How to Plan for One's Goals in Life: Strategies and Techniques

No matter what one's age is, whether you're still a student in college, or even middle-aged or older, we all have dreams and ambitions that we would like to achieve, yet many may be stuck in how to accomplish those goals. Ask yourself, do you really know the steps you need to take in seeing those goals of yours come into fruition? If not, you may be wandering rather aimlessly, and wondering why you're not getting anywhere. Oh, sure, the ideas of how to go about fulfilling those goals may be kicking around in your head, but if you don't have a clear, and concise game plan going for you, you might be taking additional steps that lead you nowhere.

To my mind, the best solution in attaining one's goals is to set up a step by step goal setting plan, and that means really sitting down and writing out your targeted goal. Now there are plenty of self-help books that will give one ideas on just how to do this, but one of the best I've come across, one that I keep re-reading over and over again, is Barbara Sher's book, Wishcraft: How To Get What You Really Want. She not only suggests writing down your goals, but also has what she calls a "flow chart", which is a visual aid with the goal setting steps leading to it's final stages and achievement. To my mind, Ms. Sher's book is perhaps one of the more instrumental books in goal-setting to achieve what one really wants to accomplish in one's life, and the good news is that one can still set goals in one's life, no matter what one's age is. In fact, she's a big advocate of encouraging people to set goals who have reached the beyond the thirties or forties age bracket.

Throughout this wonderful book of hers, Ms. Sher, time and time again, often states that many times our original dreams and ambitions that we had for ourselves when we were much younger, were often put aside, detours or setbacks may have cropped up, and we started living a different life than we had originally intended. Our goals were put on hold and in later years we wonder, what happened to those dreams of ours, to the life we really wanted to achieve and accomplish? Her book is so inspiring, in that if one searches deep within oneself, and if one still wants to improve their life, and if those dreams and goals haven't completely died, we can still attain our goals, no matter what our age. How wonderfully encouraging.

In Section Three of Ms. Sher's book, she gives step by step strategies to map out one's goals, and first and foremost is the flow chart. She gives an example of a woman, named Mary, aged 27, who while had been a pre-med student in college, but never continued her studies, as she had gotten married, and had children. Her dream of going to med school was put on hold. Yet, she still longed to finish her studies, despite her age. Then ironically, it wasn't until after she got divorced, the idea began kicking around her head to go back and continue her studies. The question was she just didn't quite know how to go about it, not until she decided to use a "flow chart" to map out the various stages leading up to the final targeted goal. First, she also had to do some, as what Ms. Sher calls, "brainstorming", as the first most obvious obstacle toward this woman, Mary, was money to afford going back to school. She also realized, that she would have to go back and take pre-med courses to brush up on her science knowledge so that she could pass the MedCat exams, which were the required competence tests for medical school admissions. In the photo I have included with this article, is the step by step strategies which Mary used for her flow chart which begins with her doing a little research in libraries to look for corporations and/or grant or scholarships that would help her fund her schooling, all the way to the ultimate goal of actually go to med school.

I had fun doing my own flow chart, and I seriously need to revise my chart now, as one major part of it has already been accomplished. One of my ultimate targeted goals is to once more become a successfully published photographer. I had enjoyed success as a published photographer between the years of 1980 to 1996; my photos had appeared on the covers of numerous magazines, in newspapers and calendars, and even in books. Then various family matters came into my life which put my career on hold until a few years ago, when I decided to once more make the attempt in getting back to my career goals. However, I soon discovered I had a few roadblocks in front of me. One roadblock was the fact that the world of photography, had greatly changed from when I was an actively published photographer, and that was due to the digital format. No longer viewing 35mm slides or prints, the very same companies I had sent portfolios of my work to no longer viewed photo work on either of these formats, but instead preferred digitized images.

The second roadblock, a real major one, was the fact that I just didn't have the means to transfer my images into digitized images...I didn't have to tools to do so, that is, I didn't have either a computer or film scanner to set my goal in sight. How could I possibly hope to become a published photographer without these vital tools to get my career going again? So, I did some brainstorming, and created my own flow chart, and even though my ultimate goal, one that I'm still working toward fulfillment, and that is to become a successfully published photographer again, is still my ultimate aim, I did a step by step chart on just how to go about this. One of the earlier steps for me, was to do a little studying of my own in understanding the digital world of photography. Since I'm still a film photography, I had no comprehension of what pixels or resolution meant. So I often took out a pile of books from my library to understand this revolutionary new medium of photography.

Then, I had to figure out how to afford the computer system I needed, and I began searching for grants that could help fund the costs of such a system. Well, I'm still hoping to get a grant to advance my goals even further, but in the meantime, I did actually fulfill one part of my targeted goal, I finally got my own computer and film scanner system to make just one part of my targeted goal a reality. I am now currently in the process of scanning and digitizing my numerous slides and prints and building up a library of my photographic images. The next part is to set up a professional photography website to not only allow potential clients to view my work on-line and sell my images directly to them. While I do have two "make-shift" websites to display some of my work, I still yearn for a more professional website, and thus the reason for my continuing to apply for grants.

Now while creating a flow chart is the ideal way of visualizing the steps necessary for any targeted goal, it won't do any good if one doesn't add some kind of time frame in which to accomplish that goal. Once again, Ms. Sher suggests setting up another chart...a time frame and activities chart. By setting up a time/activities chart, one can break down the steps on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. The idea here is to set up and write down, what activity one can accomplish each day of each month of each year that leads to the goal, and of course, one has to be realistic here. As in Mary's case, she realized she wasn't going to accomplish her goal of going to med school in just a few months, but maybe a few years. To set herself in motion toward her goal, she wrote down in her time and activities chart, for instance, to go to the library to do research on who to contact for funding possibilities on a Monday, then on Tuesday, write letters to the various companies or corporations that might give her the funding needs, and so forth.

Now one may ask, why does one need to do all this anyway? If one has some kind of goal they what to accomplish, can't they simply just "think" about it? No! It doesn't work then. By having a flow and time/activities chart staring in front of you and having something written down helps one to actually do the steps necessary in accomplishing that goal. One can even feel a great sense of satisfaction by doing this, for each day that one does an activity toward that goal, and then tick it off as one thing done, will give one a sense of achievement of having taken the necessary steps toward that ultimate goal. Looking back at my own flow and time/activities chart, I'm amazed at just how much I've already accomplished. With my charts, I've set in motion of what I want to do with my life and the fulfillment of my ambitions for myself, and that is truly a wonderful feeling.