Have you created life-long goals that give meaning and purpose to your life? I am not talking about New Year’s resolutions. You can decide to change something in your life at any time. In fact, I recommend you set goals throughout the year. Choose to keep setting goals throughout your lifetime that will move you and the world you care about forward.
Life-long goals help you stay engaged in life and connected with others. Discover what you feel drawn to and go with that flow. This helps add meaning and purpose to your life.
Setting goals has served me well but I am more relaxed about it than I used to be. My expectation is that goal setting will always be a part of who I am. As you move through your life stages, you will set short-term goals but the focus, energy, and values you place on your goals will change over time. Here, I want to explore the importance of setting realistic life-long goals.
Leo Buscaglia wrote “Each of our acts makes a statement as to our purpose.” This is very true of goals.
The first wave of Boomers began turning 75 in 2020. Many who have postponed retirement will take the retirement step. Being post World War II babies, we watched our parents struggle and strive for a better life for themselves and their families—their life-long goals—and the things the “Greatest Generation” achieved are no less than phenomenal. As we observed, we learned it was our responsibility to work hard and continue the progress our parents started. This became part of our birthright. We, too, worked hard and played hard and changed our environment whenever it was necessary. As a result of our upbringing during these historic times, our generation tends to be high achieving, service oriented, with our own life-long goals. A successful career has become fundamental to our identity. Perhaps your legacy has also been leading changes like the civil rights movement, a desire for world peace, environmental shifts, or raising profound awareness regarding gender identity, equality, and multicultural diversity.
Unfortunately, we need new attitudes about retirement, ones not rooted in the model our parents retired with, to achieve more of our own life-long goals. We can fill our lives with meaning and purpose and continue to change our world in positive ways if we refuse to look at retirement as the life stage where we let go and coast on our past successes.
Life-long goals will keep us moving forward, leading fulfilling lives for years to come. We have 20 to 30 more years to shakeup, change, and infuse energy into our generation’s legacy, which will impact generations to come.