Whether you've just come back from your honeymoon, or you've been married for many years, a key ingredient to a successful marriage is setting goals. In other words, to work out what you want to accomplish in the future in a specified period of time or by a certain date.

As a couple, where do you want to be in five years? Ten years? Thirty years? Those are of course long term goals, but you can also sit down and discuss what you'd like to accomplish in the next week, the next month or by your next wedding anniversary.

Discussing and working out agreed upon goals will help you to accomplish more in your life in any given period of time.

There are a few things for you to consider when setting goals with your spouse:

1. You want to discuss mutual goals, those things that the two of you together want to accomplish as a team.

2. You want to also include individual goals, what each of you personally wants to achieve in the desired time period.

3. Look at the mutual goals and the individual goals and work them over so they don’t conflict and are in alignment with each other.

4. List out real and doable steps that will move each of you and the marriage in the direction of attaining each goal. This is important because without real and doable steps, your goals could simply remain as lofty ideas, where no real progress is made. List out things you can actually do and start working on them.

5. Review your list of goals list. Discuss ways to improve your progress. Talk about how the both of you can eliminate things that get in the way of achieving your short and long term goals.

6. Set goals that are attainable. Without this, you’ll just be setting yourself up for a loss.

7. When you achieve a goal, no matter how short term or seemingly insignificant, work out a way to reward yourselves. Do something to acknowledge the achievement. Enjoy the win of having set a goal and attained it. This actually makes it easier to achieve the next one!

8. When you achieve important goals, be sure you set new ones.

We can sometimes lose sight of "where we’re going" in this hectic world we live in. Setting and achieving goals can help bring some order and sanity to a marriage!