In the last blog post (read Part 1 here), we covered the establishment of dreams, vision and purpose. I talked about the importance of setting goals that will eventually make your dreams come true. Goals must be realistic. I like using the acronym SMART in order to clarify goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant (to your dream, vision, and purpose) and timely. I talked about setting major goals that meet the above criteria and I used the following example of a major goal from our homestead:

By August 1, 2016 the homestead provides 80 percent of family’s caloric needs, averaged out over any given week (when we are on the homestead) in order to obtain more self-sufficiency, provide work for the family, reduced financial strain and healthy food to eat.

Does this major goal support our dream, vision and purpose? Yes. It is nested inside of that. Designing major goals should be a very lofty goal but must meet the SMART criteria.

The next step in the process of realizing your dream is to take your major goals and break them down into mid-term and short-term goals. Everyone needs to see progress on big projects or the tendency is to get demotivated. Setting mid-term and short-term goals keeps us on track with doing things that support our dreams and they keep us motivated. What’s the difference between mid-term and short-term goals?

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