This article describes how creating a goal or target can help you to succeed in life. I myself want to be successful in life and have read many books on the subject. One lesson and something all the successful people I have read about seem to do, is that they are always setting themselves goals for the future. Setting targets has among other things helped me to quit smoking cigarettes. I hope you enjoy reading my article.

One example I clearly remember from one such book, described a survey that had been carried out for schoolchildren who were in their final year of high school. One hundred people took part in the survey and they were asked to answer a number of questions. The main question the people who commissioned the survey were interested in was about where the children wanted to be in five years time and what they wanted to be doing, for example in their business life.

Not all children of this age are that mature and in the end there were only five answers which were taken as being a true goal for the future. Five years later these one hundred people were contacted again and were asked to fill in yet another survey. The results were quite staggering as the five children who had set a goal for the future had a higher combined net worth than the other ninety five added together. Money of course is not everything in life, however for me this showed, that is if you believe everything that you read, that you are more likely to be a success in life if you set yourself a goal.

I then looked at the aspects of my life with which I was not happy with. At that age, I smoked around fifteen cigarettes a day. This was something I quite enjoyed but which I knew was not healthy for me and something which also cost me a lot of money.

I set myself small targets, I would firstly reduce my intake to only ten a day and after two weeks reduce it down to five. I would then try to totally stop smoking after around a month.

This sounded so simple, however proved to be quite difficult. I was determined to stick to my goals and kept thinking of all of the benefits of quitting smoking. I am happy to say I was successful in my quest to stop smoking, even though it did take rather longer than one month.

I have since followed the same pattern in other areas of my life, to help me to lose weight for example. This attitude has helped me to no end and I will continue to set myself more goals in the future.