You’ve probably read all the “How to set your goals for the year ahead” articles. Not this one. Please, for your own sake, keep on reading. First of all, 2018 is gone. It was a great year for me and my business, a great year for freelancing and content creation, and a great year for travels. It was a calm year on the personal life matter, which is always great because it means nothing dramatic has happened.
2018 might be gone, but it will forever remain in my memory. Why? Because 2018 was the first year in which almost all of my goals have become true. Minus one or two goals, which I’ve more precisely worked around, not just push to the side, I’ve been able to reach all of the resolutions and come out of it clean and better.
In this guide:
The Writing Challenge
For those of you who don’t know, I wrote one article per day in 2018, every single day. Through sickness and health, through riches and poor, I married my blog and wrote on it for the entire year without even a single day off. One of the first articles was the one about the 18 realistic goals that I’ve set for myself in 2018.
Writing that article has led me to a series of events that somehow have made 2018 my ultimate year. Why? Because by writing that article and using the word “realistic”, I gave myself a chance. Most of you people wish for stuff, not plan for stuff to happen at the beginning of a new year. The Universe does not grant wishes.
Even if you’ve seen “The Secret” 10 times, it still doesn’t happen. If you don’t plan your way towards your goals, you’ll never reach them. This is what I did: I set up a list of realistic goals for the year, with a very strict plan for each of them, and then went for it. And 12 years later, I did everything on the list that I really wanted.
How To Set The Right Goals
Most personal development people, life coaching gurus or how to set your goals “experts” will tell you goal setting is now wrong. It’s a cliche or some sort of an illusion from keeping you away from your true potential. That’s bullshit. How are you going to work towards something if you don’t set a goal for that something? It all starts with a goal, but it has to be the right kind of goal.
When it comes to how to set your goals for the forthcoming year, you should answer these three questions before setting your goals for the next year:
Is my goal going to make me a better person?
Is my goal doable if I’m willing to plan it out in detail?
Am I ready for the ending of the goal?
It is very important to not treat these questions lightly. Let’s say you want to have a working company by the end of 2019. You want to sell personalised mugs to millions around the world. If it were for me, I’d simply say “no” to this plan from the first question. There’s no way in hell selling personalised mugs would make me a better person.
I’m no graphic designer, so I can’t benefit from that business in any way. Sure, I might be able to advertise and grow it, but to what extent? I like food, for example, so why not start a food blog and sell merchandise or gourmet products on the side then? Sure, that would make me a better person because I’d do something I really love.
Also, my goal is doable because I can design a detailed plan for making it a reality. I can start with an optimised blog I can install WordPress on. I know WordPress. Then I can publish recipes that I cook at home or I can scrape some good ones from the web. Afterwards, I can SEO the heck out of it, as I have experience in SEO stuff. Finally, I can then launch the “Shop” section and sell products.
How To Set Unreachable Goals
Goals that you can’t define by the three questions above are unreachable. No matter how much you want them to become reality. You need to stay true and honest with your goals, and the fact of the matter is, most of them will never become true. Maybe I’ll never be able to move out of my parent’s house. But maybe I don’t have to.
While I’m sure the move will make me a better, more independent person, I still think I’m perfectly fine living an independent life, me and my future wife included, under the same roof with my parents. There’s enough house in there, and there are millions of couples worldwide who are doing just that and are perfectly fine.
Some goals are unreachable because you simply don’t have a plan for them. You just want a sports car, but have you ever considered doing something for it? Like changing your job for something riskier, but that actually has the potential of buying you that dream car? Are you willing to do something, or just wish stuff to an imaginary Genie?
The point is, goals are reachable once you have a plan for them. If you don’t, they simply remain ideas or wishes you will never be able to reach. It’s the brutal truth, but it’s liberating if you take the good parts of it. Do, more than anything else. Stop wishing. Just do.
And as always, use words that inspire to greatness.
