The four main constituents for a living are breath, sleep, food, and “peace of mind”. You might readily agree with the first three as a necessity, but not the fourth. The reason could be that we take peace for granted. But, with the absence of “peace of mind”, we don’t live, we merely “exist”. Why?

You might agree that the purpose of life is happiness. Happiness is the result of doing things that bring you joy. It is not a goal to be achieved. Instead of trying to be happy, you do things that make you happy. For doing anything, you need three things – time, money, and/ or energy – in this practical world. Life is an experience that you actively create, not something you wait around to “happen”. So, in order to make your life meaningful, you aspire to achieve certain goals in life. Goals are the fulfilment points in life. Most goals have financial implications, and some goals may not have, or few goals may demand all three. You would definitely like to attain financial security for your present and future requirements. But what do you do?

As part of your life, you thrive and strive hard to earn, spend, save, and borrow, all along, to meet ends. Most of your activities are motivated towards money management, and all your time and energy are focused towards materialistic possessions and/ or pleasurable appeasements. When you attempt to manage your finances, you might fall victim to many “misses” – misconception, misalignment, misguidance, and/ or misfeasance. And to catch up or to make up for the shortfall, you repeat spending your time and energy to make money, make more money, thinking that once you have the money, you can accomplish others aspects of life; unknowingly getting trapped in a vicious circle, and diluting your happiness quotient. Are you doing what you would like to do?

If you can understand the other areas of life that bring you joy, you can align your life purpose and can set your path to prosperity. According to the vital life principles, there are six opulences – namely knowledge, health, wealth, fame, beauty, and renunciation – a mankind needs to learn to enhance this life to its maximum potential. It is believed that only the Supreme Personality has displayed full in all six opulences. As a human being, your only duty is to grow to your full potential, joyfully. Have you assessed the objectives of your goals that you aim to achieve?

In pursuit of personal excellence, if you look up for any guidance, you can use this as a tool to improve your life balance. When you place these life areas in the radar chart and assess your current experience versus the ideal situation, you will be able to quickly and graphically identify the areas in your life to which you want to devote more energy, and you can understand where you might want to cut back or pay attention. Create your “big-picture” of what you want to do with your life.

The first step to make your life purposeful and to be successful is goal setting. Without goals, you lack focus and direction. Goal setting not only allows you to take control of your life’s direction; it also provides you with a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding/ progressing/ digressing. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, gain on strength through physical and mental wellness, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life. In this way, with “peace of mind”, you will be able to pursue, albeit not in fullness as human beings, all the six opulences in life, in balance, as much as possible, in this lifetime.

Like all individuals, you ought to have life goals that set the direction for which you are headed. It means defining your priorities, values, and your interests; and then putting all your abilities and resources towards attaining those goals. However, goal setting is not an end in itself. It is an ongoing activity. It needs constant revisiting, reevaluating and redirection to achieve your long-term vision, to reflect your changing priorities and experience.

Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making. Just by being born gives you the goal of peaceful living. Just by joining workforce gives you the goal of retirement. Just by getting married gives you the goals of childbirth, children education, children marriage. Practically viewing, each and every life stage and life event presents you with a default set of goals, with increasing responsibilities and challenges for fulfilment. Assuming that all your pre-adulthood goals have been taken care by your parents and you are taking care of your children’s goals till their adulthood, you have to list and plan for your various adulthood goals, including all your responsibilities, and involving your family members.

To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, set yourself in the timeline, try to set goals and assign categories, and make them aligned to the S.M.A.R.T convention. Then plan the steps you must take to realize your goals, by focusing on your performance and not on the outcome. For all your goals that have financial implications, develop an action plan with real & near numbers assigned. Earmark specific sums of money for specific needs, instead of simple/ generic designation.

Once your goals are set and plans are developed, see your goals visually in your timeline. Post your timeline chart in visible places to remind yourself every day of your life path and commit to it. If you have a serious desire, you must live it, work on it, and achieve it through hard work and perseverance. As and when you achieve goals, be it progress goals or target goals, cross off each one as you work through them. When the financial aspects are taken care of to achieve your goals, and when you see that you are on track to accomplish all your goals, you start spending your time and energy to do other things, to do more things, with a greater satisfaction in life; alongside getting merged in a virtuous circle, and intensifying your happiness quotient. Are you happy with what you do?

It’s your life. It’s your money. It’s your resources. It’s YOU. Do things to yourself first, and then to your family, and then expand to your circle of beneficiaries. Make your life meaningful. Be Happy. Plan to live, your life, your way. Keep adding goals.

When your goals stop growing, you stop growing.
So, keep your goals growing, and your goals will keep you growing…

The views presented in this article are of author’s perception and learnings. The quotes and references made in this article are attributed to the respective creators. The author, Arun Ramaswamy, is the Founder Director of PurplePath Wealth Management Solutions.