Definition: Achievement

Personal Goals Individuals can set personal goals. A student may set a goal of a high mark in an exam. An athlete might walk five miles a day. A traveler might try to reach a destination-city within three hours. Financial goals are a common example, to save for retirement or to save for a purchase. Managing goals can give returns in all areas of personal life. Knowing precisely what one wants to achieve makes clear what to concentrate and improve on, and often subconsciously prioritizes that goal. Goal setting and planning ("goalwork") promotes long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses intention, desire, acquisition of knowledge, and helps to organize resources. Efficient goalwork includes recognizing and resolving any guilt, inner conflict or limiting belief that might cause one to sabotage one's efforts. By setting clearly-defined goals, one can subsequently measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. One can see progress in what might have seemed a long, perhaps impossible, grind.nnnAchieving Personal Goals Achieving complex and difficult goals requires: focus, long-term diligence and effort. Success in any field requires forgoing excuses and justifications for poor performance or lack of adequate planning; in short, success requires emotional maturity. The measure of belief that people have in their ability to achieve a personal goal also affects that achievement. Long term achievements rely on short-term achievements. Emotional control over the small moments of the single day makes a big difference in the long term. By accepting a degree of realism when setting goals, one allows oneself not to attempt to change reality to match one's own dreams by their own efforts alone, but to accept how it is until a certain degree. This degree of reality-checking can prevent one from falling into unhappiness by losing too much control of life by trying to specialize and excel in a very small area and to aspire to become a top leader in that field. This kind of "I must be better than 'X' thinking" can lead to ulcers if taken too seriously. Such competition, however, clearly exists in democratic societies, and no matter what level of a layered society one may identify with, it is very likely that individuals will measure themselves with an above and below scheme. One formula for achievement reads A=IM[citation needed] where A = achievement, I = intelligence, and M = motivation. When motivation equals zero, achievement always equals zero, no matter the degree of intelligence. Similarly for intelligence: if intelligence equals zero, achievement always equals zero. The higher the combination of both intelligence and the motivation, the higher the achievement.nnnWikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia Contributors (Disclaimer)nThis article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.