The most important part of a goal is not the accomplishment of the goal, but the time spent achieving the goal. Your goal before you start it will change when you are close to finishing it. Most people have goals related to money. They can involve getting a better job, buying better things, or gaining more power. When you accomplish these goals, you often move to higher quantity goals. Having general goals will help you accomplish more goals. When we have goals that are too specific, we often ignore the realities involved in them. Realistic goals are the best goals. A helpful goal is one allowing you to devote time to improve yourself and your environment. Instead of saying you want to run a marathon in a year, tell yourself to jog tomorrow morning. The time you spend can be short on the first day. It will get longer over time until you are spending enough time to run a marathon. The original goal should be to spend time in an activity. The activity is the goal followed by developing a routine involving that activity. Self improvement is always a worthy goal. Some things can impede our goals such as boredom, mental or physical problems, or letting failure allow us to quit. The activity involved in the goal should be something that interests you. It should not stress you out or let false steps take you away from it. You can tell people you are spending more time doing a certain activity, but do not tell them your goal is to achieve a certain accomplishment. You may have an achievement goal for yourself, but telling others will not help you achieve the goal. Your goal is to better yourself at a certain activity. The more time goes by, the better you will become at it and the more inner goals you will accomplish. The dream job people picture for themselves as a child is rarely the job they do for a living. They may get the dream job, but the reality does not live up to the dream. If you still find your job interesting after years, it was your dream job. When I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming an animator. Later, I found animating was just one thing I wanted to do. I also became interested in writing, acting, music, and editing. The jobs incorporating more of my interests became my dream jobs. It is unhelpful to set a goal of attaining a dream job. We need goals of having interesting jobs. You will have found your dream jobs when you can do what interests you most of your life. Multiple goals are better than singular goals. If a singular goal does not come to fruition, you cannot accomplish an alternate goal. The more goals you have, the better. Being the best at something is not a proper goal because it is not realistic. It is too simplistic and depends on uncontrollable factors. Most of the people who are the best at something sacrificed the rest of their life for that singular goal. Having multiple goals that change over time will ensure you accomplish many goals in your life. Failing at a goal is only a singular unattained accomplishment. The problem is not the failing, but the goal. Goals based on winning or losing are not realistic goals. If you are in a competition, the goal in your mind is to win. You do not have to state it as a goal. Especially if your goal is a onetime winning of a specific event, odds are you will lose. If you enjoy the competition, winning or losing will not matter. Your goal should be to take part in the competition, not winning the competition. We should be proud of people’s journeys toward a goal, not their successes. Your goals should be general rather than specific. If you set a specific number on a goal such as losing weight, you will feel as if you failed if you only come close. General goals of improving your skills or gaining knowledge are attainable goals. A general goal is to get where you want to go. A more specific goal is to get there as quickly as possible. I have general goals of avoiding stress, being happy, and staying reasonably safe. Rushing through life goes against my goals. People speed through life because they set specific goals of arriving somewhere at a specific time without accepting the reality of barriers that will get in their way. They blame the barriers for making them late instead of their unrealistic goals. Limits create barriers to unrealistic goals. The barriers will set limits to allow us a realistic view of our goals. Accepting the limits of our goals is important to accomplishing the goals. Denying the limits will hamper our ability to accomplish them. We cannot solve problems in accomplishing the goals because we did not accept their limits. These limits and barriers may appear discouraging, but they will assist us with the goals. The more limits we accept, the more realistic the chances of accomplishing our goals. Bucket lists and New Year’s resolutions are not proper goals. Realistic New Year’s resolutions are actions you intend to take in the next year. The goal is taking actions, not accomplishing specific goals. A bucket list is a list of things we want to do, learn, or experience before we die. We write this dream list when we are young and forget about them later in life. Our dreams may change, but the list stays the same. Unless we are the same person our entire lives, the list will quickly be irrelevant. The more general our bucket list or New Year’s resolutions, the more likely we will be to accomplish them. Self-centered goals are goals only benefiting one person. The goals may affect others negatively or simply not benefit them. Our goals should always be beneficial to other people. Other people do not have an incentive to help you accomplish your goals if they only benefit you or affect them negatively. If we have a goal that benefits others, we will be more likely to accomplish the goal because we will have help. Goals that benefit others will benefit you more than self-centered goals. Your goals should interest you, be realistic, diverse, general, and should benefit others. Goals that are too specific will most likely fail. We should see our goals as intended actions. We plan and execute goals to improve our lives. If our goals detract from our happiness or health, they will not improve our lives. Goals do not have to be easy, but we should base them on controllable factors. Setting a goal to win an award depends on too many factors outside our control. Goals should build into other goals. Accomplishing goals is about knowing what will truly make us happy when we accomplish them.