Achieving Your Goals and Living the Life of Your Dreams Part II

Photo by Gecko

This article is Part II of a series of posts entitled "Achieving Your Goals and Living the Life of Your Dreams." It will make more sense if you've already read Part I. As I related earlier, achieving your goals requires you to plan your future "from the top down," starting with your highest goals and aspirations, instead of planning for your lower needs first. Let the necessities of your highest goals determine how you will meet your other needs and not the other way around. Here's what such a process would look like step by step:

Start with your dream:

I'm going to use myself as an example for this article because I am most familiar with my own dreams (which you can read more about here). I dream of being a successful writer. That has been a dream of mine since my preteen years. If you're not sure what your dream is or what your dream-life would look like, I recommend this article: A Thought Exercise For Finding Your Life's Purpose. Once you've discovered your dream, which is usually formulated in pretty abstract terms like my dream of "being a successful writer," you then have the task of translating that dream into a concrete and very specific goal or set of goals. In my case this would be something like: 1) Own at least two blog websites that each garner a million unique visitors monthly, and 2) Write at least two novels that make the NYT's bestseller list in my lifetime.

Chart The Path To Your Dream, Backwards:

After translating your dreams into tangible goals, you have to break those goals into bite-sized, manageable pieces that don't scare the crap out of you like your dream and the thought of trying to accomplish your dream do. What do I need to make the two goals above come true? Well- readers of course! If your dream is to start a bakery, the answer here will be customers. If your dream is to be a rock star, the answer will be fans. The cool thing is that it's usually people. That's what I love about dreams, that we depend on each other and help each other to accomplish them. Donne was right to say that "No man is an island."

Keep going!

Okay, then. How I do I get readers? The answer is two-fold. First, I have to offer something worth reading. I have to offer quality. Second, I have to get the word out. Even if I offer the best value in the world in terms of my writing quality, I won't accomplish my goals if I don't tell people and make it easy for people to access that value. The answer is the same at this point for other goals. You have to take measurable steps towards excellence at what you do. Study up on your area of passion and practice! Get good at it. If I want to be a successful writer, then it might help to do something that involves writing everyday- like- blogging. If you want to be a rock star, then you've got to get some chops. You've got to practice so that you're offering good value to people. Then you've got to promote yourself and the value you're offering to the world like crazy.

Take the first steps:

You've traced a path from a distant mountain peak all the way back to your starting point, to a place in a nearby foothill that you know you can reach. That takes the abstract, distant, possibly scary goal that makes you ask "Where on earth do I begin?" and gives you a clear, concrete, not too distant, not too scary answer. It gives you a direction to get moving in. Take clear, specific actions that will bring you closer to your ultimate goal. Often times the first step is the one that holds us back. It's the one that we don't take because we're bewildered by the vastness of the dream or the seemingly impossible nature of the goal. It's easy to be distracted and consider other things more important. It's common to promise ourselves that we're just setting aside the goal for now, and we can try it later when things aren't so busy, money's not so tight, or whatever the excuse is. It's also common to break that promise and have regrets. You have to believe, you absolutely must believe that fulfilling your life's purpose is inextricably intertwined with finding true happiness. You have to have the courage to act according to that conviction and start moving forward!

A Final Note:

Please contact me, if you want any further clarification on what I've written here. If you believe that your dreams don't neatly fit into the steps I've outlined above, please let me know, so that right or wrong, I can write an article using your goals as a case study (and respecting your anonymity of course!).