One of the most important elements of setting and achieving long-term goals and objectives is to celebrate milestones. A milestone is the achievement of an intermediate goal or objective. For instance, if the goal is to lose 30 pounds in a year a milestone might be losing 10 pounds. Now, we celebrate all kinds of milestones in our lives some are quick and easy, while others take years to achieve. Examples of quick and easy milestones are birthdays or anniversaries. We celebrate these out of tradition and without much thought.
Let’s explore what we could be celebrating as milestones if the goal much higher and make it a bit more complex. Something like saving for retirement or getting out of debt or starting a new business. All of which I am trying to do. I must admit that it is better to focus on one thing at a time. Like getting out of debt and letting retirement go to the debt is cleaned up. However, I have chosen to do all three at simultaneously, which is not bad just not the best. The reason is that what is going into retirement could be going to the debt which has a guaranteed ROI (example: 4% on the car loan, 5.25% on the motorcycle loan).
Back to the milestones. In most instances there are intermediate achievements within the larger goals that should be celebrated. These little celebrations will provide some added motivation and something to look ahead to in the drive to achieve a larger goal. An example might be, if the larger goal is to become debt free a milestone would be to reduce the debt by 20%. Or maybe the larger goal is to become a millionaire, a milestone might be when you have $100,000.
The idea here is to keep the momentum and energy up. If you have never celebrated a small victory, then you might lose sight of what is important. Celebrating the achievements and progress is very important.