How to achieve your long term goals. Free printable goals worksheet to help you.
The time will pass anyway…why not achieve your goals?
As I was turning 30, I looked back over the last decade. And realized that I had accomplished basically nothing.
I had bounced around from one writing job to another. I made no strides in achieving a successful, long-term career. I had started and quit college TWICE.
Looking back, I couldn’t believe it. Until I was 20, everything was about achievement. From playing practically every sport in high school to coming in first in ELT school in the Navy- if I wasn’t achieving, I felt lost.
Is this sounding a little familiar? At least a little? You were doing great…then stuff came up.
You’re overwhelmed. Work commitments. Kids. Keeping the house up to standards. Meals. And trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle while doing all that.
Keeping up with each day’s to-do list is hard enough. Long term goals often get pushed off to “someday.”
It’s time to change your mindset. Here’s a quote that will help.
“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it.
The time will pass anyways.” – Earl Nightingale
What does this mean? You might be looking at a long term goal and saying “I’ll be “X” years old before I accomplish that! It’s impossible!”
That’s a common objection. In fact, it’s one I’ve felt myself. Then I ran across this obvious answer.
I’m going to get to that age anyway. Why not reach it having achieved a big goal?
If you like this content, you can also check out How to Set Goals & Achieve Them: 10 Steps to Finally Succeed.
Table of contents
Long Term Goal Definition
Long term goals require at least a year to achieve. Often they require 5 years or longer. They require significant energy, time, and good planning.
Long Term Goal Examples
While these examples may not be precisely what you want to achieve, they give you an idea of long term goals in various areas.
- Get your dream job
- Get your degree
- Reach a certain income level
- Marry the right person
- Get a degree
- Maintain a healthy lifestyle long-term
- Complete a marathon
- Set aside enough money for retirement
- Expand your worldview/understand other cultures
- Make a difference about an issue you care about
Why Have Long Term Goals?
“Small things were important. Seconds were small things, and if you heaped enough of those on top of one another, they became a man’s life.” – Androl, Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time book series)
In 5 to 10 years, your life is going to be one of three things:
- better
- worse
- the same
How you spend your days- day after day- is eventually how you spend your life. No matter what your long term goals are (losing weight, getting healthy, saving for retirement, doing well at work) , it’s going to affect your quality of life. I’ve spent time both healthy and extremely overweight. And I can tell you that the quality of life at those two different poles is very different.
Without long term goals, you might end up looking back someday wishing you had spent your time on something else. Regret is a hard emotion to deal with. And you can never get that time back.
In fact, regretting not living a life true to yourself is the top deathbed regret according to a hospice nurse. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.”
Now, let’s answer “How do you achieve your long term goals?”
Define Your Why
If you really want to achieve a goal, you need to have a reason why. A reason that means something to YOU.
There are a couple of exercises you can do.
The first is to use the “5 why” technique to discover the fundamental reason you want to achieve your goal. You state your goal, then keep asking “why” until you have a fundamental reason for achieving your goal.
Example: I want to lose weight.
Why? Because it’s getting hard to participate in activities and I’m ashamed of how I look.
Why? Because I’m not healthy enough. And because I weigh too much.
Why (does this bother me)? Because I’m miserable every day.
–For this example, I didn’t need to go any further. I had a fundament reason to change: I don’t want to be miserable anymore.
Another exercise is to list absolutely every reason you have for wanting to achieve a goal. This can be helpful as you face different challenges in the future.
Prioritize Your Goals
While they are all important, it’s (almost) impossible to work on every long term goal at the same time. In all likelihood you’ll get burned out.
‘Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about.’
-Winston Churchill
To prioritize your goals, take the following steps:
- Pick which goal is the most important.
Remember when we talked about how we’ll achieve “x” age anyway? We also need to remember there is a cost to reaching the goal. The time you spend on that goal is time you can’t spend on something else. So make sure that this goal is important to you. - Use the goal worksheet below to break it down & study your goal.
- Start working on that goal.
- Once you have some momentum and start feeling comfortable, then start on the next goal (if you want).
- Remember that flexibility is important. Your long term goals might evolve over time.
Free Printable Goal Worksheets
A goal that isn’t written down is just a wish.
Remember to keep your goal worksheets (especially your monthly one) where you can see it often. My goal worksheets are in my planner which I use everyday. The default size of these is full-page. However, if you want smaller, simply reduce the print size. If you’re not sure on how much to reduce, check out my post “How to Resize Printables to Fit Your Planner.”
Included are:
Long-term goal worksheet. Define your long-term goal, write down exactly why it’s important, and envision what your life will be like once you’ve achieved it.
Most important is the breakdown section. Specifically where you decide what needs to be done in the next year to achieve your long-term goal.
Quarterly breakdown- break down current year’s goal by quarter and identify habits that will help you reach goal.
There are instructions and an example in the workbook that provide more detail on how to do this.
Quarterly planner- break down current quarter into monthly actions that need to be completed.
As stated above, there are instructions and an example in the workbook that provide more detail on how to do this.
Also included are:
- Monthly planner
- Weekly planner
- & more.
Sign up on the form below to get your free worksheets.
Did you like this?
If you liked this post on how to achieve your long-term goal, you should check out the “Inspiration” section. In particular the “Focus & Goal Setting” section.
If you feel comfortable, why don’t you comment below and share your major goal(s)? I would love to hear what you hope to achieve.
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