Plan Your Life and Fulfill Your Dreams

We all have desires. We all dream of what we would really like, but very few people do anything about their dreams. Instead, we kill them with bad excuses.

A goal is bigger than a dream. A goal is a dream that is planned, and action is how you get there.

The Difference is Whether You Achieve It or Not!

Unfortunately, the vast majority do not control their own lives. Instead, life and circumstances govern them. Without planning and visions, we have no control over where we end up and what we achieve.

A wise man once said, “You can’t hit a target you can’t see.” That sounds logical enough, right?

Do you have clear, written goals? If not, you have no control over how your situation looks like in ten years, for example. But, on the other hand, the people who succeed in making their dreams come true have planned and worked hard towards their goals.

Drop The Excuses

Drop all the excuses and take control of your life. Whether you have 12 children living at home, have only one leg, or are seventy years old, there are no excuses.

If you can’t abstract from the excuses below, you are yet another of those persons who sit back, goes to a job you are really not fond of, eat the usual dinner at 17:46, watches the same miserable episode of a series on TV, and goes to bed at 22:21, hold your vacation at the same place and makes the same spaghetti dish as always.

Maybe you have ended up in a situation where you are “satisfied” with your life but still feel that life has more to offer.

Here Are The Most Common Dreams Killing Excuses:

• I am not good enough

“ I would like to be an engineer, but I am not smart enough,” “I would not succeed even if I tried,” “I lack experience or education.”

• Security

“Things are fine as it is now, so why do anything about it?”, “I know what I have, but I don’t know what I can get it.” It’s one of the most miserable phrases and bad excuses to live a boring life!

• Competition

“There are far too many persons better than me,” “There are many others who are better than me at this.”

• Family responsibility

It’s probably the worst excuse of them all. “I can not. I have a family that needs to be supported” “I worry about what would happen to my kid if it does not work.” You are locked in, and your dreams cannot come true because your family prevents them. What a pity for you!

What Can Goals Be?

Goals can be to get all your debts paid, buy a house, buy that cool car you always wanted or maybe be self-employed and open your own company? Maybe it’s watching less television, being a better person, spending more time with the family, or getting a new job? How about a trip to the Amazon jungle with the whole family for eight weeks?

How to Plan Your Goals

First, imagine your future in three areas—work, home, and social. By splitting, you prevent getting confused, and it helps you see “The big picture.”

Then force yourself to answer the questions: What do I want to achieve with my life? What do I want to be? What does it take to satisfy me in life?

I will make this easier for you. Look at the form below and answer these questions and add some additional questions if necessary. Remember it must be written down on paper and hanged somewhere you see every day.

Your goals in 10 years:

Work:

• How much money will I make?
• How much responsibility do I want?
• What job title do I want?

Home:

• What standard of living do I / my family want?
• What kind of housing do I want to live in?
• What kind of vacations will I take?
• Where do I want to live?
• What car do I want?

Social:

• What kind of friends do I want?
• What interests or hobbies do I want?
• Which social groups do I want to be a part of? (For example, volunteer football coach or other)

Once you have decided what the future should look like, you must take action. For example, let’s assume you would like to earn 10 thousand dollars per month. Is it realistic that you can get this salary in the job you have now? If not, what kind of job do you need? Where are there better opportunities to achieve your goal?

If the goal requires you to find another job in another company, start looking for another job. If you cannot get the desired job immediately, then look for a job in a company where you would have better promotion opportunities later. That’s good planning!

If you work as an accountant but would like to be a model airplane mechanic, join a model airplane club, buy a model aircraft and the necessary tools. Have fun in the model aircraft club, make new friends with the same interest as you and offer to repair the other model aircraft when they break down.

The result can be that you improve your social life, spend more time on what you find exciting, and continuously get better at repairing model airplanes, allowing you to quit your current job to make a living from being a model airplane mechanic. That’s good planning!

The Psychic Influence

Something mental also happens to you when you plan. If you have your goals defined, written, and memorized; You will automatically continuously make choices that bring you closer to your goals.

An example could be that your goal is to move from your apartment to a house in 5 years. If you are then offered a larger apartment in 1 year, you will automatically reject the offer even if it’s a great deal! Otherwise, you deviate from your goal, and suddenly you let coincidences control your life, which is not the point.

People who have not planned the future would probably accept the offer, and thus luck controls them and not the other way around.

Achieve The Goals Bit by Bit

Goals can be long-term and to stay focused, it is important to have sub-goals. Let’s assume that three years from now, you would like to go on a trip with the family to the Amazon jungle for 8 weeks. You start by figuring out the cost of such a trip. If the price is 6000$, you must plan how to save it up. 6000$ in 3 years corresponds to saving 167$ per month.

Make sure that the amount is transferred to a saving account from now on! These are milestones and provide focus and motivation to achieve your goal. Talk to your manager at work and inform him that you want 8 weeks’ vacation 3 years from now because you are going on a long vacation with your family.

In addition to being assured that you can take time off from work, you have now informed others about it, and that will put you in a situation where you are motivated to achieve your goal. In addition, your manager and colleagues will probably ask you regularly about your upcoming vacation, which will help keep you focused on it.

If you have a family, of course, plan it with your partner. Maybe together you can find common goals and achieve them.

If you would like to read more in-depth on this topic, I can highly recommend reading “The Magic of Thinking Big” by David J. Shwartz.

Get started on your goals already today!