Setting goals in life and achieving them by doing what you enjoy.

Arturs Jermolickis
4 min readJun 26, 2021

Our life consists of long-term and short-term goals that we achieve daily. It can be at work, at home, at your hobby place.

Question from Daughter:

Yesterday I had a question from my Daughter:

-Pa, what was your goal when you’ve finished school?

I was surprised, but it was a good question, as sometimes we describe.

Of course, I had to remind myself about what it was like and what I wanted back then, but it wasn’t that hard.

Growing up in Latvia, I was building my plans for the future during the ‘90s when it was a “Rapidly Changing” time here.

The time and surroundings are dictating our dreams, I would say. Most people dream of continuing to have what they already got or want to have something they never had. And the way we achieve our plans always depends on our habitat.

Back then, the well-known and most popular pathway:

Study

Get a Good Job

Start a family

Save

Invest

Retire

We can add much more here, but I guess that you got the point.

So this pathway was broken, and there were no “good Jobs”, and to earn enough to fulfil your short term wishes, you had to think out of the box, as you probably always have to achieve more than others (actually). So instead of earning, you had to make money.

But I did have a goal, and my dream was to create a happy and wealthy family of my own from the time I finished school.

I was a tech enthusiast from the beginning, and I remember I’ve created my landline telephone (I was about seven at that time) from the parts that I found on the street, and I used a shoe box as a case. Funny enough, it worked!

When growing up, I had a passion for computers and the technologies around them.

So I knew the area, which is very interesting for me. And no matter what my activity will be, I wanted to stay in the field.

So while in the Uni, I have started my own company in the field, which was my first step.

Answer:

After thinking about everything, and I can add so much more to the story, I have replied to my Daughter:

the main goal that I’ve achieved by now was to have a happy family.

Reason for asking:

After all changes, stresses and different activities, I’ve managed to stay in the field and continue doing something that I love from the beginning.

It happened to be that she is now in the same area with me, after:

finishing school,

Deciding that studying is not the most crucial thing in life,

Finding a job (a surprisingly good one),

trying to live on her own (she paid her bills),

changing decision (understood that this “good job” is not taking her anywhere)

finding a field of interest (by actually trying herself in different areas, such as Medicine and AI),

home hard-studying, to pass exams to the University of her choice(understood that University is the must-have step, that you have to make)

coming back home,

Receiving an offer from University (Artificial Intelligence program),

Waiting for her 1st studying day and talking to me by my desk

So, after efforts and tries to prove something, she is happy to get where she is and wonder what steps I took initially.

The main similarity in goals:

So my goal in life was clear, I wanted to have a family and make them happy doing what I like.

Her goal in life is to finish University, grow as a professional, become wealthy by doing what she likes.

We all want to do what we enjoy.

Conclusion:

According to Pew Research Center, she belongs to Generation Z. (born in 1997–2012).

In modern society, life is quite understandable, and it is evident most of the time what steps to take to achieve your goals. In some other articles, we can talk about bits of advice to Generation Z. Now, I want to stay focused on what we have to respect in ourselves to achieve our true dreams.

From my life experience point of view and others surrounding me, we have to remember our childhood, our beginning. Something we loved to do, talk about or look at, when we didn’t have any pressure from the side.

By pressure, I mean good and bad things that our Lovely internet-connected devices, tv’s and radios can tell us. I’m sure you do understand what I’m trying to say.

So if you are someone who is trying to make a change in life, then remind yourself what you loved to do, and try to think about how it’s related to the present world, and start making your first steps into adapting your gifts to the real world, think about how can you monetize it? Finish a course, or create your own. Just make your first step.

If you have a child and worry about their future, you don’t worry. Instead, keep a good things that you find in them!

Setting yourself a life-long goal as I did, or a small one as my Daughter, is very important. You will achieve it no matter what steps you will have to take and what problems will be on your way.

Just remember to do the steps to your goal every day consistently!

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Arturs Jermolickis

Arthur is a Full-stack Python Developer with hands-on other technologies. Enjoy creating crypto bots.