Live Your Life Your Way, Plan It!

Many people feel they work hard, but they don’t seem to get anywhere worthwhile.

A key reason that they feel this way is because they haven’t spent enough time thinking about what they want from life, and haven’t set themselves proper personal goals. After all, probably you wouldn’t start on a major journey without a set destination!

A goal can be a lot of different things but not a dream or a hope. I dream of owning my own home. I hope to have my own business. Those are great and admirable dreams, but they are not goals.

A goal is specific. It’s measurable. Reframing those dreams into goals looks like this: I will save $50,000 in the next five years and have enough money for a down payment on a home. 

For something to truly be a goal, you need to know when you get there. When you reach it. Those kinds of specific goals will set you up for success.

Setting Personal Goals: Dream Big but Start Small

Setting personal goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation.

One of the best ways to set a goal is to pick a small, tangible milestone.

If your dream is to save money for a home in the long term, then your first goal could be to save $1,000 in the next three months. If your dream is to run your own business, decide what that means for you. Maybe it means you will have a higher income and become financially independent or manage your own time how you think best.

Dream big, but start with a goal of reaching one realistic step that will take you closer. Setting an actual goal should be small and tangible. Once you hit the first one, you can set another goal that brings you further down the path to your dream.

How to Set a Goal

First, consider what you want to achieve in life, and then commit to it. Set specific, measurable, attainable and relevant goals that motivate you and write them down to make them feel tangible. Also, set a deadline for your goals. Then plan the steps you must take to realize your goal and cross off each one as you work through them.

By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. Also setting your lifetime personal goals will show you the steps needed to achieve them and you’ll be able to set your financial goals.

You set your goals on several levels:

• First, you create your “big picture” of what you want to do with your life and identify the large-scale goals that you want to achieve.
• Then, you break these down into smaller and smaller targets that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals.
• After this, you can analyze the requirements to achieve your small goals and on the same principles, you can set your financial goals.
• Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to achieve these goals.

This is why we start the process of setting goals by looking at your lifetime goals. Then, we work down to the things that you can do in, the next five years, then next year, next month, next week, and today, to start moving towards them.

Step 1: Setting Lifetime Goals

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? 

•       A career life goal might be to open your own business. A personal goal might be to have a family one day. 

The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in the future. Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision-making.

To cover all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of the following categories:

• Career – What level do you want to achieve in your career? This might be the job of your dreams but also running your own business.
• Financial – What financial requirements does achieving your goal have? How is this related to your career goals?
• Education – Is there any knowledge you need to achieve your goal? What information and skills will you need to have to achieve other smaller goals along the way?

Spend some time brainstorming these things, and then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want to do. Then trim again so that you have a small number of really significant goals that you can focus on. Do not forget to focus on the financial goals required in achieving your personal goals.

As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want. 

Step 2: Setting Smaller Goals

Break the big picture down into smaller and more specific goals. Areas might include career, finances, family, education, or 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 the given time frame.

For the life goal “I want to open my own business,” the smaller goals may be “I want to learn to manage a business effectively” and “I want to open a construction company.”

Once you have set your lifetime personal goals and the financial goals required for this, set a five-year plan than a one-year plan, a six-month plan, and a one-month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.

Then create a daily To-Do List of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime personal goals.

Finally, review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way how you want to live your life.

Staying on Course

Once you’ve decided on your first set of goals, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your To-Do List daily.

Periodically review the longer-term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience. 

A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART  mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants SMART usually stands for:

• S – Specific.
• M – Measurable.
• A – Attainable.
• R – Relevant.
• T – Time-bound or Trackable.

For example, instead of having “to be rich” as a goal, it’s more powerful to use the SMART goal “to be debt free by December 31, 2026.” This will only be attainable if a lot of preparation and all the small steps had been completed beforehand!