Whether you’re starting a new project, starting to work out or wanting to become an expert in your career – there is always a path to the top. However, it can take a lot of work, structure, and discipline. If you don’t know where to start, you may find it almost impossible to get there.
This is where long-term goals can come in and impact your mind and focus more on the details of your desires. Solidifying the key objectives that you can obtain with time and planning will always go hand in hand with hard work.
Getting your priorities straight and focusing on what you want out of life will help you connect your daily life to what you want to achieve – giving you a purpose to be positive and create a successful journey.
What are Long-Term Goals?
Long-term goals can be perceived in many different time frames. Some long-term goals could be considered to just be a certain number of months. Whereas, others can take years and years of hard work to attain their final success.
However, the main purpose of a long-term goal is for them to be completed over a long period of time. These goals are rarely easy to achieve – but having long-term goals teaches you many lessons about yourself, your drive and your discipline.
For example, let’s say you weigh 275 pounds at the beginning of the year – a realistic long-term goal would be to get to between 200 and 215 pounds by the start of the next year. The art of turning weakness into a strength – a worry into lifetime skills and overcoming adversity – becomes the main target for a person’s long-term goal.
The Differences Between Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Just having ‘goals’ can be broad when it comes to measuring them. This is why we set short, medium and long-term goals. Many people think short-term goals take less desire or a small amount of learning and effort to execute. This is where people are mistaken and can start to get disheartened when they realise it’s not going to be as easy as they thought.
Short-term goals include tighter deadlines, which can ultimately lead to larger amounts of pressure in a small window of time. These goals can be set as stepping stones to your ultimate end goal. Each short-term goal hit can be one step closer to your dream achievement, which can be a great alternative for chopping up your main task into actionable tasks – rather than working on one huge goal at once with no in-between.
Having a big long-term goal is essential for keeping a purpose and motivation in your life. However, let’s say you want to lose weight. It is not possible to attain this goal in a short amount of time, so it wouldn’t be considered a short-term goal, right?
Well, if the objective is a process – then smaller actions can be crucial to take into consideration when looking at that larger goal. These are your short-term goals – the small actions that take discipline towards a long-term goal.
Long-term goal setting will be the end objective and is more open-ended compared to a short-term goal as it could be anywhere from a year, up to 10 years plus. These goals are just put out into the open and are less detailed than short-term goals. They’re difficult to put a timeline on as they could be achieved in a smaller or larger amount of time than expected. It’s really up to the person and the factors affecting their goals.
Why is it Important to Set Long Term Goals?
So, why is it important to set long term goals? Well, it can help you become the person you’ve always dreamed of being, in your ideal situation. Here’s how it can do that:
Stay Motivated and Disciplined
Long-term goals can create powerful mind tools that people didn’t realise they ever had. Whether it be starting a new business, learning about marketing and advertising or even improving your social skills – goal setting can be a key component to boosted performance.
Having determined long-term goals can take a person from being lost in life – to having an intrinsic motivation they’ve never felt before. The difference that having a purpose can have on a person in society nowadays is astounding.
Weeks, months or years without a soul purpose can have a damaging effect on a person’s mental health as they can feel out of place, bored and dissatisfied with life. People ask themselves, what is there to look forward to?
On the other hand, when working on a long-term goal of yours once you’ve found out what it is that you truly want to achieve – you have something to work towards. This boosts mental health massively as you feel worthy, motivated and ready to attack the day.
However, you will certainly gain valuable discipline on the journey to your long-term goal – which is one of the most important life tools you need. This is because motivation can deplete along the journey as going gets tough. That is when consistency and discipline come in handy – as you no longer want to do it, but you know it needs to be done.
Defining Your Success
As you set these long-term goals, you realise that you’re looking at the best outcome. Your ultimate success. Your future vision becomes a transparent picture in front of you and now you just have to work for it.
As you find what your success is, you will become more independent and time-smart when a goal is set. Whereas, if there was no goal and just a vivid intention of what you wanted – there is no way to measure the duration of how far you’ve come with your successes.
Working With Passion
Furthermore, every business or person who has ever seen growth has had to work with passion intention and heart. If your mind is not in the game, there is no point in working to grow.
Having long-term goals can instil these hard-working habits into a person as it encourages you to focus on a certain formula for something that means something. It specifically hones in on your daily schedule and that every single piece of work you put in matters.
Mark is a multi-award winner in business networking and relationship building. He is passionate about coaching and mentoring business owners and professionals through 1-1 & group coaching, team performance workshops and group mastermind sessions.