“It is better to aim high and miss than to aim low and hit.”
Les Brown
When I was in my 20s, I just went wherever life took me. Luckily I had good parents who guided me into a good education and career, but very little of it was by my own design. I graduated from college and got a really good job with IBM, mostly through luck rather than intentional design. I enjoyed the feeling of being a “free spirit” who just went where the wind blew. However, it didn’t always take me where I wanted to go, and I often struggled.
Soon after I turned 30, I took an amazing vacation that left me with an empty feeling on the way home. I wasn’t too excited about going back to work, and I wanted something more out of life. I started dreaming about my perfect life. I wrote down a few short things, and posted them on Facebook when I got home.
- Earn $10k/month passive income
- Have a “job” that I can do in a few hours a day, anywhere in the world
- Find a soul mate
- Own a house in Asia
- Have good health
Then I promptly forgot about them. They were just dreams of some far distant future. And besides, I wasn’t the kind of person who planned my life, I just went where the winds took me.
A few years later I came across my Facebook post and I was quite surprised. I had bought three rental houses, all of which were profitable and brought me passive income. It was nowhere $10k/month, but it was a good start. I had met a great partner, who I’m still with ten years later and counting. I had resolved the health issues that I had been dealing with, and I went to the gym regularly. I didn’t have a house in Asia, but I also no longer desired one. I still had a regular job which was 40+ hours per week, though I had started traveling more and working remotely some of the time.
For someone who had never set goals, I was surprised that I had accomplished a number of them without even trying!
I learned some valuable lessons from this:
- It’s amazing what you can accomplish by setting goals. For the first time, I was in the driver’s seat in my life.
- Write them down, and put them out there for the Universe (and your social network) to see.
- It’s better to dream big and start small than to not dream at all. I still have’t accomplished 100% of these goals, but I have moved forward on them and have added and accomplished many more goals in the process.
- You don’t have to obsess about them to make them happen, though it doesn’t hurt to review them from time to time.
- It’s OK to change your goals. Life is not a linear path and your dreams can change too.
Since then, I make personal goal setting a regular process, especially at the beginning of each year. I have set and reached (and changed) many other goals, and accomplished much more in life than I had ever dreamed in my 20s.
What are your goals? What have you accomplished? Share them in the comments here for the Universe to see!
Hi Steve,
I really enjoy your blog. I thoroughly like the layout of it. This way of thinking reminds of The Secret. It is sort of having an online vision board. I have done this and it is surprising how subconsciously we follow our dreams. I wrote down on my phone that I wanted to become a private chef. One year later, I achieved this goal.