Hitch Your Wagon to the Stars
– Ralph Waldo Emerson –
Many, many years ago, I saw an illustration with a simple, crude stairway stretched toward heaven, and the words were inscribed: I Want! It may have been a William Blake illustration. I saw it at about the time that I was writing a thesis on him, Today, it seems like that was a lifetime ago, but it was not. I am still alive and kicking, and I’m still setting new goals.
“When a tree quits growing, it dies.”
In another post, I tell you how I have created a set of editable and easy-to-update lists in Microsoft Word. Please read that post for more about the need to make lists, to follow through, to become accountable for the goals that you set, etc..
For now, I’ll merely share a portion of my Goals List.
Notice that I have distinguished between my Short-Term Goals, my Mid-Term Goals, and my Long-Time Goals.
I could add another box, indicating my Life-time Goals, but my Lifetime Goals are always the same:
- To Survive
- To Prevail
“I Decline to Accept the End of Man….
I Believe that Man Will Not Merely Endure,
He Will Prevail”
– William Faulkner –
Sure — I’d like to be rich and famous, but those are not my most pressing goals. My most pressing Lifetime Goal is to prevail. But in order to reach my Lifetime Goal, I’ll have to establish several smaller stairstep goals along the way. And as I make a thorough list of my stairstep goals, I begin to create a strategy or a plan for success.
Notice the first entry in my list of goals that I have shared above.
My Task for 09.21.2-21 was to share my first post from Harvest Your Past online.
The Hierarchy of my goals for that day are as follows:
- The Short-Term Goal of that task is to begin to stimulate interest in my Write Memoir to Regain Your Passion platform.
- My Mid-Term Goal is to attract the attention of an Agent who represents people who write both for children and for adults.
- My Long-Term Goal is for Harvest Your Past published.
- My Lifetime Goal is to Prevail.