Preview the Saint Jude Program

LONG TERM GOALS

This Chapter is devoted to creating your long term goals list. Before you get started, go through your happiness lists and make sure you have highlighted all the items you have extracted and converted into daily goals. Do not read on until this is done. What should be left (un-highlighted) will be every happiness list item that may now be converted into a long term goal...

...It takes some time and effort to build a long term goal oriented life, so there is no need to rush this process. If completed with tenacity and hard work, you will see your new life plan emerge. It is worth the effort.

Each of our guests have different goals and aspirations. For some, concentrating on their family might be a high priority as they may have created tremendous problems that must be addressed. Years of neglecting or abusing the children or spouse may have created tensions, poor communication and resentment. Perhaps fixing your home is a priority because it is in disrepair and has become an embarrassment to you and your family. If participating in an organized religion is an important part of your spiritual life, you may feel you need to reestablish your personal relationship with God by attending church for the first time in years. Your career could be on the rocks and this may be where you need to put your energies as your family will pay a dear price if you lose your job. The possibilities are endless. Ultimately your happiness lists hold the key to your long term goals - most of the goals are already written, but need to be categorized, prioritized and organized into actual long term goals. To accompliSh this takes five very specific activities:

Copy an item from one of your happiness lists and rewrite it as a long term goal.

1. List any natural talents you have to achieve the goal.
2. Write a detailed account of what it will take you to accomplish each goal.
3. Check for mutual exclusivity. In other words are any goals in your list in conflict with your daily goals or long term goals. If you find mutually exclusive goals, begin the process of creatively working out solutions.
4. Each long term goal must be assigned a time table and deadline. A goal without a workable deadline is still just a dream...

...As time passes, you will want to update both of your goals lists. It is natural to discover many of the things you thought would bring you happiness really do not. This process of eliminating activities you find unsatisfying is a part of life. As goals are achieved, spend time creating new goals, regularly. This is important. This is how confidence is built: through the realization of dreams brought about by hard work and stick-to-itiveness.

We know that the last few chapters have been fairly mechanical and are based on spending much time and effort writing and filtering ideas and dreams, but these very mechanics change people. The human experience is an emotional one that is governed by your thoughts and actions. Should your thoughts and actions be driven by goals and aspirations to be more developed and more fulfilled then your life includes those qualities. Should you avoid self-examination, then you have chosen to live with the consequences of such behavior. Keep uppermost in your mind that to win in life is much easier than the path of laziness. The path of laziness ends in places you don't want to be. Guide your own life and habits to match your dreams and new self images and you will have fulfilled the reason you are alive, and that is - to be happy.

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