It's all about the mindset, imagine setting a goal of 5 years in mind, if you share that dream with the poor they will shout, saying they can't ever wait that long or they will think about death, like ' what will happen if I don't live that long, excuses upon excuses.
Years ago I tried to hard to bring people up, dream together and make something for ourselves, but they don't believe, they are the type that like quick action, get rich in weeks or months.
That's a great point Crypt0Gore. One thing is to set goals, but another thing is to realize that it can take a long time to reach the more fulfilling goals, so one of the techniques that I recall from my youth was to consider various levels of goals, and to attempt to have some longer term goals in mind that all kind of lead to an ultimate goal (of course, these can be changed as they are reached or get closer to being reached) and then to strive towards making progress towards the goals on a daily basis... there surely will be subgoals in the middle, so the subgoals that are on the list may well be various things that need to be achieved (or are on one path) towards achieving the BIGGER goal.. but also sometimes the paths along the way (and subgoals), might have some divergences or failures; however, there can be alternative paths that could still allow for striving towards the ultimate goal, but ONLY become known or pursued once a previous path might no longer be applicable.
You can also write down a goal on a piece of paper and look at it everyday to ask yourself "what have i done today to make progress towards that goal?", and to attempt to continue to be realistic in terms of frequently the progress being incremental and sometimes set backs along the way.. and sometimes there also might be breakthroughs or luck in which a lot of progress happens in a short time, perhaps based on previous preparations that put the person in a position of being able to take advantage of opportunities (short-cuts) that end up presenting themselves.. then if the goal looks too easy because you thought that you were going to reach it in 20 years, but you reach it in 10 years, that should not preclude setting new goals.
Many people says writing the goal is so important to accomplish it - I plan it all the time and then I don't do it.
although we all have to die - but than we have to struggle to make our living better - everytime I attend a funeral I lose interest in the life.
It is better to work towards your dream and die trying than to have a long life and live a miserable life, I have seen too many R.I.P in my own world and I also feel like struggling less but I ask myself, what if I am destined to live a long life?
My enemies won't have their way, never, I have been told too many times that I won't succeed in life and lately they are surprised, it is just the beginning, giving up on my dream is like a dead man walking.
Do not give up just because your life can end at any time, who are you to say that?
I would rather consider my own efforts and working towards progress improving myself as competitions with myself rather than competitions with others, and I give few shits about what others think about me. At the same time, I have no problem attempting to be courteous to others even if they do not agree with me or my vision in various ways.
Also, personal goals do not necessarily need to be described to others, unless there might be some reason to describe what you are doing. Let's say that a friend might ask you to engage in a certain recreational or entertainment activity, and you might say that you are working on x, y or z project, or that you could not see spending $200 on that because you have a budget that ONLY allows less than the amount that they are suggesting you spend, or that you are reading a book and needing to prepare for a class, or that you have to go volunteer on a project that does not pay any money so you are giving up some of your wages in order to get exposure to certain experiences, so perhaps your friend will consider that you are spinning your wheels and wasting your time, and I doubt that you need to prove anything to him/her but instead just keep plodding on your path in terms of selecting your priorities that might not show meaningful/material/monetary results in any kind of short period of time, perhaps won't even show meaningful/material/monetary results in 3-5 years... even though the results can be seen by you in terms of your feeling more and more prepared for higher level challenges and perhaps even offers or opportunities that come due to your various ongoing and persistent preparations and choices how to spend your time.
Another thing if you worry about impressing others, then you may well be focusing your energies wrongly or worrying about the wrong things... because sometimes (if not frequently) others might not be able to measure or appreciate your results and they may well consider that you have not put yourself in a better place, even though your assessment might be different, and it could even take 10-20 years or longer when you realize that you don't really have to work anymore or that you can choose not to do certain kinds of work, and you might see that your friends from earlier years are struggling financially or even having to work for many years beyond your own path.
We all have this laid down opportunities for everyone to make it in life but only to those that can discover they could actually do, poverty start from the thinking mentality of individuals and the way they attend to situations in life, which means we all have equal opportunities but those than take quick advantage of it are the successful ones that make it to getting rich, we cannot blame anyone for our failures be it our parents or government because the decision we take in life comes from us and that right to choose lies in our hands as well, but some have settled for less to the standard been expected of them because they never see themselves being there.
I doubt that each of us have equal opportunities. There are going to frequently be decisions regarding what kinds of resources that you have available and how to spend them, including your time and energies and if you have created reasonable goals that you can work on achieving. Sometimes any of us could put ourselves into a position that we have to change our goals or that we might lose track of our goals, and we also might create goals but then do not take adequate steps in a direction that would work towards achieving the goals, and surely people do not start out with equal resources, but there may be times in which their paths cross but there still might be different resources that might exist at different points in life.
I would imagine that each of us fuck up in various ways in life, and some of the fuck ups are more recoverable than others, but some fuck ups lead us down a path that might make it more difficult to create certain goals that we had previously considered as possible and reasonable. I would not even proclaim that we are able to put ourselves into any path that we like, and surely there is value to youth, but there is also value with social circles or money, but having wealth (and resources) in any one area will not necessarily guarantee us success if we squander it or don't figure out a way to deploy it, and for sure, we could screw up one of the areas, but still have some fall back areas that we can use to either reestablish our earlier goals or maybe to create new paths that are based on our having had to readjust to new circumstances, all of which might not have been chosen or foreseeable but become part of our new baseline upon which we are attempting to go forward.