What do you want to accomplish in life? Do you have big picture aspirations?
Maybe you want to become a New York Times bestselling author, or maybe you hope to hold public office someday. Some people may call these aspirations “goals,” when actually, without a proper goal-setting strategy, these are dreams or resolutions.
An aspiration is something you want to achieve or be. Dreams, resolutions and goals are all aspirations, but they’re 3 very different things. A dream is something that you’d like to do if you could, but it feels out of reach.
Ever heard the expression pipe dream? Because dreams feel so far-fetched, we don’t always work hard to achieve them.
A resolution is something you’d really like to do. Consider New Year’s resolutions. Many people make them every January about the items and activities they’d really like to start (or stop) this year.
But what they don’t realize is that resolutions (and dreams) will never happen without a more concrete strategy.
So what is a goal? It’s the actual plan to achieve your aspirations. You can set short-term and long-term goals, and both are typically necessary to achieve big picture aspirations like the ones listed above.
