MAKING YOUR GOALS A REALITY - WHITNEY OLADEINDE (25/05/2015)

I cannot stress enough how important it is to have goals, and you can never be too young to start setting and reaching your goals. Richard Branson once said, ‘I believe in goals. It's never a bad thing to have a dream. If you really want to do something, just do it. Whatever your goal.’ If dreams are not age-specific, then goal setting is something that people at all ages can have and achieve!

Why are goals important?

1. Goals can make your dreams a reality. You can’t wake up one day and say I want to start my own business without a plan to get you there? Winning or becoming successful never comes by accident.

2. A breakdown of your dream into achievable goals motivates you and is a constant reminder of where you want to be in a year, 5 or 10 years’ time

3. Without goals, you can’t measure your success or progress

4. If you can’t measure your success, you may not reach your full potential, preventing you from living life to the fullest! And who wants to look back and regret never reaching their full potential?

And for those of you who already have goals, I’m sure we can all admit that we fall into the same trap of writing out our goals and not fulfilling all of them each year. Who wants to look back at the end of 2015 and feel it was a wasted year? 

So here are a few tips that I have recently started using to make every year more productive than the last:

Tip No. 1 – Have goals for ALL areas of your life

Growth is important in every area e.g. academic (maybe getting those top marks), personal (challenging yourself to learn a language or an instrument, for example), goals for your future career (this can be to get work experience in that field). 

Tip No. 2 - Break down your goals – The “how” part of making your dreams a reality

One of the main reasons that people never fulfil their goals is because they make them too big and this can be discouraging. Breaking them down into smaller, more achievable goals can help with this. I tend to break my goals down into monthly and then weekly goals. For example, one of my goals for this year is to improve my cooking skills. I’ve broken this down by choosing 12 dishes that I want to learn to cook this year and I’ve set one for each month. Another thing that works for me is phone reminders; I have a weekly reminder every Sunday evening to remind me to set my goals for the week. I also have a monthly reminder on my phone set all the way to the end of 2015. This reminds me at the end of every month to look back at my goals of the year and see whether I am happy with the progress that I am making. This “How” part is what makes achieving your goals possible and realistic.

Tip No. 3 - Share these goals with someone who can hold you accountable

In the same way that I suggest you split your goals into academic, personal, career, etcetera, I also suggest you get a mentor for each of these areas. This is extremely important in making your “how” part effective. Someone who has experience in a specific area that is important to you can be very valuable and at least you can save some time by not making the same mistakes that they did!

Tip No. 4 – Where do you falter every year?

What are the problems that prevent you every year from fulfilling all your goals? Are you prepared to not let them make you falter once again in 2015? If not, what can you do? You might be someone that lacks organisation? To prepare, you could use the weekly phone reminder idea to make sure that you use your time more effectively. Or keep a diary, or stick notes around your house. Whatever way that will work effectively for you, start putting it into practice and make the rest of your 2015 a successful one.

EXPECTATIONS BY NNENNA MOIZE (RE UPLOAD)

The older we get the more the search for someone who we can share the rest of our life with becomes cardinal. 
   It is safe to say that in today's world 'the game' has changed drastically, most of our parents probably met at university or were high school sweethearts who ended up with their own little version of 'happy ever after'. However with technology and our generation’s heavy reliance on the media to teach us life lessons the basic concepts that were in place in older generations are not present in modern day. 
   One of the main issues I've noticed amongst the young adults in our generation who are dating is their expectations from their partner. I've heard my parents speak time and time again about their own dating experiences and the one thing both of them seem to draw back to is that whilst dating they were searching for someone who had potential. With everything being so fast paced in our generation we inevitably crave a partner who is essentially 'ready made', meaning: great job, good car, nice house, no bad habits. Just someone who's good to go. Now who am I to say that doesn't exist? Some of you are looking at your partners and thinking, "What's she talking about I found that," however truth be told you probably didn't, the person they are today most likely came from hard work and patience on both ends. 
  I am fully aware of the fact that not everyone wishes to settle down, however if you are someone that does be realistic about your expectations and search for the right things in a future partner. So many relationships fall apart nowadays because people go in searching for the wrong things; they place heavy emphasis on variables and ignore constants. I can not sit here and tell you what you should be searching for in a partner as, but I can give you a few pointers; instead of looking for someone who's one hundred percent financially stable look for someone who's working towards that and is taking the correct measures to be there. That's the ambition we all want in our partner. Presentation is important but instead of worrying about how well they dress focus on their beliefs and morals, these are the things that make a relationship, dress sense is a variable that can easily be changed. Allow futile issues fall by the wayside and focus on the things that will matter in the next 20 years. 
   Whilst studying in America I remember an athlete saying to me, "the problem with females now is they see us broke in college and aren't interested, they don't want to ride out with us till we become that man on ESPN." The truth is who the person you're with is today isn't who they'll be in the next ten years and this goes for both sexes, dating someone who seems "perfect" now doesn't mean they won't be an overweight couch potato living off benefits tomorrow, however when you go in search of constants such as; their morals, ambition, mindset etc with hard work the change is more times than not positive. 
  My mother has always told me that the man I call 'dad' now was not the man he was when they first met, everything from sense of style to his financial situation indicates growth. Now she stands proudly next to a good man that loves and provides for his family. A man she grew with and had faith in. 
  As I said earlier, we live in a media saturated generation where we are taught to emulate couples like Beyonce and jay-z and completely overlook the hard work they put into getting there. Men are more focused on dating a woman who looks great in every picture and fills their friends with envy rather than a woman with a good head on her shoulders, and women search for a man with money, perfect style and who is self made rather than someone with potential to become that man. 
Overall we must be realistic in our expectations and seek out the appropriate traits, focus less on variables and more on the constants that will be there in 20 years. 

"When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are." - Donald Miller