Forming your vision of where you ultimately want to be in life is a major achievement and a big step on the way to successfully following your passion. But your final destination can seem so far away that it feels like more of a dream than reality. To make it more real and prevent the sheer scale of what you want to achieve becoming too daunting, you need to break down your journey into smaller goals. This provides a map to reaching your destination. In the short term, it also becomes a motivator for action, driving you forward.
The key to successfully setting your interim goals is to ensure that they are aligned with your vision by staying focused on what you want to achieve. Otherwise, you run the risk of ploughing your energy into activities that appear to be useful in the short term, but are actually not taking you any closer to your vision. And the more energy you focus on reaching your ultimate goal rather than wasting it on other activities, the quicker you’ll realise your vision.
Hitting these interim goals will be a satisfying experience – and one that delivers a sense of fulfilment and meaning. However, the kind of goals you set will be crucial. You’ll need to have a trade-off between the traditional view of only setting goals that are realistic and achievable, to avoid becoming demoralised, while at the same time, making sure they are stretching and challenging. After all, achieving your vision will not be easy, so to get there as quickly as possible, you need to be pushing yourself close to the limit at every stage.