When most people think about the principles of goal setting, they also think back to their business days. Yet while businesses thrive on goal setting, especially for their sales people, these principles can apply to anyone for anything they desire.The first principle is to take action to set goals!Everyone sets goals all the time. Something always needs to be done. Some action is always taking place in time and space. Getting up on time is a goal. So, too, is meeting a friend for a movie.Setting goals, then, happens to be as natural as breathing. Everyone sets multiple, unique goals every single day.Yet these goals are not considered life changing. They may alter your life a little, but not really change it for the better very much.Setting a business goal, or a health goal, or a spiritual goal, on the other hand, can change your life in a way that can be noticed.This brings us to the second principle of goal setting. A goal is not merely a task that you can do without much of a stretch. It is something that is a little beyond your current capacity to fulfill. It is also something that is very important to your sense of well-being. Thus, the second principle of goal setting is that it should make you stretch in an important area of your life.While with most daily goals, from brushing your teeth to washing your car, you just think them up and act on them, really important goals need to be treated in a much different way.This brings us to our third principle of goal setting: write it down. Why is this important, even vital, to the success of your goal? Surely, if you plan to lose 10 pounds in weight or make $10,000 a month or win the local bowling championship, you’re not going to forget it from one day to the next! No, the reason why it’s essential to write a goal down is because it formalizes it for you.When you sign your name to something it means that you stand behind the statement, you honor it. Similarly, when you write down your goal, you honor your commitment to reach it. A written goal has power and focus!Now that you’ve got some momentum with your goal setting, you can apply the fourth principle. This is to monitor your goal and readjust it as you work on it.Suppose, for example, your goal was to lose 10 pounds in 3 weeks. After your second week you find that you’ve only lost 2 pounds. You now need to make an adjustment. You can adjust your diet and exercise, or how much you plan to lose, or extend the time you need to meet your goal.Finally, a fifth principle is to reward yourself after you achieve your goal. Find some way to celebrate it. This will give a sense of completion to your journey. It will mark your starting point and your end point. The psychological satisfaction of a sense of completion will then carry over into the next goal you set.Goal setting is a skill, just like basketball or chess. Principles, like the rules of a game, help keep you within an acceptable range of behavior and strategy. If there were no guidelines, no criteria, then the entire process would fall apart.Principles of goal setting create an organizational structure for your endeavors. They create a line of progress that you can follow from the birth of a goal to the celebration of its attainment. Principles define the process of goal setting. They make it work.