Set achievable life goals by questioning yourself about what you want to achieve in the short term like this week and the long term like in 10 years. Determine your life goals such as family, education, career, and health goals then break them down into short term milestones with detailed steps, write them down, and keep track of your progress in a journal. Remain flexible by assessing if your timeframes and milestones need adjusting as you work towards your goals. Once goals are met, celebrate your accomplishments and set new goals.
3. Question yourself
• What do you want to achieve this week?
• What do you want to achieve in a year?
• What do you want to achieve in 10 years?
4. Determine your life goals
• Family goals
• Educational goals
• Career goals
• Health goals
5. Break them down
• Into short term measurable milestones
• Write them down
• Turn them into detailed steps
6. Keep track of your progress
• Write in a journal
• Celebrate small
accomplishments
• Find motivation
7. Be flexible
• Are you sticking to the timeframe
• Are the milestones
still necessary
• Do you need
to adjust them
8. Next step
You met your goals! Now what?
• Assess your goals
• Celebrate the victory
• Set more goals
Editor's Notes
Whether you have small dreams or lofty expectations,
setting goals allows you to plan how you want to move through life.
Some achievements can take a lifetime to attain,
while others can be completed in the course of a day.
Whether you're setting broad overarching goals or planning specific manageable goals, you'll feel a sense of accomplishment and self-worth.
Getting started can seem daunting, but we'll show you how to build up to even the loftiest dream.
To Determine your life goals:
Ask yourself some important questions about what you want for your life.
What do you want to achieve: today, in a year, in your lifetime?
The answers to this question can be as general as "I want to be happy," or "I want to help people."Consider what you hope to attain 10, 15, or 20 years from now.
• A career life goal might be to open your own business.
A fitness goal might be to become fit.
A personal goal might be to have a family one day.
These goals can be incredibly broad.
Break the big picture down into smaller and more specific goals.
Consider areas of your life that you either want to change or that you feel you would like to develop with time.
Areas might include:
Career,
finances,
family,
education
health.
Begin to ask yourself questions about what you'd like to achieve in each area and how you would like to approach it within a five year time frame.
Now that you roughly know what you want to accomplish within a few years,
make concrete goals for you to begin working on now.
Give yourself a deadline within a reasonable time frame (no more than a year for short-term goals)
Writing your goals will make them harder to ignore,
consequently making you accountable for them.
Make your goals steps towards life goals. Basically, you need to decide why you're setting this goal for yourself and what it will accomplish. Some good questions to ask yourself when figuring this out are: does it seem worthwhile? Is now the right time for this? Does this match my needs?
For example, while a short-term fitness goal might be to take up a new sport within 6 months, ask yourself if that will help you reach your bigger goal of running a marathon. If not, consider changing the short term goal to something that will be a step towards meeting the life goal.
Keep track of your progress:
Writing in a journal is a great way to keep track of both personal and professional progress. For example marathon
Celebrate: Checking in with yourself and acknowledging the progress made towards a certain goal is key to staying motivated.
It may even encourage you to work harder.
Find motivation: Asking a friend to keep you on track can help you stay focused. For example, if you're training for the big race, having a friend to regularly meet up with and work out with can keep you on track with your progress.
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You may find yourself set in your ways concerning broad life goals, but take the time to re-evaluate your smaller goals
Acknowledge when you have reached goals and allow yourself to celebrate accordingly. Take this time to assess the goal process—from inception to completion. Consider if you were happy with the time frame, your skill set, or if the goal was reasonable.
• For example, once you have run your first 5K, be grateful that you've completed a goal, even if it seems small one in comparison to your bigger goal of running a marathon.
Keep setting goals.
Once you have achieved goals—even major life goals—you will want to continue to grow and set new goals for yourself.
• Once you run your marathon, you should assess what you’d like to do next. Do you want to run another marathon, but improve your time? Do you want to diversify and try a triathlon or an Ironman race? Or do you want to go back to running shorter distance races—5Ks or 10Ks?
• If you have opened your independent bookstore, do you want to work on implementing community events, such as book clubs or literacy tutoring? Or do you want to make more money? Would you like to open additional locations or expand by adding a coffee shop inside or next door to your bookstore?