Achieving
Your Dreams Through Setting Goals
Part III: Set Long-Term Goals
Quote
for Board: “It’s
better to shoot for a star and to hit a mountain peak,
Than to aim for a mud puddle and hit it every time.”
Purpose:
By
the end of this session, I want my students to have written goals to help them
see their dreams come true.
Optional
Resources:
Overhead
Sheet and Student
Handout.
Choosing
Worthy Goals
I heard of a pilot who announced from the cockpit:
“I
have good news and bad news. The good news is that we’re making great time.
The bad news is that we’re lost.”
Many fritter
away their lives, working hard on projects that in the end they decide are
meaningless.
Goal-Setting
to the Rescue!
I am appalled at the aimlessness of most
people's lives. Fifty percent don't pay any attention to where they are going;
40 percent are undecided and will go in any direction. Only 10 percent know what
they want and even all of them don't go toward it.
(Katherine A. Porter)
To keep this
from happening to me, as a high school student, I began to write down long-term
goals to reach my dreams I listed in the last session. What’s the difference
between a dream and a long-term goal?
A
goal is simply a dream with a deadline attached to it.
Some of my
long-range goals as a high school and college student included things like:
Being able to bench press 200 pounds by the
time I was 17. (I benched 220 at 18)
Mental:
To become a wise person by 1) reading at least 12 books outside of school
each year. 2) pursuing a Masters degree. 3) Getting wise counsel on many
subjects.
Spiritual:
Search for religious truth by prayer, wise counsel and reading both
proponents and critics of various religions.
Life
Impact: Always
look for people who need a helping hand and find practical ways to help them.
Try to positively impact as many people as I can in my lifetime.
The result? I
reached many of my goals; in others I fell short. But life’s been so much more
fun and rewarding just knowing what I was going for!
Your
Turn
Look over your
dreams from the last session and set some specific long-term goals that will
help you fulfill your dreams. Don’t be afraid to make your goals “bold,
audacious and hairy”. And do take
the time to put your goals in writing. I believe it was a study of Harvard grads
that found that the ones who had written goals were more likely to achieve them.
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Personal
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Family
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Work/Vocation
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Life
Impact
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Spiritual
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Discussion:
Share with us some of your
long-range goals. Let's all get ideas from one another and share our thoughts as
to how our fellow students might make their goals more effective.
Next
Session: We'll talk about the magic of setting short-term goals to help us
reach our long-term goals. In other words, we'll figure out what we need to do
each day or each week in order to see our dreams come true.
