How To Set Goals For Your Life The Right Way

Strategy for setting goals and moving towards them

Key Insights

  • How can you be happy, if you don’t know what happiness looks like to you?
  • If life is going your way, you are most likely happy
  • What you think you want may not be the same as what you are unconsciously looking for
  • The more general the goal, the more routes are open for you
  • Concentrate on being happy first and you will likely achieve your goals faster

How Is This Related To Happiness?

If things in life are going the way you want them to go, you are probably happy. If things do not go they way you want them to go, then you are likely unhappy. Pretty simple, but I think it sums up one concept of happiness pretty nicely. Now unlike what you may have thought, the problem isn’t that things in your life are not going your way. Things that are happening in your life are always going your way.

The problem is, you do not know what you want or where you are trying to go. Well, consciously anyway. As we have explored in other resource pages (beliefs, visualisation), your subconscious is guiding you towards what you believe your life should be like.

How can you be happy if you don’t know what happiness looks like to you?

I admit that’s a bit simplified. What’s happening in the world at large is not entirely in our control, since there are almost eight billion of us co-creating our experience here on planet earth. But things in your life are in your control and you can always choose how you feel despite what’s going on around you. In that sense, things in your life are always going your way.

So the thing that remains then, is to be conscious of where you want to go. Let me ask you a question: what is your goal in life? What are you trying to get or achieve?

Are You Happy With Your Life?

Answer truthfully now.

Don’t worry, no one is judging you. 

I was around 35-years old when I was hit with the realisation that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. All I knew was, that I wasn’t happy. I had no idea how to change that. I was pretty much set for the rest of my life in the job I had at the time (or so I thought), but I had absolutely no idea what I wanted or how I could be happy with what I had. Is this what life is all about, I wondered. Work, try to have fun and wait for retirement?

Hopefully you answer is different than mine and you are happy with your life in general (If not, don’t worry. I found happiness and so can you).

But life isn’t just about some big thing you have to set out to achieve in order to find happiness. Life, as you may have noticed, consists of different areas that we struggle to balance. There’s work of course, family, hobbies, friends, travel, eating, working out… the list goes on.

So maybe you are happy with your life in general, or you are happy with some areas of your life. What I’ve found out is that most of us think about our life and our happiness only in relation to one or two parts of our life. Maybe happiness equals success at work. Or happiness is finding true love.

There is so much more to life than that. 

Have you set goals or thought about different areas of your life? For example, what do you want to do with your finances? (by the way, winning the lottery is hardly considered a goal in this respect).

What about your love life? How do you keep your mind sharp? Here’s a tricky one: how do you contribute to the lives of people around you? Yes, your life is not just about you. Do you have charity goals? Do you plan to work as a volunteer for your community? Many of us have goals for our careers, but we forget the other parts of our lives. 

Please note that I’m not suggesting you absolutely must do charity or have goals for every area of your life in order for you to be happy. The choice, as with everything in your life, is yours. I am merely suggesting, that your life consists of more areas than you may have given thought to. Here’s one more example: what do you want to do creatively? Do you for example draw, paint, play an instrument, make videos, write something? Yes, your creative mind needs some attention too.

Ok, that’s a lot of things to consider. 

Worry not, we are getting to the good stuff.

"It doesn’t help much to have a map if you don’t know your position on the map"

Goals To Set For Yourself

The first thing you should do is take a look at your life as it is now. It’s important to know where you are now to know where you want to go. It doesn’t help much to have a map if you don’t know your position on the map, right? Having some sort of a benchmark also helps to keep track of your progress.

It seems that usually people struggle the most with money, love, or health, so it makes most sense to take a look at those categories in your life as well. But to shake things up a bit, let’s think about a broader spectrum of things and add three other categories.

Grab a pen and paper and rate the following categories in your life from 1 to 10. Want to add another category? Go ahead, it’s your life and you know what you want to work on.

1= you are not happy at all with how things are going
10 = you are extremely satisfied and that there’s nothing to improve.

Don’t think about it too much. The first number that comes to mind is the right one.

Life Assessment

Think about your life right now. Rate the following categories from 1 to 10

1 = Not happy at all with how things are going

10 = Perfectly happy with everything

Health

Your overall health and fitness. Are you exercising enough, eating well, sleeping well etc.

Finances

Does money cause you stress or do you have a steady income with savings and investments?

Career

Do you like your job or do you do it just to get money? Is there a chance to grow?

Love

Are you happy with your love life? Do you find yourself loved? Do you love others openly, or is love something you reserve for certain people?

Spiritual

What is your connection to your inner self? Do you meditate? Do you reflect on your life and the deeper meaning behind life, the universe and everything?

Social

Do you have good friends and meaningful relationships? Do you make time for your friends and family?

Got them down? Good. Now you at least know where you stand.

When setting goals in the next chapter, you may want to start working first on the category where you scored the lowest.

After a while, rate it again.

If you see improvement, start working on the category that now has the lowest score and so on.

It’s a simple but effective tool to remind you where you are and where you want to go.

Setting Goals The Right Way

Now that you have assessed what your life looks like at the moment, start thinking about what you want your life to look like. Then it’s time to instruct your subconscious mind of your goals. Remember, you cannot be consciously aware of how you are moving towards your goals every second of every day, it will be much easier to let your subconscious mind take control. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

First, let’s start with setting the goals.

Imagine what your perfect life in each category looks like.

Write the details down in present tense, as if you are already living your dream life. What does your ideal social life look like for example? It could be something like:

  • I have parties with my closest friends every month in a hotel penthouse by the sea
  • I make new friends every week
  • I have connections with like minded people on all continents

Describe what you want in detail, but don’t overdo it.

Detail is important, as it will help your subconscious mind get a grip of what you are going for, but going into too much detail might rule out other options. For example your social life goals could include things like the aforementioned parties in a hotel penthouse by the sea.

The place is broadly defined: Party in a hotel penthouse, preferably by the sea and it would probably be okay to add a couple more details, like “hotel penthouse with a sauna, large balcony and top A/V equipment”. Now what if you You had a very specific hotel room in mind and a very select group of friends: The presidential suite, with celebrities and the DJ Mag number 1 DJ in the world. What are the odds of just that specific outcome happening? 

Who Else Wants An Amazing Life?

Yes, I am aware that everything is possible and you could indeed achieve very specific goals. Despite that, I am suggesting that as your details get broader, the more options stay open for you. Think about it. If you say you want to party in A hotel penthouse with friends, instead of insisting that you want to party in THE presidential suite of a certain hotel with a very specific list of people, you are leaving yourself lots of room to wiggle. 

Do you think that when you are partying with your friends in a fancy hotel penthouse by the sea, you will be sad that it isn’t the exact hotel you had in mind and there is one person missing from your ultimate list? Or would you think: “ehhh, close enough” and just be super happy about being there?

So set your goals in detail, but not too exact. Always leave room for something even better.

Write down your goals for each category of the assessment you did previously. 

Now you now what your ideal life looks like!

Easy!

Then it’s just a matter of getting there. 

Yeah, about that…

I’m only joking of course, there’s a good way to start working your way towards what you want.

Visualize Your Ideal Life

The next thing to do is instruct your subconscious mind to guide you towards your goals.

Your mind is a wonderful tool and it does what you want it to do, as long as you are careful with the instructions. However, we have not learned to pay attention to our thoughts, therefore most of the instructions we give our mind everyday are either contradicting (I want to be successful at work but I don’t want to go because I’d rather watch TikTok videos) or non-beneficial (I hate my life, I wish I was never born). Do you think your mind might get confused from these kinds of thoughts? 

Luckily there are good ways to give your mind specific instructions. 

I personally recommend visualization meditation.

Just hop on this page and see how it’s done.

Another way to give your mind consistent instructions every day, is to construct a visualization board (mood board).

I personally use Pinterest to create mood boards, it’s quick, easy and fun! Just search pictures and save the ones that look like something you would want to have, be it a car, vacation, etc.

Go ahead, construct your mood board and look at it as many times a day as possible. Once you’re really in the mood (for crating your dream life, duh!) take 5 to 15 minutes and do the quick visualization meditation. Visualize the things in your mood board becoming real in your life. Be consistent and expect your life to change. 

2 Shortcuts To Get To Your Goal Faster

Learn How to Turn Stress and Anxiety into Happiness

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    Do You Make This Mistake?

    You’ve probably heard the saying: Wish for it, dream of it, then go ahead and DO IT.

    Something along those lines.

    By all means, now that you have set your goals, just go ahead and get to work. Work hard. The harder you work on them the better. 

    Right?

    If only it was so easy. If reaching our goals was simply a matter of “doing it”, we would all reach our goals eventually, wouldn’t we?

    The problem with just doing it, is that we are trying to fight our habits and subconscious thought patterns by sheer will alone.

    Doing it requires willpower and willpower will eventually lose to your programmed habits. For example each New Year’s Eve people make resolutions like “I’ll go to the gym and get in shape”, but by the end of January they are not going to the gym anymore. Why?

    Because your subconscious mind is in control 90 % of the time and is way more powerful than your conscious mind. Therefore it is important to learn how to instruct your subconscious mind and change your habits. Otherwise you will keep repeating the same patterns that you have been repeating so far.

    Please don’t make the mistake of trying to push through with willpower alone. Take a look at changing your beliefs and giving instructions to your subconscious mind.

    Shortcut Number 1: What You Really Want

    Here’s a fun little exercise you can try.

    Think for a moment what is the most crucial thing that you are missing from your life right now? You’ll probably come up with many things, but just pick one for now. Pick the one thing that makes you feel “if I just had more of this one thing, my life would be great”.

    It could be a significant other, better health, or if you are like most of us, the one thing you are missing is more money. It could be an exact sum. 100 million dollars. It would no doubt solve some, if not most, of any person’s problems.

    You got the one thing down? Good!

    Now comes the second part of the exercise. How would getting the one thing make you feel? If you had the one thing you think you are missing, would you feel relief? Joy? Gratitude? Happiness?

    You see, it is not “the one thing” you think you are after that is your goal. It is in fact the feeling behind getting the one thing that you are after.

    Instead of making millions of dollars, what you are really after is happiness. Or joy or deep inner peace.

    "It is not 'the one thing' you think you are after, It's the feeling behind that thing, that is your goal"

    Shortcut Number 2: Start With The End Result

    The way we have learned things, our society’s model of happiness if you will, is that we think we have to get something in order to be something. Get the education you need to get the job to get you money to get a car and a house and a family and so on. It’s a never ending cycle. And you may or may not be surprised to learn that even an abundance of money may not bring you happiness.

    Does that mean you shouldn’t want money or love or any of the other “material” things? Of course not. Well, maybe not WANT them, but instead CHOOSE or PREFER them.

    You should consider reversing the process. Instead of trying to get something in order to be happy, choose to be happy first. Then making your next choice from a place of calm and happiness will enable you to achieve your goal much easier. In best cases with almost no effort at all.

    Wait a minute! Essentially what is being said here is that you first have to be happy in order to… get happiness?

    Well, yes. What I am trying to get trough here is that happiness is a choice and not dependent on your wants and needs. And that you should strive for happiness as a state of being instead of something material that you think will bring you happiness. This is explained in more detail in a blogpost here.

    The most important thing that is said here, is that you should start with the end result. Do not think about the details or state that you want to get somewhere. Think, speak and do things as if you already have what you are after.

    That is one of the best ways to give instructions to your subconscious mind. If you visualize yourself on a journey to happiness, your mind will provide you with plenty of opportunities to experience the journey – but the happiness will always remain at the end of the journey, just out of your reach.

    On the other hand, if you visualize yourself being happy already, your mind will guide you to situations where you can experience the happiness.

    Conclusion

    How can you be happy, if you don’t know what happiness looks like to you? Assess the key areas of your life and decide what you want to change.

    If life is going your way, you are most likely happy, so set goals according to what you would like your life to look like.

    What you think you want may not be the same as what you are really looking for and the more general the goal, the more routes are open for you. Therefore it may be beneficial to just identify the feeling behind your goal and strive towards that.

    Choose or prefer things instead of wanting. Wanting something will only create the experience of wanting.

    Concentrate on being happy first and you will likely achieve your goals faster. 

    Learn More

    Learn How to Turn Stress and Anxiety into Happiness

      By downloading the eBook you agree to join Happiness On Demand mailing list.

      We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at any time.

      Built with ConvertKit

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