How to Set Meaningful Goals You Will Want to Achieve

 

The key to setting life-changing goals for the next year, month, or week, is to have a long-term vision.  You need to know where you want to be five, ten, and even twenty-five years from now.  Hopefully, you have given some thought to where you want to be in twenty-five years; if not, read this article first.^⁠  

Once you have your long-term vision in mind, it is time to break it down into more specific goals.  I find it most helpful to work in distinct categories.  Doing so allows me to structure my thought process better. 

 

To start, list all of the major categories in your life.  These include;

• Family.
• Health and fitness.
• Career
• Financial
• Personal Development
• Spiritual  

 

Your list of categories may be longer, but if you don’t know where else to start, this list is a good jumping-off point.

I want …

Beside each category, write, “I want …”  Then list as many things as you can think of that you want to achieve in the next quarter-century.    Just write what comes to mind.  Get as many ideas as you can down on paper. Not all of these ideas will be keeper, but there will be some diamonds among the dross, and the more you jot down, the more gems you will unearth.

Don’t self-edit your goals at this time.  

Don’t stop to question if an idea is “realistic.”  If it comes to mind, write it down.  There will be time for evaluation later, but you can’t review an idea you did not list in the first place.

What if nothing comes to mind?

• Sometimes it can be hard to think of goals.  This is often because you are holding yourself back.  So if nothing comes to mind, write, “There is no way I could …”  That trick can open you to more audacious goals and get your thoughts going.  The idea here is to open yourself up to thinking big.
• Another trick for freeing your thinking is to set a timer for three minutes and then write as many items down as you can before the time runs out.  This technique generates a need to write furiously in that limited time, focusing you on doing rather than thinking—the focus on doing bypasses the filter in your brain that holds you back.  I have tried this trick many times, and it never fails to bring up something that surprises me.

Review your list.

After you have exhausted every category, it’s time to go back and look at what you have written.  

I find it useful to take three colored pens and circle the goals that I see recurring in multiple places on the list.  I use a blue pen to indicate positive goals, as in things I want to obtain or achieve.  These goals can be things like starting a website, running a marathon, or setting aside money for retirement.     

I switch to a red pen and circle all of my negative goals.  These are the things I want to stop doing.  They can include things like stop snacking, stop worrying about what others think, or spend less time shopping for new books on the internet and read the pile of books I already have.

Finally, I take a green pen and circle the essential goals that may only show up once on the list but that are too important to ignore.  These are the things that I know I must do in my life.  Some people call them Bucket List items.  I know that if I don’t make an effort to accomplish these items, I will regret it later in life.

Review the goals and dreams you have highlighted.

Focus on growth-seeking goals. 

People often chose goals that do not motivate them because those goals are meant to impress other people.  I call those Validation Goals because you are trying to prove your self-worth to others.    

The goals that get results are growth goals.  These are goals that focus on what goes on inside you rather than how the world reacts to you.  Growth goals focus on learning new things, developing your abilities, and improving yourself.  Focusing on those goals will be more motivating.  They will enhance your internal sense of self-worth, and, ironically, improving your self-worth will also elevate your value in the eyes of those around you.

Avoid zombie goals. 

These are goals that could more easily be accomplished by a corpse than a living human being.  Zombie goals usually start with the phrase, “I will stop doing …”  Maybe that is snacking, doubting yourself, or drunk-dialing an ex.  A brain dead version of yourself could more easily achieve goals like this.  But you won’t become a better person by focusing on things a zombie could do better than you.

Zombie goals are not necessarily wrong; you just need to rethink them.

Try rewriting zombie goals into actions you can take.  Rather than make a goal to stop snacking, instead say, “When I want to snack on Cheezy Puffs, I will eat some baby carrots.”  Or maybe you will say, “When I want to lay on the couch and watch TV, I will take a walk while I listen to an audiobook.”  Find a way to replace a behavior you want to extinguish with a positive action you can take, and you will get much better results in the end.

Set a timeline for your goals.

Decide which goals you are going to pursue and when you want to have them completed.  It is best to organize your goals into those you intend to achieve in one, two, five, and ten years.  Knowing which plans to focus on and when requires knowing who you want to be in twenty-five years, so if you have not done the twenty-five-year exercise, click here.^⁠

Some goals will need to come first to make later goals possible, and some will need to wait for the proper time.  Just don’t push all your dreams off into the distant future because you don’t think you can achieve them in the next year or three.  Instead, think of things you can do this year that will serve your five, ten, and twenty-five-year goals.  Then get to work today.

Write out your goals.

Write out your goals for the next one, three, five, and ten years.  I have a special notebook where I write these goals every year.  It is interesting when I look back through it and see how much I have accomplished over the years.  There is magic in writing things down.  There is also accountability in making specific commitments, even if only you and a notebook know about them.

When you write down your goals, there are a few caveats to keep in mind.

Make your goals as specific as possible.  Rather than say, I will write more in 2020.  I said I would build a minimal website and post one article per week.  And I did.  

The writing goal was also measurable.  I can mark on a calendar when I post an article, and at a glance, I can see if I have met my goals.

I did not commit to writing a book in 2020.  That would have been outside of what I could have achieved in the year.  Instead, I set an achievable goal.  Don’t sell achievable goals short.  They have the power to motivate us to get going, where overly ambitious goals can be demotivating.  Also, achievable goals usually lead to doing more than one needs to do.  For example, I have regularly written more than one article per week.

Keep your twenty-five-year plan in mind as you list your goals for the near term so you can make sure those goals are relevant.  It does no good to set specific, measurable, and attainable goals if they do not take you where you want to go.  Start writing the next chapter of your story with the ending of the complete series of books in mind.

Conclusion

That is plenty for one day.  If you have completed your list, you have done excellent–far better than most people who stumble through life.  But having a list of goals and being able to check off those goals by the end of the year are two different matters.  Watch for my next article that will teach you how to turn your hopes for the future into actions that achieve results.