same path.
 
The goals that I set for myself had to be attainable and realistic. I had to be careful not to set goals that were too high and potentially cause me to burn out or give up. With all the things I had going on in my life as an adolescent mother, living in a dysfunctional household, being raised by a single-parent who was battling substance abuse - I could barely see what was in front of me.
 
My goals consisted of making the best out of my current circumstances. Completing high school on time with a healthy GPA was my primary focus, in addition to parenting my kid. In effort to achieve this, I had to:
 

• Make it to school on time every day
• Complete all of my assignments on time
• Make time to study whenever I had downtime from my motherly duties and/or work
• Don’t over commit to too many hours at work
• Postpone hanging out and socializing with friends on weekdays
• Subconsciously be aware of not getting too engulfed in relationships what would take me off focus
• Give it my best every day

 
Once I completed high school and enrolled in college, my goals changed, but were similar in a way. During college, I also worked, so my goals consisted of getting a job with a company that could provide an opportunity for me to apply my degree. In effort to achieve this, I had to:
 

• Look for a job that paid well enough to care for my son and me, offered benefits, and advancement opportunities.
• During my job search, I looked at companies that had departments for the field of my study.
• Once I was hired by one of these companies, I set goals to learn my role and job duties well, in preparation for advancement when I was close to completing college.
• After securing a job in my field of study, I set goals to take on more opportunities that would strengthen my skills, increase my experience, and position me for growth.
• Once I got to the next level, I would reset and do it all over again until I advanced to the next…

 
The key to my success consists of learning from my failures, staying focused, and living life one goal at a time.