Always Set Goals

Life after high school can feel like a whole new world to many young adults. You get hit with a lot of things at once and it can often be overwhelming. Ove of the hardest things you are faced with is trying to map out your adult life. Questions like “What kind of job do you want?” or “Where do you want to be in 10 years?” will often come up and are typically hard to answer. With all these big questions being thrown around combined with the weight of trying to plan the next 30 years of your life, its important to learn to set goals. The phrase “setting goals” sounds like a very simple process, and in all honesty it is. However, people often take the wrong approach and end up giving up on their goals or being disappointed with the final outcome. Today I’d like to share a couple tips that have helped me set reachable goals and stick with them.

Tip 1 - Realistic goals

There is a distinction between dreams and goals that many people seem to forget. Your life dreams can be wild, you could dream of being a billionaire tech mogul or a world renowned movie star. While dreams are great and give us a reason to keep pushing in life, it’s important to set more down to earth goals. A proper goal may look something like “I want to be able to buy a house in the next 5 years.” Or “I want to work my way to a managerial position in my company by this time next year.” Goals are meant to be a challenge, but also be attainable with the right amount of effort. Keep your goals simple but meaningful and you will always be able to accomplish them.

Tip 2 - Meaningful goals

If you want to stick to the goals you set, they have to have some sort of worth or reward involved. The reward has to be worth the effort. Let’s use the example of a fitness goal. If you say to yourself that you’re going to go the gym everyday. Structure that goal to be for a certain amount of days, or until you’ve lost a certain amount of weight. That way there is a mental reward involved in achieving your goal which will keep you pushing towards completion.

Tip 3 - Improvement goals

Make certain that the goals you are setting will have a lasting positive impact on your life as a whole. There are a ton of things we wish to accomplish in life, many of which have no effect on our wellbeing or success. These are things that can be chased after on your free time, goals however are always being chased and are part of your life routine until they are accomplished. If you are going to devote that much time and energy to something, it’s important to make sure it is going to positively impact your life.

These tips are simple, and from the perspective of an 18 year old. They aren’t professional advice by any means, but they have helped me learn to set proper goals that I can achieve and improve my life with. If I could leave you with anything here, it would be to always have goals you are chasing, and always see them through.

-Braden Schmidt 11-25-2019