To me, a goal is a dream with a deadline.

You’ve probably all heard how goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. I don’t necessarily agree with all of those points, at least not the “achievable” aspect. I, for one, never really set achievable goals ― I always set massive, scary goals.

But in order to truly make a goal count, to be able to dedicate the time and energy needed to make goals happen, there’s one more thing they need to be: They need to be meaningful for you ― meaningful enough to stand the tests of time, change and all the many distractions that life has to throw your way. And, believe me, life has a way of doing that.

That’s when a goal transcends your resolutions list and has the power to change your habits, your lifestyle and even your mentality in order to accommodate it and make it happen.

As Stephen Covey’s second habit goes: “Begin with the end in mind.” Your end goal needs to become your unmoving, uncompromisable target.

Another big thing to keep in mind is your motivation, your why behind setting a goal. To those of you who have read Simon Sinek, I’m a big believer of starting with why.

My journey: Couch to 250K marathon

My starting point looked like this: I worked 12-hour days and had no time for health and fitness, and while I was hitting all my financial and career goals, the picture was completely out of focus when it came to any personal accomplishments beyond work.

In August 2012, I was wheeled into bariatric sleeve surgery. What got me there? A few months before that, I attempted to increase my life insurance cover. I was 33 years old at the time, and I got quoted 100 percent more than an average person my age. My policy was going to run out when I was only 72, but the life insurance company saw a potential payout before then. My medicals, my lifestyle and my family history told them that.

So, the surgery was a decision I took to reverse the damage quickly. I knew I needed to shift to a healthy lifestyle post-surgery too, which I did. It started with three workouts a week with a personal trainer and ended in … well … over 15 hours of training a week.

I still remember how much I had wanted to do a tandem skydive in Dubai back in 2011, but I couldn’t because of the weight restrictions. You needed to be under 99 kilos to do the jump. So, that was my absolute first goal: Hit that 98-kilo mark and sign up for a jump. In January 2013, I jumped off a plane. Clearly, I survived that jump.

The next four years were where my fitness journey began to take shape. In September 2017, I committed to running the Marathon des Sables (MdS). I still remember the day I decided to do it.

I had just come back from a CrossFit session at the gym at 5:30 p.m. after having a post-workout conversation with two guys who I thought were, well, fools, because they had just completed the infamous MdS, deemed to be the world’s toughest footrace.

They told me about their grueling experience running across the Sahara Desert in a completely self-sufficient race with all the provisions they needed for the six nights and seven days tucked away in their backpacks.

They told me about how the organizers would give them only 1.5 liters of water every 10 to 12 kilometers and keep their shared tent-for-eight ready before they came back to the campsite. I use the word “tent” very lightly here. They also told me how one of them lost their hiking poles because it broke on a rock on day one and how the other was admitted to the medical tent from dehydration at the end of day one and had to get on an IV drip.

This is a guy who is Middle Eastern and has lived his life in the UAE, in the desert, and he got admitted. [visual] I was all kinds of intrigued. They also told me about their grueling training program six months leading up to the run and the amount of time they had to spend training in solitude in the desert regardless of weather conditions. They told me about the time it took for them to recover from all the muscle loss, all that muscle that they had spent years building.

And to make it more challenging, as if it wasn’t already, one of them was a 47-year-old pilot, so he had that to manage alongside the training. The other was a devoted father of three, went through all kinds of injuries training for MdS, and began the first three days of the run with a flu he got on the flight on his way to Morocco for the race. I mean wow.

When I signed up for MdS, I had no running experience whatsoever. I had done a few 10Ks here and there, and even those had left me tattered. I hated running. So, I thought MdS was a big enough goal for me to overcome this. One of the requirements for MdS, however, was to complete one full marathon before the run. So, in January 2018, I ran and completed the Dubai Marathon, more to tick off that prerequisite for MdS than anything else.

Everyone who knew the old obese me was all awe and appreciation when I crossed that Dubai Marathon finish line in January. To me, however, the Dubai Marathon was just a steppingstone toward my bigger goal. In about three months, I was going to run five full marathons back to back in the Sahara Desert, and hopefully not die.

Set milestones along the way, but don’t let achieving (or, for any reason, not achieving) the milestones slow down your momentum or deter your focus from the big goal.

Goal-setting is a personal exercise. Some people believe in setting goals and then sharing them with others, involving people and drawing from the collective energy of everyone who helps to make a goal happen. That’s what I’m like. I like to announce it to the world so that people can hold me accountable for it.

I write all my goals down on the Vision Wall in my study. I do this multiple times a week. I erase them and rewrite them. This leaves them ingrained in my head and keeps me committed to working toward them every day. Seeing my goals every day makes me question whether what I do in the day is taking me toward the Big Goal or not. If it’s not, then I will just not do it or do less of it because sometimes the adjustments are inevitable and much required.

Goals are what helped me build the road map to the life I wanted to live, and they’ve been my guiding light.

Rickson Joel D’Souza is a 16-year MDRT member with one Court of the Table and 12 Top of the Table qualifications from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, who specializes in life insurance for high-net-worth individuals. Over the past 12 years, he has focused on financial planning and sourcing large-value life insurance policies for entrepreneurs and high-income executives.