Tag Archives: long term goals

Intrinsic Vicissitude

Happy New Year and Happy New Decade! Goal Setting for 2020 and the New Decade

I love the idea of starting fresh (as much as possible) each new year. So, I spend some time the last day or two of each year and then spend some time setting goals for the coming year during the course of the first day or two of each new year.

2020 Goal Setting image courtesy of Pixabay

The year 2020 provides a great opportunity, in my opinion, to add some long-term goal setting to the mix, too.

Some of My Ideas for 2020 Goals

For 2020, I’m working on goals that focus on my career and my health, and I plan to add a lot of chit-chat and some facts about things that interest me, here on Intrinsic Vicissitude. So, for tonight, I thought I would combine my personal tips for goal setting with my personal goals, as examples that show ways to apply the tips.

Picture Where You Want to End Up

This visionary step is the classic ‘begin with the end in mind’ and to apply it to my 2020 goal of focusing on my career, I am picturing how much time I want to invest in my writing work, and how much I would like to have earned by the end of 2020. I’m picturing how it will feel, the things I’ll buy, the things I’ll do, and how New Year’s Eve 2021 is going to look at my house.

Commit 2020 Goals to Paper

This commitment-forming step is for your 1-year or less short-term goals. Okay, it doesn’t have to be actual paper if you’re a digital type, but it’s important to write goals down because the written form puts something solid and real in front of you. Moving on to my goal of focusing on my health for this example, I’m writing down my commitments to:

  • Drink more water
  • Eat more vegetables
  • Either walk, do resistance exercises, or yoga stretches at least five times per week.
  • Notice, I picked ‘gentle’ exercises that I find enjoyable to make it easier for myself to stay on track.

Add Some Long-Term Goals Since It’s a New Decade

You can set long-term goals anytime, but the start of a new decade is a great time to do it because it gives you an easily remembered date and time frame to work with as you aim for your goals. Like short-term goals, long-term goals should be written down to help you focus on them and make them more concrete. Allow yourself room to adjust them, though, because what you want today may not be what you want next year or five years from now.

Make a Success Plan Based on Your Goals

This step may take several days to complete, and it doesn’t matter if it takes longer than you originally expect. The important part is that you DO it. It’s practically impossible to go from point A (where you are now) to point C (your successfully reached goals) without filling in the point B (roadmap) details.

I’ll add a lot more about this in future posts, but basically, list a few things you KNOW you have to do in order to reach your goals. Want to make more money? What options do you have to do that? Get a new job or a second job? Charge more for your services? Consider all your options, and make a list of the things you’re going to do – that YOU GET TO CHOOSE from your list, and commit them to written form along with your short-term 2020 goals and long-term decade goals.

Set Deadlines for Completing Steps to Achieve Your Goals

Imagine if you were planning a trip, because the journey to reaching your goals is a type of trip in many ways. Typically, you would have a destination in mind, and know how far you plan to travel each day, and things you want to do. With goal-setting, the stops along the way are a vital part of your roadmap for the journey.

Deadlines help you stay on track, and as you reach each step successfully, you get to enjoy the success of having completed a leg of your journey to success. Plus, if you notice you’re falling way short, you can quickly adjust the things you’re doing – or not doing – so you can get back on track and work toward still reaching your short-term and long-term goals.

Goal-Setting Success image courtesy of Pixabay

Thank You For Visiting Intrinsic Vicissitude!

Want someone to talk to for encouragement and support as you work toward your short-term and long-term goals? You’re welcome to add you comments below or stop by the Intrinsic Vicissitude Facebook page and click like so you can join in the conversation that’s going on there – or start a conversation about whatever you want to talk about

I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by the site, and I hope you find something of interest here in the information I shared, or elsewhere on the site. Browse around the site to check out some of the other articles, too.

By Laure Justice

Intrinsic Vicissitude, Rewrite Your Life Story

Why We Get Addicted to Feeling Lost

Logically, no one wants to feel lost in life, but once we have fallen into that type of destructive cycle, we often end up remaining stuck and wondering why we can’t break free and stop feeling lost.

Why We Get Addicted to Feeling Lost

Trauma and Addiction: Stop Feeling Lost
Click here to check this out on Amazon!

Just like we can get addicted to feeling good,  we can get caught in a pattern that leaves us feeling lost.ven though it’s a negative pattern and a feeling, it can become our “normal” and we can end up (subconsciously) recreating our lost feelings over and over.

Even though feeling lost develops as a negative pattern and is an unpleasant feeling, over time it can become our “normal” and we can end up (subconsciously) recreating our lost feelings… over and over and over.

What Does an Addiction to Feeling Lost Do to You?

Feeling lost is basically letting a sense of failure take over, and it gives us a sense of having failed ourselves – and the more times the cycle  of loss recurs, the more the let-down feelings intensify.

My 6 Favorite Tips for Breaking an Addiction to Feeling Lost

As someone who spent years – decades actually – feeling lost, and who eventually found a way to break the cycle, I would like to share a few simple things that made all the difference for me.

  1. Own your feelings: Instead of thinking the things you feel are the result of external forces, recognize them as your own emotions.
  2. Set some long-term goals: Set goals for five or ten years down the road but don’t stop there – go on to analyze the  things you need to do to achieve those goals and set them up as your smaller, short-term goals.
  3. Write things down: Seeing your plans in written form can inspire you to act on them – it can also help you catch weak spots in your plans so you can adapt the steps as needed.
  4. Take action: Pick one of your short-term goals and set it in motion – waiting – with no action – leaves you stuck in the feeling of being lost.
  5. Be adaptable: If you have spent a long time  struggling, breaking free of a destructive cycle isn’t going to be easy, so expect to find flaws in your plans and be ready to jump into an alternative approach – and remember that it’s only failure if you completely give up.
  6. Set yourself up to succeed: This is especially important at first – make some of your short-term goals SO easy and SO small you can breeze right through them – this gives you a taste of success that you can use as a strong foundation for your bigger goals.

You can take control and take action to change your course if you are feeling lost in life, whether you find the right path or not is completely in your hands.

Financial Stress

4 Financial Tips for Starting a Money Saving Plan

At its core, a money saving plan boils down to setting some money aside and saving it for a rainy day, but it’s not as simple to do as it is to say that.

Life gets in the way, and not putting enough thought and detail into your money saving plan to make it actionable can set you up for failure.

“No one’s ever achieved financial fitness with a January resolution that’s abandoned by February.”  – Suze Orman

Financial Tips for Starting a Money Saving Plan

The One-Page Financial Plan: Setting Up a Money Saving Plan
Click here to see this book on Amazon!

Start by thinking of a money saving plan as a long-term goal.

Sure, you can save a bit of cash here and there with no plan and spend it when you get in a pinch, but having a plan in place, and sticking to it over the long term can make a difference in your future – not just in your current situation.

“If you want to reap financial blessings, you have to sow financially.”  – Joel Osteen

Figure out your budget (if you don’t already have one.)

In your budget, include what percentage of each pay you want to put in long-term savings, then add a percentage for short-term savings – that you can use for emergencies without wrecking your long term plan.

Set up an automatic savings plan.

Through your bank, credit union, or employer, set it up so the percentage you select to save long-term goes automatically into an account you can’t easily access – then either handle the short-term savings deposits on your own or set them up for automatic transfer, too.

“No complaint… is more common than that of a scarcity of money.”  – Adam Smith

(Automatic transfers reduce the likelihood of spending your savings without thoroughly thinking it through first because, while it’s always your money, it never passes through your hands to tempt you to spend it.)

“A simple fact that is hard to learn is that the time to save money is when you have some.”  – Joe Moore

How to Find a Trustworthy Financial Planner

Consult a financial planner or investment specialist if you need help.

If you really struggle with the  concept of saving money, consult a professional financial planner for some help and direction – just be sure to check the planner’s credentials so you don’t get scammed.

(I really want to stress this part – check credentials if you need help with this type of planning – you cannot be too careful when it comes to your money.)

Positivity, Rewrite Your Life Story

7 Secrets to Setting Goals That Change Your Life

The new year is kind of like a blank notebook – you get to write the story that emerges in it, so setting some new goals – at the start of the year – or any time – is a way to start fresh on your terms, but do you know how to set goals you can stick to?

Life Gets in the Way

Goal Setting TipsUnlike writing a new story in a new notebook, when we are talking about real life issues, we don’t get to start completely fresh.

We still have to deal with the same old baggage that’s been a problem in our lives, and setting new goals without giving a nod to that baggage sets us up for failure.

Think about goals, such as New Year’s resolutions you’ve set in the past; how long did they last? A few hours? A week? A month? (Did you know only

(Did you know only 8% of the people who set new year’s resolutions actually achieve them?)

How to Set Goals That Stick

Instead of thinking of your new goals as big, major, life-changing things that you need to achieve in a single year, think of the really big changes you need to make as long-term goals, and set some short term goals you need to do while in pursuit of your long-term goals.

  1. Brainstorm and plan.
    • Break the process of setting goals into several steps and build success into each step.
  2. Start with an awareness of your long-term goals.
    • Planning without an eye on where you want to end up would be kind of like taking off across country on foot with no destination in mind – sure – it could be an adventure – but more likely it will be a failure.
  3. Be very specific in your goal setting.
    • Using weight loss as an example, instead of making the goal an 80 pound (or whatever) weight drop, set small goals around the steps involved in losing weight, such as giving up second helpings or increasing activity levels by walking 20 minutes per day, three times a week.
  4. Set attainable short-term goals as your resolutions. 
    • If you do the steps as short-term goals, the big results will come, plus you get to feel inspired and successful as you meet each short term goal.
  5. Build in adaptability.
    • Give yourself a break.
    • It’s hard to make life changes.
    • Instead of setting yourself up for failure by creating rigid goals, expect to adapt them after the first week, or even during the first day.
    • If you set more than one goal at once, know in advance that you will most likely make rapid progress on some and struggle with others.
  6. Give yourself at least one fun, totally positive goal.
    • This is a total confidence builder!
    • What is something you enjoy doing but rarely, if ever do?
    • Set aside ten or fifteen minutes a day (or longer if you have the time) to enjoy that thing.
  7. Keep your new goals to yourself if you are surrounded by negative people.
    • Nothing can crush your motivation faster than hearing something negative from someone whose opinion is important to you – so just don’t tell them.

So, let’s get started… what are your new goals?

Positivity, Relationships

3 Easy Self-Empowerment Exercises to Help You Take Control of Your Life

If you are feeling down about your life, it can feel as if empowerment is an impossible thing for you, but it’s not.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Become Self-Empowered)
Click here to buy this book!

Becoming self-empowered is a process, and it’s the same for almost everyone, it’s just that some people never really try to take on the process and some manage to slip through it with more ease than others.

Wherever you are at in that, there are some simple things you can do to help yourself move through the process to self-empowerment more quickly and with greater ease.

3 Easy Self-Empowerment Exercises

Go ahead and grab a notebook and pen, or open up a blank document that you can use to record your work on these exercises.

  1. Dream Big: Start by writing down that big goal – or even all of your long-term goals.
    1. It’s perfectly okay and normal if they are “crazy big” or so big you can’t ever imagine them coming true.
      1. If you worry that someone will find your notes and make fun of you, first, you are probably surrounding yourself with the wrong people, and second, encode them so only you can read them.
        1. You can even destroy them when you finish the exercise, though if possible it’s best to keep them and refer back to them every couple weeks or months.
  2. Start Small: Rather than start work on achieving one big, or long-term goal, think about, and record, the steps to make that big goal a reality.
    1. You don’t have to do it all in one day – and if you can do it in one day – it isn’t really a long-term goal anyway.
      1. For example: if your long term goal is a better job so you can live as you wish, financially, but you need to get an education to get the job you want, signing up for college and registering for your first semester of classes would be a good first short term goal.
        1. The advantage of setting these small short-term goals is that each one in itself is easy to achieve – you are setting yourself up for success by setting a series of achievable goals, and each success you experience adds to your sense of accomplishment and self-empowerment.
  3. Record Successes: Make a checklist of the small steps you are taking and plan to take, and check off each one as you complete it.
    1. This gives you a visual confirmation you can look at any time you need a bit of inspiration and a reminder that you have indeed completed steps toward your long-term goal or goals.
      1. Being able to look at a checklist of your accomplishments can speak to your psyche in a unique and effective way.

Personal Growth is a Journey

“We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.”  – Dr. Steven Covey PhD

Don’t expect to change every single thing that’s wrong in your life at once, at best that would be overwhelming – at worst it is setting yourself up for failure.

Always remember that a small success is better than no success and that each small success is but one step on the path to creating and living the life you want.