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We all need something to look forward to in the future. The more exciting and the more meaningful to us that thing is, the greater our sense of motivation. Choose your goals and your motivations very carefully for just that reason.

You will need goals for each arena of your life: personal, extracurricular, working, and spiritual. Your goals need to be compatible with each other. They've got to pull you in pretty much the same direction, otherwise you'll run into trouble.

It helps enormously if you can succeed in identifying an attractive goal of some sort. The goal might change in the months or years to come, but it can help carry you through a difficult episode in your life. This goal doesn't have to be specific, it can be as general as simply wanting to make the most of your life.

To get the best from life you have to be enjoying it. Enjoyment should be a key goal.

You have to know quite specifically what you want from life, otherwise you set yourself an impossible target. Make goals very specific. The more specific the better. Under close scrutiny, you might discover that your goal is not the thing you want, but that it's the feeling associated with the goal which is what you're really after. Then, at least, you can wonder what else might be good sources of those sought-after feelings.

You have to know quite specifically what you want from life, otherwise you set yourself an impossible target. Make goals very specific. The more specific the better. Under close scrutiny, you might discover that your goal is not the thing you want, but that it's the feeling associated with the goal which is what you're really after. Then, at least, you can wonder what else might be good sources of those sought-after feelings.

Make your life thoughtful and deliberate rather than accidental. Try to anticipate what the future holds or could realistically hold, so that you can prepare yourself for it.

Every goal you set yourself will have a cost. Weigh-up the likely cost against the likely benefits. It's easy to find attractive goals, but not so easy to find attractive goals which require journeys you can't wait to undertake.

Take a very reality-oriented approach to life. Never lose site of how things really are, rather than how you'd like them to be. Then at least you've got a chance of improving them.

Excellence in any field of endeavour depends on three basic factors: (1) how clearly you know where you want to go; (2) how much you really want to get there; (3) how strongly you believe in your ability to do so.

High-accomplishment and life-satisfaction are very often associated with those individuals who invest considerable time and effort in strategically planning their future. These people think in terms of the long-range and are more willing to postpone gratification of their immediate desires. Such individuals reflect on their lives more than others by deploying regular and detailed consideration of the events of their daily lives in the light of their longer-term aspirations.

If you set yourself one goal, what other goals are you postponing? Are you sure that's the order you want to take them in?

Life can't be forced and you can't absolutely guarantee things will work out just as you planned - sometimes the timing will be wrong. But you can at least give yourself the best chance possible.

You can't eliminate risks, you can only reduce them to a level that is acceptable to you. What are the chances of things going wrong? What are your contingency plans if they do? Don't have one back-up, have two.

It is vital that you set your own goals rather than having someone else set them for you. Taking ownership of your decisions will greatly increase your commitment and motivation.

You are half way to achieving your goal if you define it very clearly and know exactly why it's important to you.

Identifying what is really most important to us, is one of the hardest things. Not getting accidentally side-tracked by less important goals is the second.

You have to think that you and your goals are worth it. Are you doing it for someone else, or are you doing it for yourself?

Choose for yourself where you head and how you get there, then at least if you fail, you will fail on your own terms. Don't fail on someone else's - that feels twice as bad.

Give your so-called 'frivolous dreams' some time to ignite. Chase them like crazy! Not indefinitely, of course, but for a couple of years until they deal with themselves one way or another. You'll not regret that.

Be happy on the way to the goal. That's the key. Don't wait for the achievement of the goal to bring all the rewards. It won't and can't and shouldn't.

It's helpful to have goals, but those goals shouldn't just be about reaching the finishing line, they should be about the journey along the way. Your goals could include things like 'enjoy the companionship'.

The trick with an ambitious project is to set yourself mini-targets that lead bit by bit towards the greater goal.

A common error is to set only long-term, far-off goals. Whereas long-term goals can help with self-motivation, you will also need lots of very small and achievable daily goals that will lead inevitably to your final destination.

There is no point setting yourself extremely high goals that will only stress you out. Take it inches at a time. You can always build up speed and ambition as your confidence and ability grow.

Don't aim to do things 'just in time'. Don't take things to the wire. Aim to do them well before time, and then coast in. That just takes good planning.

Not giving ourselves time to do a decent job is a very common mistake, and one easily made when planning. You have to allow time to improve the plan, to brief your colleagues, to do the job, to research and review what you've done, to sit back and consider how to put all the problems right and repeat most of the process. Many people plan things as if nothing will go wrong, no one will get sick, no revisions will be necessary. Such a plan is likely to prove as comfortable as running a marathon in a wet suit.

You set the standard to achieve, then you set a higher standard, and then a higher standard on top of that. That's how you grow to reach great heights.

You set the standard to achieve, then you set a higher standard, and then a higher standard on top of that. That's how you grow to reach great heights.

You never think you're going to be really good at something when you're just starting out, but take it one step at a time and aim to keep progressing. Your confidence and skills will build with each new stage, and after a while some new target will come into view and seem almost possible and just within reach. When you look back two years down the line, you won't believe how far you've come.

Find yourself a good coach who can help you look three or five years ahead to a highly exciting, strongly motivating future, and can help you plan strategically. That coach will also be an ally against some of the pressures, mental and physical, that you will come up against on route.

It's impossible to stand still in life. You either improve or you wither. It's moving forward that brings a sense of contentment and pleasure.