In planning our life goals, it’s important to start with one question, and one question only. Is this what I want for my life?

I would say that most people don’t ask themselves this question, or, they don’t take the time to sit in solitude and wonder about the answer to this question; until it is resolved. The problem with leaving this question open ended — we move forward in life without a compass.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
~Socrates

We all have life goals, but, do we really want them, and, how far forward have we looked?

What happens when we don’t really want our life goals? We aren’t full with vitality, we don’t experience total immersion, and we’re generally not very excited about the small action steps that are necessary to bring us closer to our big life goal.

I’m not saying every minute task has to bring us into a state of glee and ecstasy. Some rote tasks will be dull, repetitive, and not challenging enough to peak out interest after we have learned them. They will still be necessary!

Life Goals are a Joke

Life can’t possibly be too serious, not when you consider that Life is a Game. Our only hope of winning - or at least doing very well - is knowing, and playing by the rules.

So we set a life goal. We want to accomplish X by the time we’re 80. Eighty rolls around, and let’s say that for the sake of argument, we reach our life goal. Now what?

Triumph is nothing more than a fleeting moment. In the next moment we can hold our heads up high and say “I have achieved my life goal, in the past.” But, now what?

As any good goal setter, we would set a new life goal, and strive to achieve another triumph. The worthwhile goals are few and far between, but the small action steps that pepper the journey towards our life goals are precisely what our entire life is made of.

Think about it. If you spend 40 years working towards one life goal, you better enjoy those 40 years, and not hold your joy off until mission accomplished.

That’s the punch line. The true fulfillment of life goals is in the journey towards them, not in the goals themselves. That’s the long-tail of life goals.

Look at it like website traffic. After several years, you’re still going to get traffic spikes to your newest posts. This might be Y amount of visitors. However, little by little, the hundreds of articles from your archives, will have a grand total of 50Y visitors. Going through all those years of hard work — the journey — is more important than actually reaching the goal.

In this way, the joy of goal achievement is X, but the joy of working on your goal, day in, day out, is X times a very large number; a number that you can’t put a value on, and a number you wouldn’t trade for the world.

The Problem (and Solution)

The key is to have the best life journey that’s absolutely possible. In order to do this, we have to want to live, and we have to have something to live for. We need to have life goals that we would absolutely love to achieve - both in the short, and long term.

Without setting any life goals for yourself, you’re going to have a goal-void. This void is like a black-hole, so it’s going to get filled. The trouble is that it’s most likely going to be filled by another person, and no other person has your best interest in mind like you do.

No other person knows you, what you like, and what you aspire to become like you do. This makes the solution quite simple.

It’s quite simple, and very hard at the same time. Sit down — alone, with yourself — and take a look at things in your life that have brought a real smile to your face, things that have made you laugh uncontrollably, things that have made you cry tears of joy and touched your soul, things that you could see yourself doing for the rest of your life.

Then, reach for a life goal, in the distant future, and ask yourself: If I were to use all my time and energy to go for this goal, would my day to day be full of the things that make me come alive?

This post is part of a series on Life Goals. Subscribe to the site, so you don’t miss a thing, and share your experiences with goals in the comments below.