Express and Define Your Goals

Back to “success”. Once you’ve identified what success means to you, you can settle down and define your goals.

Goals may be many and varied and can relate to hobbies and wellbeing (and other things) as well as to career-orientated success. For instance, my success goals currently are:

• · Have a screenplay sold and produced

• · Lose five kilos and smarten up a bit

• · Win a bagpiping competition.

That’s not all to do with career, as you can see. Moreover, goals can change over time, and some goals are medium-term rather than long-term. For instance, my goals I cited above are all medium-term goals. My long-term goals might be:

• · Establish myself as a successful working screenwriter

• · Develop and grow a successful blog

• · Become a well-respected bagpiper

• · Live a happy, contented life.

Goals may also be superseded once they are achieved. For instance, until last December my medium-term screenwriting goal was:

• · Have a screenplay optioned.

That has now been replaced, as you can see.

There is a fine balance between being visionary and realistic when refining your goals. For instance, if you are an octogenarian built like a rugby prop forward you are unlikely to win an Olympic gold medal in the ten thousand meters. While your goals shouldn’t be unachievable, it’s okay, though, to stretch yourself. For instance, if you are afraid of heights one of your hobby goals might be to take up rock climbing and complete a challenging ascent. Just don’t be stupid about it. It might be one thing, for instance, to choose to study for a law degree in your fifties if you have the relevant capabilities; but quite another to take up astrophysics in your fifties if you are no good at maths and physics.

It's a balance.

Finally, do you see how long-term goals are just a little vaguer and more ephemeral than medium-term goals? That's to be expected, they are still in the distance as you perceive them on the horizon. They will sharpen up as you get closer to achieving them and they come into enhanced perspective. Eventually bits of them will refine into medium-term goals. Nevertheless, you should always have long-term goals: it keeps the achievement arc healthy and constantly refining and defines a direction of travel.

Get your notebook out and start refining your goals. And don’t be afraid to brainstorm. You might be surprised at what emerges from the gloaming.