Home / Blog / Lifetime Blueprint

LIFETIME BLUEPRINT

Is It Okay to Change Your Life Goals? Yes, If You Keep the Old Ones

By Joshua S. Brogley · October 26, 2026

Part of the series How Often Should You Review Your Life? Choose an Interval by Your Age

There is a quiet guilt in changing a life goal. You said you wanted the partnership, the farmhouse, the business, and now you do not, and part of you suspects that means you quit. It does not. The Lifetime Blueprint gives this its own page near the end of its measurements, and the instruction is simple: your Ideal is allowed to change. Just do not erase the old one.

You learn what you want by living toward it

The book's first measurement has you score an Ideal for every area of your life: the future you actually want, scored without shrinking it. Years later, some of those numbers will look wrong. Not because you were dishonest, but because you have lived part of the way there and seen it up close. Eleanor, one of the book's worked examples, scored a Work ideal lower than her past because she had chosen to retire. The goal moved because she did.

Do not erase the old one

The page, shown here, is a table: your Origin Ideal in the first column, then three columns for revisions, each with a date and a score for every domain, and lines underneath for what changed, and why. Recording the new destination beside the old one does two things. It keeps you honest, because a goal you lowered after one hard month looks different on paper from one you outgrew over five years. And it keeps a history your future self will want: the sequence of what you thought you wanted is a map of who you were becoming.

Changed goal or abandoned goal?

Ask one question of every revision: did I change it because I learned something, or because it got hard? The first is growth. The second is the aspirational lie run backwards, scoring where you want to be so you do not have to feel the gap. If you cannot tell, keep the old number one more interval and look again at your next review.

When to revisit

Not every time a goal feels hard. The natural moment is a scheduled review of your life, after you have scored where you are and compared it with last time. If the gap in a domain has stopped making sense, that is when to write the revision. The Blueprint places this page right after the last of its twelve snapshots, and tells you to come back to it whenever your destination shifts.

The goals were never the point

The point is direction. A life measured honestly at intervals, against a destination that is allowed to move, still draws a line, and the line is what tells you whether you are living on purpose. Setting life goals instead of yearly goals covers the first Ideal; how often to review your life covers the interval; what changes when you score honestly covers the rest.

Lifetime Blueprint

The hardcover built to be inherited: eight life domains scored across decades, thirty life-event templates, and letters written forward, ending in a Final Letter.

Buy it on Amazon See the book

Is it okay to change your life goals?

Yes. You learn what you want by living toward it. Record the new goal beside the old one with a date and a reason, so you can tell growth from giving up.

How do I know if I should change a goal or keep going?

Ask whether you changed it because you learned something or because it got hard. If you cannot tell, keep it for one more review period and look again.

Should I write down my old goals?

Keep them. The history of what you wanted is part of the record of who you became, and it keeps future revisions honest.

written by the author, at the kitchen table, after work.