Accomplishing Long Term Goals
As anyone who has ever completed a long-term goal can tell you, it doesn’t happen overnight or without loads of effort. I have achieved a few big long-term goals during my life. It is important to break them down into smaller pieces. This will keep you from becoming completely overwhelmed and helps you to achieve your goals by giving you a roadmap to success. Accomplishing small goals keeps you going on the path to achieving your long-term goals. You can set lofty short-term goals and really push with all you have to accomplish them.
I have many different types of long-term goals and want to make sure that I am dedicating enough time and effort to each of them. They all eventually get me to my ultimate long-term goal. I am going to begin breaking them down into small monthly goals. I will post a list of my monthly goals and how I plan to accomplish them. I will do a summary at the end of the month to discuss how the month went including the good and the bad. I think this will help to hold me accountable for working toward where I want to be in life. It would be awesome if it encourages anyone to work on their goals as well.
In order for all of this to make sense, you need to know what it is I’m working toward. My ultimate long-term goal is a little crazy. It goes like this: A year of traveling around the world with my family followed by a year or two working as a travel nurse so we can decide where we want to live. When we know where our “home” is, we will buy a home there and settle down until we get itchy feet again. There are a lot of things that need to happen before we are ready for any of that. This leads us to that list of long-term goals I was talking about.
My/Our Long Term Goals
- Be Debt Free
- In Good Shape and Healthy
- Live Simply and More Minimally
- Finish Our Home Projects
- Further my Career/Improve my Career Potential
- Build This into a Successful Blog/Website
- Buy a New Van
We are working toward becoming debt free now. We want to pay off all of our credit cards, student loans, and a personal loan. I will likely do a post about the break down of this or a running page that I update as needed to involve all of you in the process. I will include the dollar amount in the monthly goal breakdown so you will know exactly what it is we are trying to accomplish at that time. My husband and I are both Dave Ramsey fans. We intend to do a slightly different version of the debt snowball. We are planning to pay off our credit cards and personal loan first, followed by student loans, and then we will work on saving/paying extra on our mortgage.
I am currently out of shape. I want to return to my extremely active lifestyle. My daily life is better when I am in better shape. I don’t get tired as easily. I feel better physically and mentally. It is easier to travel the way that I like to when I am in good shape. I love to hike and be outdoors. It is also easier to keep up with my kids. I plan to start eating better and exercising regularly. We will also be cooking at home more and avoiding eating out. This will also help us financially.
We want to lower the stress level in our home by living more simply. I have been researching minimalism for a couple of years. It is something that my husband and I have discussed for a while. We have been slowly transitioning and we have decided to start making bigger pushes this year toward the lifestyle that we desire.
There are a few projects at our house that we would like to get finished. There are two reasons we would like to get these done. The first reason is that our house will be worth more when we eventually sell it and it will likely sell faster. The second reason is that we will enjoy living here more until we move. We are planning to do these projects anyway before we move so it makes sense to do it sooner and actually enjoy it for a couple of years.
My career as a nurse is always going to be part of my life. I love what I do and I want to continue to grow. I plan on taking some classes towards my next degree, getting my med/surg certification, and attending more meetings. I think these meetings will give me some new perspective on how other units do things.
I plan to continue working on this website. I would like to post at least once a week going forward. I also want to spend the time getting all of our past travel posts edited and live. This website is fairly new. I started it at the beginning of October 2017 after blogging for fun for a number of years. I went live in November 2017. I feel like there is so much that I don’t know yet and many things that I don’t fully understand yet. I want to keep working to improve my writing and photography skills as well.
We really want a van. We will eventually need one to achieve one of our ultimate goals. Traveling the United States with our girls will require a larger vehicle. Currently, I drive a small car that is paid off. The five of us just fit and it is great on gas. There is just enough room in the hatchback for our luggage when we take long road trips or the large stroller but not both. Our biggest issue with our car is that we can’t take anybody else with us. Our girls can’t bring friends with them on outings if the whole family is going. We can’t take the dog with us because there isn’t an extra seat for him. He is very large and requires some serious space. A minivan would make our daily lives much easier.
Now you have an overview of all our long-term goals! I will be posting our January goal list soon!