There is an innate compulsion in humans to set goals for ourselves. Sometimes they're conscious, sometimes not. Here are 7 reasons goals are a good idea.

As I mentioned last week Erik Fisher and I recently talked about the importance of starting your day in the right way. How you start the day, i.e. the mood you're in when you get going, and the space you give yourself to do what's important before you begin, are instrumental in setting the tone for the rest of your day.

It often requires active and deliberate planning/habit building to make sure that you're not simply pushing that snooze button right to the wire and spending the rest of the day rushing around trying to catch up with yourself.

The same is true of life more generally. For the past couple of years I have blocked out time for a week in the middle of December to set goals. I'm doing it this week.

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” – Jim Rohn

In many ways this has a very similar result to the idea of starting the day right (or making sure you are prepared the night before). Setting goals has become a key part of starting my year right.

So I wanted to outline seven reasons why I believe goal setting is so important to us as introverted and highly sensitive people if we are going to make our gentle impact in the noise and overwhelm of a distracting and attention-seeking world:

They allow you to see your own vision

They give you the momentum to get back on track

They provide a bigger picture perspective

They turn the overwhelmingly impossible into manageable steps

They boost confidence and self-belief

They tell us why

They show us how different parts of our world work together