Defining goals for your life before you turn 30!

Defining goals for your life is one of the most important things in life not usually taught to us. Doing this before you turn 30 (while you are still young), is important to live your best life and maximize the time you have to achieve them, especially your financial goals!

All successful businesses have short term and long term goals.  Your life is arguably more important than the company you work for.   If they have goals and they are important for their success, what about your own life?  

Goals provide firm direction for how you want to live your life.

Do you think you could write down 100 Life Goals?   Why not decide to live life abundantly by designing your own personalized list of 100 life goals you will achieve over the next 10, 20, 30 years?  And why not design your WOW life, where you look back and say "WOW, I can't believe I did all that!

What would a great life look like to you?    

• Incredible health, energy and vitality
• Living to 100 years old (or older), and doing things that people half your age are still doing
• Traveling the world to exotic locations and experiencing different life cultures
• Spending money wisely on things that matter, without stressing over it
• Having a close relationship with your partner
• Nurturing relationships with your children who respect you even through their teenage years
• A fulfilling career as an employee or business owner.
• Having strong morals and values that you live by
• Living in the dream house you designed for yourself
• Owning a cottage or vacation retreat on a lake or in the woods
• Driving your dream car (or a car you're not embarrassed to be driving!)
• Being charitable and helping others less fortunate than yourself
• And much more . . . 

The good news is that when you are defining goals for your life, you are designing YOUR LIFE, and no two lives should or need to be the same.   Your dream life will be entirely different to that of everyone else you know! 

7 steps for defining goals for your life!

1 - Confirm the important areas in your life for which you want goals.    

There are many people recommending goal categories to base your goal setting around.  

The 100 Goals Club uses 10 goal categories:

1. Personal Development
2. Health and Fitness
3. Family and Friends
4. Hobbies and Passions
5. Financial
6. Career
7. Adventure
8. Travel
9. Lifestyle
10. Leaving a Legacy

Tony Robbins goal categories (American motivational speaker, author and live coach):

1. Personal development
2. Career / business / economic
3. Toys / adventure
4. Contribution

Jim Rohn's goal categories (America's foremost business philosopher  . . . and one of my main influences)

1. Economic (for money and income)
2. Things you want (both small things and major things)
3. Personal development (who you'd like to become, learn a language etc.)

Zig Ziglar's goal categories (American salesman, author and motivational speaker):

1. Mental
2. Spiritual
3. Physical
4. Family
5. Financial 
6. Personal
7. Career

Throughout my life, I've been through several phases where I "tweaked" the goal categories in which I set my goals.  In coming up with the 10 goal categories promoted on this site, I believe that the categories are somewhat universal, however feel free to use as many of them or adjust them yourself to what resonates with you personally! Defining goals for your life requires that you first are confident with the areas you are setting your goals around. 

2 - Brainstorm a list within each of your goal categories

When defining goals for your life, give yourself about 10 minutes per category, and without much thinking, write down every possible goal you can spontaneously.  Nothing is off limits!  There are no bad ideas.   Don't filter what you write down.  Trust that your best ideas will come out.

Hand write out or type in a word document or excel spreadsheet, the choice is yours.  

3 - Review the list of goals at the 100 Goals Club and from other sources and update your list

When defining goals for your life, review the list of 100 Goals at the 100 Goals Club.  These are recommended goals that will apply to many people in defining goals for your life. 

Request the free 100 Goals Club worksheet, which contains hundreds of potential goals across each of the 10 goal categories (or customize your own), and select any additional goals that speak to you.  

• Google search goal ideas.
• Read books and magazines and look for ideas.
• Ask people you respect for ideas on goals that they recommend

Review regularly throughout a specified period of time leading up to a milestone date by which you would like to "firm up" your goals (i.e. a birthday, decade birthday, January 1st etc.)

4 - Code your goals as Short or Long Term 

Indicate an "S" or "L" for short term or long term against each of the goals you've written. 

If you've decided you would like to focus on a list of 100 Life Goals, then consider the Long Term goals as the ones you'll focus on.   

When defining goals for your life and considering what makes a Long Term goal, I would recommend you look at 10 years or more as a Long Term goal.  

5 - Code your goals as Target or Outrageous

Decide on what will be your Target goals versus your Outrageous goals . . . 

TARGET (T)

Target Goals are the focus of this book on developing 100 life goals.  These are the goals that you will be targeting.  They will be goals that are to meet the requirements of being a “SMART” goal.   They are the goals that will be stretch goals and require significant effort and planning to achieve.  An important goal setting tip is that you believe you will accomplish each of these goals within your life. 

OUTRAGEOUS (O)

The idea of setting goals that are so outrageous that you don’t believe they are attainable, in direct contrast to the “A” in the SMART acronym which stands for Attainable.   This is particularly valuable within the framework for this book, 100 Life Goals.  This gives you permission to set goals that are far outside your comfort zone that are truly inspiring to you, but don’t meet the requirements for attainability.   The logic is that in setting Outrageous goals, your subconscious mind will get to work in helping conspire to achieve your outrageous goals and even though you believe they are un-attainable at the time of writing the goal, it is possible that over time you will achieve some of your Outrageous goals.   

As these 100 Goals are life time goals, this is a perfect.    When I learned this system, it gave me the freedom to re-examine all my goals and add an Outrageous version of each of my 100 Goals to encourage me to strive further well beyond my comfort zone, while giving me permission to not feel failure if they are not achieved. 

This is a liberating concept to know that you can set goals that are “shoot for the moon” type goals.  An example from my own 100 goals is as follows:

Example of a Target Goal:  Take a 100 Kilometer bicycle ride.

Example of an Outrageous Goal:  Ride my bicycle around Lake Ontario (the 14^th largest lake in the world with a shore length of 1,020 Km (634 miles)).

For me, setting a target goal of riding a 100Km bike ride will be a significant achievement, given that my longest bike ride to date has been approx. 10Km.   Setting an Outrageous goal of riding around the one of the largest lakes in my country of Canada, which will take approximately 10 days to accomplish, is beyond what seems attainable to me, but also something that with extreme commitment, could be accomplished within my lifetime. 

6 - Take at least 30-90 days to let your goals germinate

In defining goals for your life, take your list of goals that you think will form your 100 Life Goals (or what ever number you are focusing on).   When I turned 40, I decided to focus on the number 37 and wrote out 37 specific goals I wanted to achieve in my forties. But this is the 100 Goals Club, so I encourage you to focus on writing out your 100 goals!

Print out your goals and review them daily or weekly.  Take them with you and read them periodically, especially in a quiet natural setting like a park bench near the lake or open water.

Read inspirational self-help books and autobiographies of people that inspire and motivate you.  Update your list.  

Tweak, ammend, delete, change or add to your goals as you see fit.  These are your goals so there is no right or wrong answer, only what you emotionally feel good about.

Be careful that you don't focus on just materialistic and wealth goals exclusively, which is a natural tendency.

7 - Publish your goals 

Decide the date that you will firm up and "publish" your goals.  This only needs to be for yourself, or you can share with people that will support you.

Make a nice printout of your goals.  Laminate them.  Post them in an area that you will look at on a regular basis.  Print out a copy that you can bring with you and pull out when you have some quiet reflection time.  Put them in your smart phone.  What ever method that will get you reviewing them routinely and regularly.  Defining goals for your life is something for you to take pride in having done.

Share your goals

You can share your goals at the 100 Goals Club to inspire others.  

Email me at brian@100goalsclub.com and share them with me.  I'd be happy to review and comment on them!

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Last updated: January 11, 2020