3 things you need to set great goals in your relationships

Strengthening your relationships can be hard. Use these three tips to help you get started!

I always found it really easy to create goals for my work. It’s always easier for me to create work goals because there’s always a project going on, there’s always growth in work that I wanted to achieve.

And so it came really easy for me to set goals in the work area of my life.

But it wasn’t as easy to create goals in my relationships. And I knew that this was an area I could really use some help on. And I thought, well, if I could use some help on it, I’m figuring there’s somebody else out there who might need some help in this area too.

So I wanted to just outline three things that can help you set goals in your relationships.

Number one, is creating a long term vision for your relationship.

1. Create long-term visions for your relationships

Now, if you’re a parent, maybe that long term vision is that you want to have a close and an open relationship with your child, when they’re an adult.

You want them to be able to talk to you about anything and not feel that they have to keep everything from you. Maybe that’s a long term vision goal for you.

And maybe if you’re married, your long term vision for your marriage might be that you’re really close emotionally, that you spend frequent times together, that you travel together, that you do things together, or whatever it is.

Creating a long term vision for the relationship that you have in mind is one of the first steps to setting a goal in that area or for that relationship.

And this can also be the same for whether you’re creating a goal for a relationship with a friend or a best friend, or even the customers that come into your shop

If it’s a relationship human to human, create a long term vision of where you want to get to in that relationship with this person or group of people or whoever the other person is. So that’s tip number one.

Number two, is if it’s possible, discuss your vision or your long term goal with the other person.

2. Discuss your vision

I say if it’s possible, because if you’re a parent and your long term vision is to have a close relationship with your child, and your child is one years old, you’re not going to be able to have a discussion with them about this goal that you have for your relationship with them.

But where it’s possible, discuss your vision with that person.

If this is your spouse, then sit down with your spouse and have a discussion with them. And let them know what your vision is, for your relationship with them.

Maybe they have something to contribute to that as well. Maybe they have ideas about where they want the relationship to grow and to be in it might be useful to get their input too.

So if possible, discuss with the other person, your vision for your relationship with them. That’s number two.

The third tip is to create action oriented goals.

3. Create action-oriented goals for your relationships

Now, it’s quite easy in the relationship domain of our life to create goals, which are a statement of how we want to be with the other person.

Say for example, for parenting, I want to be a better mother or in your marriage, I want to be a better spouse.

But the problem with setting goals that start with a being verb is that it’s not as actionable as a goal that starts with an action verb.

Like, I want to listen attentively, when my husband speaks to me or I want to make sure I put my phone down when I’m playing with my kids. That’s an action that you can see what the action is that you need to take so that you can work towards your goal.

So the third tip is to make your goals action-oriented. Try not to start your goal with a being verb.

Get a free goal planner!

If you want to get a goal planner, this is a free download that you can get from PaperMePretty.co.uk.

It might not look exactly like this one because our designs for Paper Me Pretty change every month. So the design might be different but essentially the information will be the same.

You’ll write your goal out, you’ll write why you want to achieve the goal. You’ll make a note of the actions that you want to take, and when you want to achieve it by and if you’re going to reward yourself (and I recommend you reward yourself for every goal), you’ll put your reward there.

And this will just really help you to make progress on your goals. It really is a great system for helping you to make progress towards your goals.

So when you write your goal, make sure that it’s action-oriented so that you can know with more clarity what the action is that you want to achieve in your relationships.