No matter how much you know about how to achieve your goals, you'll ALWAYS get better results when you know you're going after the RIGHT goals.  Going after the wrong goals is not only ineffective, it can actually take you AWAY from where you really want to be.

A quick example.  Let's say you dream of owning a business where you can make money without having to actually do any work.  It's possible, but not if you set up your business in such a way that it DEPENDS on you being physical present in the business, such as in life coaching.  To market yourself as a life coach, you generally describe your personal experience and how that helps you be a good coach.  This isn't something you can easily walk away from and still make money.

Another example.  Let's say you're feeling lonely, and you decide to set a goal of going out to the bars every Friday night to find someone special.  Well, this MAY work or it may not.  It really depends on what TYPE of person you want to share your life with.

You see, many people know what they really want.  In the first example, we want "easy money", and in the second, we want to find someone special.  In both cases, we know what the "ultimate goal" is, but we may set a "subgoal" (that is, a goal intended to bring us closer to our ultimate goal) that may or may not help.

In this article, I'm going to share with you some tips about how to make sure you set the "right" subgoals that will move you closer to what you really want.

First - Define Your Ultimate Objective

Sounds pretty easy, right?  Just answer the question, "what do you really want?"

Except, for most people, it's not an easy question to answer.  Do I want fame and fortune, or do I want to settle into a nice comfortable pattern of "normal" living?  Do I want to have dozens of sexy women coming after me, or do I want to spend my time with one woman in private bliss?  Do I want to be the life of the party, or do I want to be respected?  Do I want to be safe and secure, or do I want a life of fun and adventure?

If you have trouble with this question, here's the easy answer.  What you REALLY want, what ALL of us really want, is to be happy.

Now, the next question is, "What makes you happy?"

The only way to answer this question is to try out a bunch of things and notice how they make you feel.  How do you feel going out to bars and nightclubs?  How do you feel taking a walk in the park?  How do you feel hang-gliding off a cliff?  How do you feel when everyone has their eyes on you?

As you get to know yourself better, you'll have a better idea of what makes you happy.

The main problem in this approach is that some things are difficult to "try out" without taking significant time and effort to acheive.  For instance, the only way to know for sure if being rich will make you happy would be to spend a sizable amount of time and energy making it happen.

In cases like these, you're probably okay to just imagine yourself in that situation, and notice how it feels as you imagine it.

So my suggestion here is to actually experience as many different things as you can, and imagine the few things that would take more than a day to set up.  Take note of the things that make you happy, and the things you'd prefer to avoid.

Second - Find the Gaps

After you make a list of the things that make you happy, where do you see the biggest gap between your list and your life? 

If you know that spending quiet time with one special person makes you happy, and your life is full of social commitments keeping you from your partner, that's a gap.  If you know that you enjoy meeting new people and you're stuck in an office most of the time, that's a gap.  If you know that you're happy when being creative, yet continually find yourself doing the same things over and over again, that's a gap.

For now, just identify the ONE gap which appears to be the most significant.  Closing this gap will give you more satisfaction than any of the others.  And when you've done that, you can go back and start working on the next biggest gap.

In some cases, it's possible to work on more than one gap at a time, although it's generally best to focus your attention as much as you can.

Third - Set Short-term Goals

When you have chosen one significant gap to work on, you have, in effect, set your primary goal.  This goal represents exactly what you want most in your life, and is guaranteed to increase your happiness as you reach it.

However, most primary goals are long-term, and we usually require something more immediate to focus upon.  After all, it's kind of hard to focus on spending a life with a special partner if we don't have such a person in our lives to start with.  In this case, we need to set a short-term goal of FINDING that special someone.  And in this, we may also want to set shorter-term goals of trying a variety of different approaches to see which one is most likely to produce the desired result.

One of the BEST short-term goals to set in any situation is to discover what action plans have worked for others seeking the same primary goal we are.  When we find out that a large percentage of folks who have what we want got it from doing the same thing, that should tell us that the best way for us to reach our goal is to do what they did.

If we find that the "same thing" many of these people did was to "be different", that should tell us that we should find a way to "be different" as well.

Fourth - Stay Focused

Okay, this really isn't a part of setting the right goals, since we've already done that above.  However, I feel it necessary to point out that many worthwhile goals take more time and energy than many of us realize.  It's important many times to stay focused on your goal in order to reach it.

Of course, now that you have a set of goals that you KNOW will make you happy, you are free to use any other goal-reaching strategy to meet them.

Alan Tutt, author of Choose To Believe: A Practical Guide to Living Your Dreams, runs both the PowerKeys Publishing website and the Pragmatic Solutions Now! ezine site.  Through both websites, Alan's mission is to empower the world, one individual at a time.