Last week I unveiled the first of ten weekly tips devoted to learning how to set and achieve any goal. I’ve studied the fields of motivation, happiness, success and resilience for the last two decades, and have put myself through a huge number of programs to test their effectiveness. Earlier this year, I released my latest book, “Creating Your Best Life,” which connected the science of goal-setting with the science of happiness for the first time.

Since then, I’ve been sifting through more research, talking to experts and coaching over one hundred new clients around how to use my book to be successful, along with some new ideas. For ten weeks, I’m laying out the principles of my next book, with this week covering how to set the “right” goal.

I often tell clients that “a goal is not a goal is not a goal.” It is not enough to state that you wish to achieve something without going deeper into your psyche and life to discover whether or not this is the right goal, if it’s packaged properly, and if it’s even the proper time for that goal to be pursued. Following are some of the determining factors of “right” goals:

•Performance goals, according to Locke and Latham’s “Goal Setting Theory” need to be “challenging and specific” for optimal performance. I often tell clients to stretch out their arms and to set goals that are slightly beyond their fingertips. No “low-hanging fruit” goals unless you want to feel as mediocre as the goal after you accomplish it.

•If you have a learning goal, in which the outcome cannot be quantified, you are shooting for a “do your best” goal, which means that you could be acquiring information, exposing yourself to a new career, or traveling solo to a country to test independent behavior. These types of goals are excellent for simply getting to know yourself or something else better, and are very appropriate at various times in our lives, or alongside “challenging and specific” goals.

•Set goals that are self-authored and “intrinsic.” I always ask someone the “So what?” of their goal so that they can share why they set the goal in the first place. It is not uncommon to find that people mistakenly set “extrinsic” goals, which are goals that a person, society or another force has made you think you “should” have for yourself. These goals are doomed to failure and unhappy outcomes. Ask yourself, “Who set this goal?” Prove it to yourself.

•Goals need to be “approach” and not “avoidance,” in the sense that you need to always be approaching a positive outcome as opposed to avoiding a negative outcome, because avoidance goals waste emotional energy (becoming healthier vs. stopping smoking, for example).

•Goals must have measurable and concrete steps to test whether or not you are making progress. Locke and Latham have famously stated: “Goals without feedback and feedback without goals are both meaningless.”

•Goals cannot conflict with other goals, meaning that if you pursue one goal, it shouldn’t stand in the way of another one of your goals. Ideally, you want “leveraged” goals, which means that you have a domino effect of goal accomplishment so that accomplishing one goal puts another one closer in reach. For example, writing a book would bring you closer to fulfilling a dream of being booked to speak at a convention.

•Write your goals down. When you do, you concretize your thinking, immediately spot goals in conflict, up your well-being and make yourself accountable to yourself and probably others. Writing down goals also quickly helps you spot the measurable feedback you can create.

•Properly-set goals often allow you to enter into a state of “flow” while you pursue them. When you are in flow, and time stands still, it is a sign that you are being appropriately challenged, instead of being anxious from too much difficulty or bored because of a “low” goal.

You may not know that New Year’s Resolutions are actually one of the best things you can do for yourself at this time of year, because studies have found that resolvers are 48% more likely to accomplish goals, while non-resolvers have only a 6% chance of accomplishing goals. So use this week’s tip as a guide for setting the right goals for the coming year, and stay tuned for next week’s Step Three: Improving Self-Regulation.