PSY 120 – Introductory Psychology

You set your goals on a number of levels:

• First you create your “big picture” of what you want to do with your life (or over, say, the next 10 years), and identify the large-scale goals that you want to achieve.
• Then, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals.
• Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to achieve these goals.

This is why we start the process of setting goals by looking at your lifetime goals. Then, we work down to the things that you can do in.

For week one please share your “big picture goals” and one smaller goal you want to accomplish this week.

On your own document write down the following:

My Big Picture Goal:

The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.

To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of the following categories (or in other categories of your own, where these are important to you):

• Career– What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?
• Financial– How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?
• Education– Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?
• Family– Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
• Artistic– Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?
• Attitude– Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.)
• Physical– Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
• Pleasure– How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that some of your life is for you!)
• Public Service– Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?

Spend some time brainstorming these things, and then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals that you can focus on.

As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want. (If you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants – however, make sure that you also remain true to yourself!)