Do you find achieving your long-term goals to be an incredibly challenging process? Do you become unmotivated when you begin crafting goals, and struggle to find direction or meaning? You’ve come to the right place. The key to unlocking your potential lies in understanding and leveraging your strengths. That’s where HIGH5 can help. The HIGH5 strengths assessment helps you identify your top five strengths and align them with your long-term objectives. Transform the goal-setting process from a daunting task into an exciting journey of self-discovery and achievement.
Without long-term goals, individuals may lack purpose in their careers, leading to a negative attitude and decreased productivity. Instead, focus on the many goals you can create for yourself and how keeping a goal in mind will restore a sense of passion in your work. You’ll learn how to establish long-term personal goals that truly matter to you and will guide you with goal examples that you can apply to your own career. Let’s start with what long-term goals are.
What are long-term goals?
Long-term goals can relate to your relationships, career, or personal growth. These goals focus on achieving outcomes during your entire career, or at least several years. To achieve long-term goals, you will need tenacity to work hard, even when it can be easier to let distractions overtake you. Short-term goals, such as taking an upcoming test, can help pave the way for a long-term goal (like graduating with honors).
Importance of long-term goals
Personal growth
A benefit of focusing on long-term goals and improvement is personal development. This type of goal gives you motivation for extended periods and provides a sense of purpose to your work, which can last a lifetime. To kickstart this process, take the HIGH5 strengths assessment. By identifying your top strengths, you’ll gain valuable insights into your natural talents, allowing you to align your long-term goals with your innate abilities. Ask yourself questions to clarify your career vision [1].
Take charge of your motivation and set the grounds for achieving your goals. as you’ll be working from a position of strength rather than constantly struggling against your natural inclinations. Successful people have long-term plans, have a clear sense of purpose, and know how to work with their motivation. They recognize the hard work they undergo will eventually pay off in the long run.
Learn more about your values
Some individuals create goals without having a true understanding of why they would like to achieve something. With long-term goals, you must constantly re-evaluate the purpose behind your goals. If you do not have a deep desire to pursue a goal, you simply will not stick with it in the long run. If you do, however, you can learn about your passions, desires, and values. This knowledge can lead to higher degrees of emotional intelligence and will make your goals more purposeful.
Types of long-term goals
Personal goals
Personal goals focus on individual growth. Develop new skills, improve relationships, or cultivate hobbies. These goals help enhance your sense of fulfillment and well-being.
Financial goals
Financial goals involve managing your money and wealth over time, such as saving for retirement, investing, or paying off debts. Setting clear financial goals can help you secure your financial future and reduce stress.
Health and wellness goals
Health and wellness goals aim to improve physical, mental, and emotional well-being. This might include adopting healthier habits, committing to regular exercise, or focusing on mental health and stress management.
Relationship goals
Family and relationship goals center on strengthening connections with loved ones. Spend more quality time with family, build stronger relationships, or plan for future family milestones.
Career goals
Career goals are designed to advance your professional life, whether through gaining promotions, acquiring new qualifications, or changing career paths. They help you achieve long-term success and satisfaction in your field. To set impactful career goals, understand your inherent strengths. The HIGH5 strengths assessment will guide you through this process. Identify your top five strengths to shift your career goals and work with your natural talents! If one of your strengths is strategic thinking, for example, you could set a goal to move into a role that complements this strength, such as project management or business development.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
When defining your career goals, don’t just focus on industry trends or salary potential. Instead, use your HIGH5 strengths assessment results as a compass. Aim for roles and responsibilities that allow you to use your top strengths daily. This approach not only increases job satisfaction but also accelerates your career growth, as you’ll be operating in areas where you naturally excel.
Examples of long-term goals
The following is a short list of goals that can assist you when brainstorming a personal goal, career goal, or any other type of goal:
- Dive into entrepreneurship
- Become a thought leader
- Mentor someone
- Learn a new language
- Save for retirement
- Secure a promotion
- Save for a child’s education
- Earn a new degree
- Establish a charity
- Focus on fitness
- Gain leadership experience
- Increase volunteer commitments
- Track your progress
- Control and manage emotions
- Earn a college degree
- Expand professional network
- Master public speaking
- Obtain a professional certification
- Purchase a home
- Improve relationships
- Become independent
- Boost your credit score
- Building new skills
- Set career and professional goals
- Develop a personal brand
- Travel the world
- Write a book
Dive into entrepreneurship
Embarking on the journey to become an entrepreneur involves identifying a business idea, developing a solid business plan, and executing it over time. This goal requires resilience, strategic planning, and the willingness to take calculated risks.
Become a thought leader
Establish yourself as an authority in your field by consistently sharing valuable insights, publishing content, and engaging with your community. This goal can elevate your professional profile and open doors to new opportunities.
Mentor someone
Dedicate yourself to guiding others by sharing your knowledge and experience. Mentorship not only helps others grow but also enhances your own leadership and communication skills [2].
Learn a new language
Mastering a new language broadens your cultural understanding and improves cognitive abilities. This can also open up new personal and professional opportunities, making you more competitive in a globalized world.
Save for retirement
Building a substantial retirement fund requires long-term planning, consistent saving, and smart investing. This goal ensures financial security and peace of mind for your future.
Secure a promotion
Advancing in your career often involves setting the goal of securing a promotion. This requires demonstrating leadership, acquiring new skills, and consistently delivering high-quality work.
Save for child’s education
Saving for your child’s college education is a long-term financial goal that requires disciplined saving and investment strategies. It ensures that your child has access to higher education without the burden of student loans.
Earning a new degree
Pursuing further education, such as a master’s or doctoral degree, can enhance your expertise and open new career opportunities. This goal often requires significant time management and dedication.
Establish a charity
If you’re passionate about a cause, establishing a charity allows you to make a lasting impact. This goal involves extensive planning, fundraising, and community engagement.
Focus on fitness
Setting and maintaining a long-term fitness routine improves your physical health, mental well-being, and overall quality of life [3]. It’s about creating sustainable habits that last a lifetime.
Gain leadership experience
Aspiring to leadership roles requires developing key skills such as decision-making, team management, and strategic thinking. Gaining leadership experience can propel your career forward.
Increase volunteer commitments
Committing more time to volunteer work not only benefits your community but also enriches your personal life. This goal fosters empathy, compassion, and social responsibility.
Track your progress
Regularly reviewing and tracking your progress toward long-term goals ensures that you stay on course and make necessary adjustments. This practice keeps you accountable and motivated.
Control and manage emotions
Developing emotional intelligence is key to personal and professional success. This goal involves learning how to recognize, understand, and manage your emotions effectively.
Earn a college degree
Completing a college degree can significantly boost your career prospects and earning potential. This goal often requires balancing study, work, and personal life.
Expand professional network
Building a robust professional network can open doors to new opportunities and provide valuable support throughout your career. Networking should be an ongoing goal, focusing on quality connections.
Master public speaking
Public speaking is a valuable skill that can enhance your career and personal confidence. This goal involves consistent practice and learning to communicate effectively in front of an audience.
Obtain a professional certification
Earning a professional certification in your field can enhance your qualifications and career prospects. This goal often requires passing exams and meeting industry-specific requirements.
Purchase a home
Buying a home is a significant financial and personal milestone. This goal requires long-term financial planning, saving for a down payment, and managing mortgage payments.
Improve relationships
Strengthening your relationships with your spouse or children involves consistent effort, communication, and emotional support. This goal focuses on creating a nurturing and loving home environment.
Become independent
Achieving independence, whether financial, emotional, or physical, is a powerful long-term goal. It involves taking control of your life and making decisions that align with your values and aspirations.
Boost your credit score
Improve your credit score to secure loans, buy a home, or start a business. You must manage your debts responsibly and maintain a good payment history.
Build new skills
Learn new skills continuously to keep you competitive in your career and adaptable to change. Identify relevant skills and dedicate time to master them.
Set career and professional goals
Set specific career goals for yourself. Are you eyeing a particular job title or salary? If so, you’ll need to plan strategically for long-term success. Put in the effort to set your goals in motion.
Develop a personal brand
Establish and promote a personal brand to stand out in your industry. Define your unique value proposition and showcase your expertise across various platforms [4]. What makes you stand out? What do you bring to the table?
Travel the world
If you’re passionate about exploring different cultures and countries, set a long-term goal to travel the world. You’ll need to master financial planning and time management.
Write a book
Writing a book is a long-term goal that involves discipline, creativity, and perseverance. It demonstrates your expertise and boosts your personal and professional credibility.
How do you set your long-term goals?
Do not let your options overwhelm you when making important goal-setting decisions. Instead, break them down into chunks. The following tips will help you set and reach almost any long-term goal you wish, no matter how impactful and life-altering it may be.
Make goals, not wishes
Wishful thinking and relying on chance do not make for great goals. Goals are not achieved through sheer luck, but rather concrete steps you take toward success. A wish is believing you can earn a million dollars through gambling while a true goal would be “I would like a million dollar e-commerce business by the end of 5 years”. Put in the time and effort to make your dreams a reality.
Be specific
Being specific in goal-setting is crucial for success. For instance, rather than simply stating you want a successful business, specifying a revenue target makes your goal more tangible and measurable. This clarity provides a fixed target and a clear path towards achievement. To further enhance the specificity and effectiveness of your goals, consider incorporating insights from the HIGH5 strengths assessment.
By understanding your unique strengths, you can set goals that not only have clear metrics but also align with your natural talents. For example, if “Achiever” is one of your top strengths, you might set a goal to increase your business revenue by 20% within a year, leveraging your natural drive to accomplish tasks and hit targets.
Break down goals into smaller goals
Breaking down large goals into smaller chunks makes achieving the goal far more achievable. It also assists you when crafting a plan of action on how to achieve your goals. For instance, if you wish to build a million-dollar marketing agency by the end of 2024, consider what you would like to accomplish before then. These smaller tasks will contribute to your overall goal.
For instance, if you would like to improve your search engine optimization to rank on the first page for a certain keyword, use alt tags, backlinks, and other SEO techniques to contribute to that high ranking. Once you achieve this smaller goal, you will likely move your business forward and generate revenue. Over time, taking these steps along with other smaller achievements can help you achieve your initial goal.
Remember your long-term goals
Constantly remind yourself of why achieving these goals will benefit your life, and what this success will mean to you. Consider hanging up a paper with your goals and desires, alongside why you wish to accomplish such goals, in a prominent area of the house. Alternatively, you could set a screen saver with your goal listed on it so that each time you check your phone, you are reminded of your desires. Even when issues occur and your goal achievement does not perfectly follow your plan, remind yourself of your long-term goals and the desires behind them to keep yourself motivated.
How do you prioritize long-term goals?
Prioritizing long-term goals involves assessing their importance and the impact they will have on your life. Consider both personal values and practical constraints, such as time and resources. Focus on your most meaningful goals. Breaking goals into smaller milestones can help you manage priorities and track progress more effectively.
Tips for setting long-term goals and creating long-term plans
Break goals into milestones
Breaking long-term goals into smaller, manageable milestones can make them feel less overwhelming and easier to track. Each milestone acts as a stepping stone towards the larger objective, keeping you motivated along the way.
Use SMART criteria
Using the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) ensures your goals are clear and attainable. This method gives structure to your planning and helps you stay focused on realistic outcomes.
Visualize your goals
Visualization techniques, such as vision boards or mental imagery, can help you stay connected to your goals. By regularly picturing yourself achieving these goals, you reinforce your commitment and maintain clarity on the steps needed to reach them.
Regularly review and adjust
Goals should be anything but set in stone. Regularly review and adjust them to ensure they remain aligned with your evolving circumstances and priorities. Stay flexible, refine your goals as necessary, and keep your progress in check.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Create a ‘Strengths Success Journal’ based on your HIGH5 assessment results. For each of your long-term goals, write down how you can utilize each of your top five strengths to overcome challenges and make progress. Regularly review and update this journal, celebrating how your strengths contribute to your achievements. This practice not only keeps you accountable but also reinforces the power of working from your strengths.
Long-term goals FAQ
What are your long-term goals in life?
Every individual has a different set of long-term goals. These goals focus on what you want to accomplish in a year, throughout your career, or during the course of your life. These goals can be related to your career, parenting, being a spouse, or any other area of your life. The long-term goals help you understand how to plan your day, and what skills need strengthening.
What is the long-term goal best answer?
A long-term goal is an objective that you aim to achieve over an extended period, typically several years. These goals often require sustained effort and planning.
What are long-term SMART goals?
Long-term SMART goals are objectives that follow the SMART framework: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This structure ensures that goals are clear and actionable, and that progress can be tracked.
Recap of long-term goals
Goals are like the fuel toward career success. Once you begin working toward your long-term goals, make sure to persevere through tough times and continue using your soft and hard skills and strengths while at work. You’ll see your hard work pay off!
References:
- Expert Panel. (2024, September 16). Council Post: How To Determine Long-Term Career Goals: 15 Key Questions. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/2024/09/16/how-to-determine-long-term-career-goals-15-key-questions.
- National Academies of Sciences, E., Affairs, P. and G., Workforce, B. on H. E. and, Stemm, C. on E. M. in, Dahlberg, M. L., & Byars-Winston, A. (2019, October 30). The Science of Mentoring Relationships: What Is Mentorship? National Academies Press (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK552775.
- Sjøgaard G, Søgaard K, Hansen AF, Østergaard AS, Teljigovic S, Dalager T. Exercise Prescription for the Work–Life Population and Beyond. Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology. 2023; 8(2):73. https://doi.org/10.3390/jfmk8020073.
- Montañez R. How to Define, Develop, and Communicate Your Personal Brand. (2023, September 4). https://hbr.org/2023/09/how-to-define-develop-and-communicate-your-personal-brand.
