A clear intention to live.

_{As someone like me, I have future goals. Do you?}

Show me a person without goals and I will gladly tell you what he or she is missing out on. Our lives are centred around goals. Have you thought about it yet? There are two months left to the end of this year and we still set some goals to achieve before we begin another phase in the year 2023. Some days ago, we talked about goals we need to achieve before the end of the year as Hivians and that was in this community.

Ok, am I moving forward or backward from this topic? Alright, I'm still in line as I needed to let you know that each day of our lives, we live by setting goals; either for the short-term or long-term. How amazing!

Getting up ready for work on a cold and wet Monday morning requires the goal of getting out of bed at a specific time, that is, you might set an alarm. This may not be a pleasant goal for many people but it is still a goal anyways. Getting home early to prepare dinner for your family is a goal.

How do you begin developing future goals?

Start with a vision.

“A man without a vision is useless.” — Princessbusayo

Begin with a vision of what you want to achieve. Whether it is a professional or personal goal, it is important to have a clear vision of what it is you want to achieve. It is a need for you to do that or else, you might never arrive at a pleasant destination.

Take some time to see what the result would be like at the end. Close your eyes and see yourself achieving your goal.

If you want to take a holiday trip with your closest friends this Christmas season, Where will you go? What will you do? Imagine yourself achieving it. This is a vision. Enjoy the emotion in your imagination, put a smile on your face, express yourself in laughter and feel the joy as you go on that amazing journey with your friends.

Ask the right questions.

The good question to ask is “what do I have to do?” The wrong question is “how can I achieve this goal?” The latter question often elicits the tempting answer “you can't” while the former question is surely incredible and powerful because why? It opens your mind to the possibility of achieving your goal. When you have to rephrase this question, it means you are only considering various ways to achieve and not ways you cannot achieve.

Look at your daily habits.

I read from a book that our daily habits and behaviours are the driving force behind the result we achieve in our life. Consider a man who smokes thirty (30) cigarettes every day, drinks several glasses of alcohol each evening and jumps onto bed slightly drunk, over time, this will have a strong negative effect on his health. If it does not send such a man to an early grave, he is going to experience difficulties with his health at some point and be a great burden on his family and friends.

Since our daily habits and behaviours have such a relatively great size of impact on the results we achieve in our life, you should take time to examine yours. Identify this habit that gives you negative results such as unhealthy eating, excessive smoking and drinking, and many others. Then try observing good habits that surely bring a positive impact on your life. For example, you need to lose more weight, spend time exercising, engage in healthy habits, eat good and healthy food to achieve your goal.

Set a date.

You cannot achieve a goal if you do not set an end date to it. Setting a date will enable you to clear away procrastination and work towards meeting the deadline of your goal. If your goals do not have a timeline and an end date, you will always have different excuses to wave off what you should do to make it happen.

So, there are times you adjust your deadline if you find that you are too ambitious with your previous excitement. But you need to set a deadline. Setting deadlines and a date keeps us on the road to achieving our goals and makes us responsible in the long run.

Review your goals regularly.

It is necessary to have a vision board or something to keep reminding you of your future goals and how to reach your final destination. Doing this constantly will give you something to help with your progress and also adjust deadlines if necessary.

In conclusion, we are all different and we all want something different in our lives. Many of us want to build a big empire and own the biggest company, others want to develop a successful career in a major field. Whatever it is you want in life, it is up to you to create it.

We all have the willpower to act on and achieve, but it all starts with an idea and a clear vision, then few questions that proffer answers to get you a plan and a destination in which to arrive at.

Thanks for your time.