163 Personal Goals Examples: Find a Goal to Aim At

Personal goals can guide your growth and keep life exciting, especially if you’re unsure what you want to do in life. Personal goals to travel the world, improve your finances, or build lasting friendships will give you the direction you need. In this article, you’ll find 163 personal goal examples, plus practical tips to help you set and achieve them. Let’s dive in!

• Personal Development Goals for a Better You
• Academic Goals to Expand Your Mind
• Travel Goals for Personal Growth
• Personal Finance Goals for a Secure Future
• Personal Fitness Goals for a Healthier Lifestyle
• Social Life Goals to Strengthen Relationships
• Essential Tips to Set and Achieve Your Personal Goals
• Take Action on Your Personal Goals Today

Personal Development Goals for a Better You

Improve your mindset, emotional intelligence, or resilience by setting and achieving personal development goals this year. These goals will reduce anxiety, increase your self-motivation and confidence, and will support everything else you want to get done. Habits like reading philosophy, self-help, frequent meditation and prayer, and weekly therapy or journal writing will spark profound changes in you and mold you into a stronger, better version of yourself who will be able to Face the Dragons of life and come back home victorious.

1. Start a meditation practice
2. Get therapy
3. Pray everyday
4. Read scripture
5. Take a personality test
6. Learn to use GTD
7. Understand what makes you angry
8. Come to grips with past trauma
9. Apologize to someone you wronged
10. Volunteer or do charity work
11. Find work-life balance
12. Make someone feel loved
13. Quit social media for a month
14. Help someone in need
15. Discover your life’s purpose
16. Overcome your fear
17. Practice patience
18. Wake up earlier
19. Let go of beliefs that don’t serve you
20. Let go of a long-held grudge
21. Declutter your room or home
22. Become a minimalist
23. Make your bed every morning
24. Create a morning routine
25. Write a gratitude journal

Academic Goals to Expand Your Mind

You might be aiming to complete a college degree, to learn a new language or just expand your working knowledge of the world. Sharpen your mind and open new doors to yourself with the academic goals below. LinkedIn’s 2021 Workplace Learning Report shows that continuous learning is one of the best ways to stay competitive in the job market, especially for young adults with less than a decade of experience. So, use the personal academic targets below to increase your earning potential and enhance your critical thinking – how else will you compete with AIs trying to take your job?

26. Read Homer’s Illiad and Odessey
27. Read Virgil’s Aeneid
28. Read The Complete Shakespeare
29. Read Beowolf
30. Read the Greek philosophers
31. Read the whole Bible
32. Graduate college
33. Get a master’s degree
34. Get a doctorate
35. Read a book a week
36. Learn to read Latin
37. Learn to read ancient Greek
38. Learn a foreign language
39. Learn Jungian psychology
40. Read Freud
41. Relearn high school math
42. Learn a scripting language (bash, python, p)
43. Learn a web language (HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript)
44. Learn a programming language (C++, Java, .net)
45. Write a novel
46. Write a memoir
47. Publish a poem
48. Understand Einstein’s theories

Travel Goals for Personal Growth

The travel goals below will expand your worldview and boost your sense of self while creating once-in-a-lifetime memories you will never forget! A 2019 American Psychological Association study found that international travel can significantly reduce stress and promote mental well-being.

As someone who left home at 20 and spent two decades in Asia, traveling around India, China, Nepal, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia, I know how setting clear travel objectives can aid you in acquiring languages, gaining new perspectives, and building resilience. Even if it seems a pipedream right now, set the goals and start with the three actionable points below.

49. Trek to Everest Base Camp
50. Walk the Great Wall of China
51. Visit Buddha’s birthplace in Lumbini
52. See the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem
53. Explore Angkor Watt
54. Explore Machu Picchu
55. See the Great Pyramid
56. See the Northern Lights
57. Discover the culture of Bali
58. Scale Kilimanjaro in Tanzania
59. See the Grand Canyon
60. Visit Stone Henge
61. Visit Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam
62. Visit Cambridge University
63. Find Platform 9 3/4 in King’s Cross London
64. Hold up The Leaning Tower of Pisa
65. Play Golf in Las Vegas
66. Visit the Colosseum in Rome
67. Explore the Parthenon in Athens
68. See the Old Man of Hoy in the Scottish Highlands
69. Step foot on every continent
70. Drink coffee with a view of the Eiffel Tower
71. Smoke a Cuban cigar in Havana
72. Taste Sushi in Tokyo
73. Flee from Bulls in Pamplona
74. Experience Holi in Jaipur
75. See the Dali Lama in Dharamshala
76. Awe at Cliffside temples in Bhutan
77. Spend three days in London
78. Drink a beer (or two) at Oktoberfest in Munich
79. Explore the markets of Marakesh
80. Look down on the world in the Burge Kalifa in Dubai
81. Explore the ancient Laotian royal capital of Luang Prabang
82. Get a tattoo in Hong Kong
83. Look down on Cape Town from Table Mountain
84. Survive in the Amazon Rainforest
85. Visit the Sherpa capital of Namche Bazaar in Nepal
86. Learn kung fu at The Shaolin Temple
87. Cross the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco
88. Visit the 9/11 Memorial
89. Visit Buckingham Palace
90. Drink a Guinness in Dublin
91. Tour the Wine growing region in France
92. Eat Pizza in Napoli
93. Visit the birthplace of Humanity – Ethiopia
94. Visit Bob Marley’s house in Jamaica
95. Visit Hemingway’s house in Cuba
96. Learn Karate in Okinawa
97. Visit every country on the planet
98. See Kangaroos in Australia
99. Go on a cruise
100. Camp under the stars

Personal Finance Goals for a Secure Future

Start with the quick financial wins below – you can do them right now, then look to set some long-term finance goals that will set you up for a future where student loans are paid off, you have no credit card debt, and you have money left over at the end of the month.

Short-term financial objectives like building a $1,000 emergency fund will put you ahead of your peers. Paying off your mortgage early or building a second (or third) income stream

101. Be debt free
102. Pay off your mortgage
103. Buy a second home
104. Buy a holiday home
105. Flip a home for profit
106. FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early)
107. Have a $1,000 cash emergency fund
108. Invest in the stock market
109. Own a Berkshire Hathaway share
110. Own a bar of gold
111. Start a side hustle or side gig
112. Invest in bitcoin
113. Track your spending for a month
114. Earn passive income
115. Have enough savings to retire
116. Read 10 personal finance books
117. Max out your 401(K)
118. Live on a dollar a day for a year
119. Give 10% of your salary to charity
120. Save half of what you earn
121. Open a savings account for your child’s college tuition
122. Achieve multiple income streams
123. Get a raise

Personal Fitness Goals for a Healthier Lifestyle

My number one tip for anyone looking to make massive progress in the gym is keep a workout log, measure what matters!

As an experienced competitive kickboxer, I never had much problem staying motivated to work out, however, it wasn’t until I started getting serious about improving my strength with weightlifting that I saw huge changes in ring. Short daily workouts can lead to massive changes with time. Use the personal fitness goals below to stay motivated, build consistency and achieve the healthy lifestyle you always knew you could.

124. Lift a two-plate bench press (225lbs, 100kg)
125. Squat three plates (315lbs, 140kg)
126. Set up a home gym
127. Join a gym
128. Buy a sauna
129. Run a marathon
130. Become a black belt in BJJ
131. Compete in a boxing/MMA match
132. Do the front splits
133. Do the side splits
134. Run a five-minute mile
135. Do yoga every day for a year
136. 1m Box jump
137. Complete an Iron Man
138. Start the ketogenic diet
139. Cycle 100 miles
140. Get a six-pack
141. Compete in a bodybuilding competition
142. Gain 10lbs of muscle in a year
143. Lose 20lbs of fat in a year
144. Start a running habit
145. start a yoga practice

Social Life Goals to Strengthen Relationships

Social connections are one of the best predictors of long-term satisfaction and overall health. Harvard came to that conclusion after an 80-year study! Young adults build friendships that often last the rest of their lives, so if you’re 18-35, use the goals below to make more meaningful relationships, and if you’re older, contact some of those friends you made back then – or go make some new ones!

146. Get Married
147. Have Children
148. Meet new people
149. Teach your child to read
150. Become a better listener
151. Wear matching outfits with your partner
152. Build a treehouse for your children
153. Take your parents away on vacation
154. Go into business with a friend
155. Spend more time with your family
156. Create a Sunday dinner tradition at your house for your extended family/friends
157. Choose your children over work
158. Make a new friend
159. Homeschool your children
160. Remove the toxic people from your life
161. Start a weekly tradition with your friends
162. Reconnect with an old friend
163. Arrange a reunion for your school friends

Essential Tips to Set and Achieve Your Personal Goals

How to Use the SMART Framework for Personal Goals

The SMART goal framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely) has been embraced by productivity experts for decades because it transforms vague wishes into actionable plans. Originating from a 1981 paper by George T. Doran, the SMART method proves its worth in everything from personal development to corporate objectives.

A SMART goal is one that is:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Actionable
• Realistic
• Timely

SMART Goal Example in Action

To turn an idea into a SMART goal, go through these steps. Let’s use the idea of:

“I want to lose weight.”

1. Make it Specific – I want to lose belly fat
2. Make it Measurable – I want to lose 40lbs of belly fat
3. Make it Actionable – I want to go on the ketogenic diet until I’ve lost 40lbs of belly fat
4. Make it Realistic – I want to go on the ketogenic diet until I’ve lost 20lbs of belly fat
5. Make it Timely – I want to go on the ketogenic diet until I’ve lost 20lbs of belly fat, starting today

Of course, you don’t need to use the SMART system for every goal you set, instead use it as a framework to improve your goals. When you set a new goal, go through the five steps and ask yourself, would this goal be better if it was more specific, measurable, etc?

Of the five steps, the most effective by far is Actionable; it’s so easy to set a goal like traveling more, reading the classics, or starting a business, but a goal like this isn’t very easy to put into action. It’s hard to see what doing those goals actually looks like, and so, when you try to work on them, you may fall at the first hurdle.

Changing those goals to actionable goals like visiting Rome, reading Paradise Lost, or starting a blog about cats makes it much more likely that you’ll achieve them.

Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Personal Goals

You need a good mix of long and short-term goals to keep you motivated and making progress. Don’t make too many goals that require ten or more years to achieve. While it’s great to have an endpoint in mind, goals that seem too far off lack the motivating energy to work hard at them today.

Instead, use goal milestones that you want to hit on the way to your long-term goal. If your goal is to retire in ten years, that’s great, but will that keep you working hard every day for the next ten years? Perhaps an intermediate goal, such as setting up a passive income stream this year or saving $25k this year, would add some urgency and energy and still keep you on track for your long-term vision.

How Many Personal Goals Should You Focus on at Once?

I think you should have at least one goal for each area of your life, if you don’t then either you are completely satisfied in that area or you’ve lost all hope that that area of your life will ever improve.

Warren Buffet supposedly recommends having only 5 goals to work on at any one time, which I think is good advice if you want to make massive progress on your goals. Too many goals will spread you too thin, and too few will make you one-dimensional.

Remember, you don’t need to be actively working on all your goals. You may have a goal to learn to juggle or speak Spanish, but that doesn’t mean you should be working on it now. Keeping a someday maybe list with goals for the future can be freeing and let you record all the things you want to do without the burden of feeling that you need to be doing them all. Make a bucket list with personal goals you want to check off before you die if that’s more your style.

Take Action on Your Personal Goals Today

So go through the different areas of your life or the topics above, and pick some goals that you want to achieve. Then when you’re done, decide on which goals to work on this year.