Setting and achieving personal goals can have a profound impact on an individual's happiness and overall well-being. This article explores the relationship between personal goal achievement and subjective well-being, highlighting the importance of goal efficacy and integrity.
Achieving Personal Goals
Achieving complex and difficult personal goals requires focus, long-term diligence, and effort. Success in any field demands emotional maturity and the ability to forgo excuses
and justifications for poor performance or lack of planning. The belief in one's ability to achieve a personal goal significantly affects the likelihood of success.
Long-term achievements rely on short-term accomplishments. Emotional control over daily moments can make a significant difference in the long term. By setting clearly defined goals, individuals can measure and take pride in their accomplishments, seeing progress in what might have seemed like a long, difficult journey.
Goal Efficacy and Integrity
Research has shown a strong link between achieving desired goals and changes in self-efficacy and integrity, ultimately affecting subjective well-being. Goal efficacy refers to the likelihood of succeeding in achieving a goal, while goal integrity refers to the consistency of one's goals with core aspects of the self.
A focus on goal efficacy is associated with happiness, a factor of well-being, while goal integrity is linked to meaning, another factor of well-being. Achieving goals that hold personal meaning increases feelings of subjective well-being, as individuals find fulfillment in pursuing projects that resonate with their values.
The Role of Meaningfulness
Psychologist Robert Emmons found that pursuing meaningful projects and activities often leads to happiness as a by-product. Indicators of meaningfulness predict positive effects on life, while lack of meaning can lead to psychological distress. Emmons categorizes meaning into four areas: work, intimacy, spirituality, and transcendence.
Goals that fulfill intrinsic values and align with an individual's self-concept, known as self-concordant goals, are more likely to receive sustained effort and lead to greater well-being benefits. In contrast, goals pursued due to external factors, such as social pressures, are more likely to be abandoned when obstacles occur.
