What are stretch life goals? Do you want to know how to reach them? It’s normal to wonder what you desire to accomplish with your life. Still, life goals are important, for nothing worthwhile can be achieved without a plan and working on it. These 10 tips on reaching your stretch life goals may be helpful to do just that.
“Having an aim is the key to achieving your best.”
Henry J. Kaiser
How to Reach Stretch Life Goals: Tips to Help You Get There
Sometimes, how to reach stretch life goals is not even on our radar. We’re too busy tending to everyday details. Yet, we may occasionally wonder how our lives would be different if we achieved success with a long-term goal. Here are some suggestions on how to make achieving stretch life goals easier and more successful.
View stretch life goals as growth and aim high.
Having a goal is part of the adult growth process. However, what’s often underappreciated is what it takes to achieve those goals. It is more than merely thinking of the goal, working on it, and succeeding.
Aim high. This tip is easy to understand. It can help make working toward even the most challenging goal less formidable.
- There is immense satisfaction in knowing that attaining goals helps you grow.
- Another crucial aspect of achieving success with stretch life goals is putting together specific plans to help you reach them.
Include different stretch goals.
Why should you aim high? Stretch goals are a great motivator. A stretch goal is beyond your current reach yet highly desirable. To achieve it:
- Success requires a great deal of thought, time, and effort. It’s not easily attainable or a goal you can achieve without thought or effort. While some successes are accomplishments, most aren’t memorable.
- Stretch goals involve challenges, going beyond your comfort zone, and embracing the possibility of being slightly over your head. On the other hand, when organizations set stretch goals for employees, it may undermine organizational performance.
Always have several stretch life goals.
Another recommendation is always to maintain a list of several goals. These can consist of:
- Starter goals can be those you’re just investigating or want to see if they interest you.
- Intermediate goals include a stepped approach to landing a coveted career.
- Or long-term goals that may include where you want to retire one day, how many children to have, and whether a one-on-one relationship is what you want.
Why have several stretch goals?
Having several stretch life goals is always something valuable and worthwhile to work toward. The more a goal interests you, even if it’s considerably far off, the more motivated you’ll be to put in the time and effort required to see it through.
Consider goals when planning.
All stretch goals require intense concentration and effort. That’s why you must think carefully about:
- How to approach it, when, where, and how to revise or adapt it to changing circumstances. You also must consider what to take away from it once you either succeed, stumble, or discard it.
- For there is always a lesson to learn. Those who are most successful in achieving stretch life goals are the ones who take the time to master the lessons they discovered from their mistakes.
Stagger stretch life goals.
When putting your goals into a list, include a rough timetable for completion. It’s also wise to space out more complex, difficult, or time-consuming goals so you don’t try to work on multiple simultaneously. Doing so scatters your focus and depletes your physical, emotional, and psychological resources.
Besides, if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. You can chip away at some of the more manageable goals to get some success to your credit. But still put in appropriate time, effort, and attention before or after the easy goals to work on your high-value goals.
Be realistic yet adventurous in goal-setting.
Does aiming high include taking risks? You bet. When a goal is stimulating and gets you excited and eager to begin, it’s also likely to contain an element of risk. You might not achieve it, at least not on the first try. On the other hand, the journey toward life goal completion is an adventure, as it should be.
- Be realistic about your goals while still seeing yourself successful in some seemingly unattainable goals you’d like to master.
- Besides, research shows that goals that retain interest can improve your work and help reduce burnout.
Take note of past goal successes.
No matter your goal, you’ve already had some experience in something similar. You can draw inspiration, motivation, and lessons learned from this success reservoir. They can and will serve you well in any goal you want to pursue in life. You succeeded because you had a plan, persevered despite obstacles, found the lesson in mistakes, and were flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances quickly.
Be flexible in implementing goals and monitor progress.
Recognize that you might not fully realize a goal the first time you attempt it. Yet, remember that flexibility in how you proceed with goals is crucial to ultimate success. What appears to be a rock-solid plan may not be ideal. Revision is not only advisable but necessary.
- If you’re locked in and refuse to adapt and adjust, you will increase your frustration and stress and will likely abandon the goal altogether.
- Monitoring your progress toward goal achievement is also an excellent strategy. Regular check-ups increase motivation and the likelihood of success.
Allow room for error with stretch life goals.
You can’t know everything. It isn’t possible to anticipate every circumstance before you work on your goals. Succeeding in important stretch life goals involves acknowledging, allowing, and accepting that you’ll make errors and mistakes, fall short on some aspects, and perhaps undershoot the mark.
Seniors with cognitive impairment may make more errors and mistakes than when they were younger. Yet, they can still work toward life goals and gain fulfillment from pursuing and completing them.
- Practice patience if you are older and have trouble concentrating, focusing, and following through.
- Or if you are the adult child, sibling, co-worker, friend, or neighbor of someone having a tough time succeeding with their goals.
Recognize some goals may feel uncomfortable – and that’s good.
The best advice on how to reach stretch life goals is to go for goals that make you feel slightly uncomfortable. Why is this good? You want to strive to achieve goals that are currently beyond your reach.
- If they’re too easy or quickly achieved, you may not gain as much satisfaction, wisdom, or advancement from their completion.
- That’s not to say that quick, easy goals shouldn’t be on your list, just that the ones you need to work for may be more meaningful to your stretch life goals.
