Personal Interests and Goals
Everyone has different personal interests, and we should all have our own special hobbies to satisfy those interests. By doing hobbies that satisfy our natural interests, you can reduce stress and help maintain that balanced lifestyle that everyone is so eagerly chasing.
So take some ‘Me Time’ and get a hobby!
It’s important to schedule some Me Time into your weekly program to satisfy your own self-growth needs, achieve life balance, for relaxation and just to get away form the daily grind.
Personal goals can also have synergies with other goals you may have for other life aspects.
Personal interest goals in particular may also enhance:
- Your ‘Friendship’ life aspect, by introducing you to people with common interests and motivations. You may even find a new partner!
- Your ‘Recreation’ life aspect, as recreation and personal interests are closely linked.
- Your ‘Health and Well-being’ life aspect, if your personal interest involves a sport.
You may even find an interest in a community service venture.
Take these synergies into account during your goal-setting journey to kill 2 birds (or 2 goals) with the same stone, and get the most out of your goal setting experience.
How to set personal interest goals
The ‘How to Set Goals’ tab on the NavBar goes through the goal setting process in detail – and that process applies to personal goals too. Here are some more pointers specific to personal interest goals.
What are your personal interests: If you’re not sure what hobby to do, try taking the HGMI test in the ToolBOX [you’ll find it under the FREE Life Planning Workbook] – this test asks you to respond to a series of questions and from your responses, you can work out what your natural interest are. Read the section on multiple intelligences under the ’About YOU’ tab on the NavBar to find out more.
For example, if you’re linguistic/ verbal, try writing your own book or learning a new language. If you’re musical, try learning an instrument or play with some of the musical software available.
Bodily/Kinesthetic people of course can take up a wide range of sports, or perhaps building a model is more your scene. If you want to use your brain at the same time, try something like orienteering or geocaching – great fun!
Logical/ mathematical people will always be happy with puzzles and mental challenges and visual/ spatial people can try a myriad of arts or computer graphics packages.
The important thing is to take some time for yourself – whether you just want to unwind beside the pool or tackle something more creative, the choice is unlimited and the choice is yours.
Research hobbies and interests: Like all good goals, you need to ‘research’ the goal before you commit to it and to enable you to prepare suitable Action Plans for achieving it.
So what do you need to know about ‘personal interest’ goals?
First of all, you will need to find out what hobbies and activities are available to you that will satisfy your special interest – now there are just too many options to provide links for, so just sit down with Google and go nuts!
You can also talk to your local Council – they usually have a list of interest groups in your local community.
Once you have a list of options, find out a little more about what it involved – remember that personal goals can occupy a lot of your time, so make them count by doing some thorough research into the ‘when, what, where and who’:
- What exactly does the hobby involve – are you up to this?
- What will it cost and does this fit into your budget?
- How much time will it consume, and will this fit into your schedule? Don’t forget though that it can take 1000 hours to learn a new skill!
- What skills or equipment do you need and do you have them/ are you prepared to get them?
- Is there a local support group you can join?
Make sure you feel comfortable with your particular hobby so that you get the ‘best bang for your buck’!
Armed with the above information, you should be able to find a hobby or activity that matches your personal profile.
What are YOUR personal interest goals going to be?
