Life Goals

List your life goals. What is it you want to accomplish in life? Not just with work, but personally? If you’ve listed them before, it’s always good to update them. Then choose one of those goals to achieve this year. Now think about what you can do today to move closer to that goal, even if it’s just a small thing. Get the balls rolling. Do this every day — move yourself closer to that goal. There are four major steps to achieve your life goals:

1. Brainstorming your life goals

·         Think about everything in your life that is really important to you.

·         Think about the couple of things you’ve really been pondering lately or your biggest struggle in life.

·         There are plenty of areas of your life you can set life goals in: careers, family, friends, other relationships, schooling, spirituality, traveling, fun, charity, money, health, and many more. These are just some to get your brain churning.

·         Write down anything and everything that comes to mind - all of the things you’d like to accomplish and those that sound fun or exhilarating to you.

2. Setting your life goals

·         Look at what you’ve written down from your brainstorming session.

·         Narrow that list down to the things you absolutely couldn’t live without doing - those are your life goals.

·         Next try to clarify each of your goals with a specific target and a clearly defined outcome. You should be able to picture what your life will be like when you achieve the goal.

·         Pat yourself on the back for identifying what’s truly important to you.

 3. Building a plan to achieve them

Once your goals are defined, the next step is creating a plan to get there. Many life coaches recommend using the Simpleology system devised by Mark Joyner. It’s called backward planning and is a method used by the US military.

To summarize, think about the last step needed to accomplish just one of your goals. If climbing Mount Everest was on your list, then literally your last footstep onto the summit should be what comes to mind.

Before that, you’ll need to come up with a team to do it with, a conditioning regimen to prepare yourself, travel plans, and much more. Work all the way backwards until you land on the first step that you need to take. It should be something actionable and achievable in the very near-term.

If you’ve done the exercise correctly and wrote everything down along the way, you’ll have a step-by-step plan for exactly what’s needed to accomplish your goal.

The rest is making it happen.

4. Getting after it

Once you’ve planned out each one of your life goals, you may feel slightly intimidated, and that’s okay. After all, these are your life’s biggest accomplishments to-be. The best way to start checking them off your list is to work on them one at a time.

Let me repeat. One at a time.

Choose just one of the things you’d like to accomplish, preferably the one that’s most important to you right now, and put your plan into action. Start adding the steps you drew out in the previous exercise onto your calendar and deciding when you’re going to take each step.

If your goal is something that’s going to take several years to accomplish, what can you do this year to get that much closer?

What can you do in the next few months?

Your goals become a lot less daunting when you focus on the smaller, more accessible steps you need to take to achieve them. Believe me, I feel overwhelmed in the little things I have to do day-to-day. I’m constantly reminding myself to take things just one step at a time. It makes everything manageable.

Once you’ve got all of your preparation done, it’s on you to go after it. Remember to choose just one life goal and focus as much energy as you can into it. If it’s something you truly desire, then motivation shouldn’t be a problem.

Ride that wave of energy and watch yourself accomplish amazing things over the course of the next 5-10 years.