The most important part of goal setting is knowing what you want most in life. The most critical part will be to achieve them and layout a plan to accomplish your dreams.

Today you have 2 choices in front of you; either you decide to set your own goals and journey will start, or you decide not to and you will soon realize that you have not achieved what you wanted.

I know it may sound somewhat ridiculous to set your own goals and a plan of action to achieve them but as time flies by you will soon realize that I WAS RIGHT.

Here is why: How can you possibly achieve something in life if you do not have a clear plan, a road map, a detail plan of action that tells you everything about achieving your goals? How can you possibly envision your future without a clear definition of how to achieve your dreams?

Goal setting is a standard technique used by top level athletes, and successful business people all around world. Remember, you will not pay a price for setting goals. You will pay a price for not setting them. You can choose to get caught up in everyday activity of your life without feeling a real sense of purpose in life or you can choose to accomplish something meaningful with your life.

First you have to write down your goals and second you have to lay out your plan of actions that will determine how to you reach them. Once you have set your long-term goals, set up your short-term goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. You can set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on previous plan. Finally set a daily to do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals.

Once you have decided your first set of plans, keep process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily and weekly basis. Periodically review your plans, results and modify them to reflect your changing priorities, experience and accomplishments.

Be precise in setting your goals: Set precise goals, put dates, and amounts so that they are real. If you do this, you will know exactly how and when to achieve your personal goals. Have a vision that you know is unquestionably right and you will be internally driven to achieve that vision. A goal is "reasonable" when you can see entire process needed to get to its attainment.

Write goals down: This is extremely important to if you wish to accomplish them. Goals are personals and should be shared with people that are close to you. This will give you more sense to what you do. Start mapping out your goals and review them regularly.

Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve if not you will give up on idea that setting goals is most important technique to help you achieve your dreams.

List obstacles to overcome in accomplishing your goals.

Identify individuals and groups you need to work with to reach your goals.

List skills and knowledge required to reach your goal. What do you need to know?

Develop a plan of action to reach your goals.

Write down benefits of achieving your goals. What will you get in compensation? (Monetary, freedom, more vacations, retire early, etc.)

Example of goal setting:

When I write copy for my advertising clients, I always check to make sure three key elements are in place. 1. psychology, 2. logic, and 3. creativity. These are three very different aspects of ad writing, which, when combined, produce a highly effective message. Master technique of each, and create ads that really sell!

It doesn’t matter which part you address when. You can write out a first draft and then go back and insert missing aspects, or you can craft your copy piece by piece and then put it all together at end. For most part, I tend to piece together my message, but you can work however you’d like.

Advertising wouldn’t be advertising without psychology. How else would you persuade or convince people that your product is outstanding in its category? What other way is there to go about creating a need for what you sell? Persuasion relies on emotional appeal, and emotions are driven by our psychological make-up. A long time ago, someone thought up AIDA method, which is good enough to serve my purpose in explaining psychology of advertising. It’s really very simple. A.I.D.A. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Attention: Capture your audience’s attention right away, with a riveting photo and headline. Exceptional ads showcase headlines and images that work together. (Read more about this in paragraph about creativity.)

Interest: If you wrote a good headline, likely they’ll be intrigued and continue reading. Your ad copy is where you can isolate a fear, problem, concern or need of theirs. Then go right into:

Desire. Make them want what you have. Pose your product as solution to aforementioned problem. Build your case with examples, or even testimonials.

Action. Finally, tell your audience what to do. Buy Now! Cick here and save! It’s amazing what just a quick directive will do.

The next key feature of your message should be logic. By logic, I’m referring to how you order words and sentences in your message to make your point. A good writer knows to craft his message in an outline form- with first paragraph driven by a main idea, and supporting sentences following that premise. Each paragraph should reinforce what’s been said in main paragraph. This is basic English, and it’s key to crafting a solid argument. You should be able to convert your sentences to bullet points if you had to- with each bullet logically supporting a main concept. In fact, you may even want to use bullets, as they’re a quick way to sum up benefits of what you sell with no extra words to dilute impact of what you say.