Often when teachers talk or think about goals, the obvious thing that comes to mind is academic targets or students’ achievement. While this is great because you grow professionally and the satisfaction from student success is simply unmatched, you soon experience teacher burn out if you have no specific dreams for yourself.

This can be quite a challenge amidst the hard balance you struggle to strike between the heavy load at school during the school term and other things like family. However, it is not entirely impossible and you can give it a try this break. That having been said, setting a target is not about guessing what you can achieve. It involves knowing where you are now, what you are trying to achieve, and determining challenging but realistic amounts of improvement needed to get there within a given time frame.

How can you effectively go about this? First, identify your short and long-term goals. Think about what you’d like to accomplish; where you see yourself; what kind of personal growth you hope to have, and probably the ways in which you can achieve your highest potentials. When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.

For this reason, the second step involves visualization- a description of what each goal will look like when it is accomplished. For example, a goal of enrolling at a university for an upgrade would be accomplished when you formally enroll at a university. A goal of graduating with Masters or PHD would be completed when you walk across the stage at graduation and hear your honors announced or when you receive your degree. When you list your goals you build your self-image. You see yourself as worthy of these goals, and develop the traits and personality that allow you to possess them. Just ensure you identify exactly what is to be achieved, set precise quantitative or qualitative measures to define results and that you have set clear deadlines and checkpoints.

Having done that, settle down and draw out action plans that will help you achieve these goals within the time frame you have set for yourself. Think about the things you will have to do in order to achieve the goals. You can attain most any goal you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them.

The final step is to wake up from the dream and build an actual castle. Most dreams die when the dreamers choose not to act on them. Every great journey begins with a step, however small. It, therefore, suffices to state that without a step there is no journey! Avoid procrastination and get on to work on your dream- otherwise it is just a dream!

If you wish to grow, you must set goals to help you visualize and achieve the growth. Without a clear definition of where we are going, it is almost impossible to set off. Stephen A. Brennan, a famous author once said: "You can’t paint a canvas if you don’t pick up a brush and you can’t achieve your goals if you don’t try. Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act.” Spare sometime this festive season to set personal goals.

The writer is a Language Consultant