How to Set Life Goals (And Achieve Them)

It's an old adage that "if you don't know where are going, any road will get you there". While this sounds like a hokey saying your father would preach to you when you were a teenager, your father was a wise man. If you create a list of life goals you may find the right road to get you there.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• a piece of paper you can carry in your wallet

1. Set aside some quiet time alone to contemplate the life ahead of you. Make sure you are free of distractions and have an open mind.

2. Write down on a piece of paper the major goals you'd like to reach during your life. These need not be heavy and philosophical....but they do need to be specific. "Personal growth" is a bit too broad and hard to measure. Instead try something like "learn a 2nd language by the time I'm 30"

3. Your list may include personal, professional, financial, spiritual goals. This is your life -- make sure these are your life goals, not other's goals for your life.

4. Once you have have written this comprehensive list, ask yourself if any of these are "nice-to-haves". For example, is one of your life goals really to have your picture taken in front of each of the 7 Wonders of The World or did you just read about it in an in-flight magazine and thought... "that would be cool". Once you have removed the nice-to-haves, try to get down to @ 10 of your most important goals.

5. Now take your top ten goals and place a time next to each of them. It is useless to say "make $1M dollars" unless you put a concrete timeline when you want to achieve that goal. A target date focuses your energies and helps you prioritize.

6. Put the list in your wallet and revisit the list 48 hours later to see if this is a true reflection of your life goals. If it is - congratulations! If not, start over at Step #1 and see where the 2nd round takes you.

Tips & Warnings

• carry your list with you wherever you go. You never know when you might "check" something off the list
• don't be a slave to your initial list of goals. There is only one thing worse than not setting goals, it's setting goals refusing to reevaluate your goals as your life changes

[eekkaa55]

on 10/14/2008 i hope that i can achive it

[Cherst1031]

on 8/23/2008 Great article with practical ideas anyone can do!

[WeeSandy]

on 6/28/2007 I like that you mentioned that the goals need to have a timeline and be measurable. Important points!