Setting Goals to Reach Dreams
Setting goals can steer you towards your dreams and help you identify what you want in life. Having this huge dream can seem overwhelming and almost unreachable if we only see the final result, but not how we get there. Goals, the big and the small ones, can be steps to a happier life and the way we set them can make a difference to achieving them.
In my previous post, we talked about continuing to dream and how important dreams can be. Hopefully, this encourages you to keep dreaming and hoping or to at least start. Let's be practical and set reachable goals to achieve that dream (or dreams. You can be a multitasker!). I’m not sure about you, but it helps me when I’m able to reach these small goals because I feel like I’m accomplishing something and it motivates me to keep going. The journey towards our goals may not always run smoothly or be easy, but having goals is part of what makes life good.
So let’s get to it!
What is your dream?
I suggested in the last post to write your dreams down. If you haven’t yet, that’s ok! We can do it now!
What is your ideal future? If nothing was in your way, what vision would you like to become a reality? By knowing exactly what you want to achieve, you know where you have to focus your attention and efforts as well as what could potentially get in your way.
I’ll write down some example goals:
Buy a mid-size SUV to help with taking supplies to family members
Purchase a house to create a safe haven/safe space for myself
Get a promotion at work
Gain another source of income
Get healthier
Travel to another continent
Pay off debt
After writing those dreams down, you now have something tangible. There’s something about seeing your dreams written down that can help shift your mindset and help you commit to achieving them. Now, we have the dreams (the “big picture”), let’s break them down! This is where goal setting comes in.
Break down the “big picture” into smaller targets.
Consider categorizing your goals into categories that mean a lot to you. Some of those categories can be, but are not limited to:
Health - What check ups do you need to get? How can you eliminate excess sugar from your diet? Could walking help with stress?
Financial - How much money do you want to earn? How much money do you want to invest? How much money do you want to save?
Education - Would you like to go back to school? Would you like to continue school? Would you like to change majors? Do you want to pick up a new trade?
Work - What would it take for a promotion? Are you thinking of switching jobs? Do you wish to join another industry?
Travel - Do you want to travel international or domestic? Do you want to go to another country to practice a language you learned? Would you like to experience a culture different from yours?
Leisure - Do you want to pick up a new hobby? Do you want to add more stress free activities to your life?
Family - Do you want to start a college fund for your child? Do you want to homeschool your children? Do you want to foster/adopt?
These are some categories as well as some questions to ask yourself as you are breaking down your dreams into goals. As you begin breaking things down, make sure that the goals that you set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your family, employers, or society might want. If you have a spouse or kids, you should definitely consider what they want, however, make sure that you are focusing on you. Your dreams are important.
Continuing with the example I gave, let’s take “Get a promotion at work” and break it down. The reason for this goal is that I could want to make more money to support my lifestyle, moving into an elevated role can remove stress from my life, I want to move out of a hands-on role to a managerial role, or even I want to step into a new industry. This can have multiple categories attached to it like Career, Educational, and Financial. In this case, we will ask a few questions about what we want to achieve:
What is required for this position we want to get promoted to? Career, Education, Financial
Career: This job recommends that I have experience leading a team
Education/Financial: I would benefit from getting a certain certification, which could potentially cost money if the company I work for doesn’t have tuition reimbursement
Do we already have a good reputation where we are? Career, Personal
Career: My experience at the company has been beneficial to increasing efficiency and effectiveness.
Personal: I have not allowed my personal life to interfere with my work in a negative way.
Career/Personal: I don’t show up to work late without communicating to my supervisor nor do I make it a habit to show up late.
Would we need to go to a new company for a promotion? Career, Travel, Financial
Career/Travel/Financial: The company I work for currently does not offer the position I would like to get and I may need to move to another state for the job I am looking at. If I have to move, the company may or may not offer travel reimbursement.
With these questions, I categorized them based on what it may take to achieve them or what could affect achieving my goals. Feel free to take a different approach than myself, but this is just to get your mind going. Now that you have the goals, let’s set a plan to reach those goals so we can then get to our overall dream.
What is your plan to achieve each goal?
Create a Daily, Weekly, or Monthly To-Do List to work towards your goals. You can even add dates or time frames and then within those goals have mini goals and how to achieve them. Let’s work down to the things that you can do in, say, a year, next a month, next a week, and then today, to start moving towards the goals.
At your early stage, your smaller goals for day-to-day might be to do research or compare details and gather information on how to achieve your higher level goals. This will help you to have realistic expectations. Let’s continue the example with “What is required for this position we want to get promoted to?“:
Year 1: Take on an opportunity to lead a new initiative in the program that can provide more training on the tool and or installing/setting it up.
Monthly: Offer brown bag meetings on the technology utilized by so many people on the program.
Weekly: Complete training on the technology that the program regularly uses and is an industry standard.
Daily: Research what technology the program uses regularly and is also a demand in the industry you are looking into.
With each of these tasks, you may even realize that your timeframe happens quicker than you planned or slower. This is why it is important to set your goals in such a way that you have as much control as possible, your goals are realistic, and they are effective. Along the way, you can realize that some goals can actually work towards multiple dreams. With the above breakdown, getting a promotion can lead to an increase in finances which can work well with planning to travel to another continent as well as paying down debt. Look how we can multitask!
Finally, review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Optimize Your Plan for Your Life
We don’t have the same life. Some people have children to consider, a spouse, they may be caregivers to someone, or may have limited accessible resources. Your plan should work for YOU. Over time, you may need to review and update your To-Do List on a daily or weekly basis because life happens where someone gets sick, unexpected bills/expenses pop up, etc. Life can change a timeframe or shift your focus. It’s ok to prioritize. Things will still work out. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself or stress yourself out when this happens.
As you are setting new goals, you may realize some things don’t work for you anymore. It’s ok to let them go because things change. It doesn’t mean you have failed. Your priority dreams, or focus has shifted because of experiences or new desires.
When you achieve a goal, celebrate!!! No matter how small, you did that! Put a date beside when you achieved it so you can look back on what you have been able to do and how far you have come.
In Conclusion…
Set Your Goals by for your dreams:
Identifying your dreams to know which goals to set
Breaking down your dreams into realistic, reachable goals
Having a plan to reach your goals
Optimizing your plan for your own life
Celebrating and motivating yourself every step of the way
There are some more detailed ways out there to set your goals and work towards your dreams, but hopefully this can get you started. Have you always set goals for yourself? Have you noticed a difference from setting and writing down your goals for yourself? Let me know in the comments!
