Our lives are going to be filled with ups and downs, successes and failure and the key to being truly successful is how we deal with the challenges.
Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. You need to plan your journey and stick to your map, identifying key things that you need to achieve along the way and what tools you have at your disposal.
Who Am I? Every journey has a starting point. Your journey begins with YOU. Who are you?
Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, my name is John and I am an accountant.” or something similar. This does not tell us about John, it only tells us about John’s present preoccupation. To gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status.
In addition to this, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses. After careful thought John could analyse himself and start to realise that he is highly motivated, generous, service-oriented, but impatient. His passions were to help people and see people take financial control of their lives. Furthermore, He believed that life must serve a purpose, and that people should move away from the destructive forces that would and influence people’s destinies.
This now gives a greater insight into who John is. Seeing the end before getting there: A vision of who you want to be “Who do I want to be?” this is your vision. It is vitally important that you know what you want to achieve and what you are working towards because will make your journey a lot more smooth. It will also allow you to make the necessary changes needed in order for you the get there, whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future would also be unclear.
Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Continuing John’s story, after he defined his beliefs, values, and principles in life, he decided that he wanted to have a life dedicated in serving his fellowmen. The Vechicle: Your journey A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination.
To a great extent, your journey would depend on what you know about yourself. Based on John’s self-assessment, he decided that he was suited to become a Financial Consultant, and he was going to get there. His chosen vocation was a Accountant but he understood that he had now gained the necessary skills needed to move to the next level and really start helping people. Resource kit: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude Food, drinks, medicines, and other traveling necessities are normally contained in a traveling resource kit. Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way.
This two-fold assessment will give you insights on the reality of your targets and will help you to gauge your progress. John realized that he needed to gain some additional professional knowledge and skills within the financial sector so he come become a Financial consultant. He knew that he was a bit impatient with people so he realised that this was something he wanted to change. GPRS journey indicators Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time.
Therefore, in planning out your life, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success. These measures must be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time bound. This is otherwise known as SMART objectives. Therefore you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since the minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years.
Going back to John as an example, he identified the following landmarks in his life map: completing a bachelor’s degree in Economics by the age of 21; working for a large financial house by 23, setting up he own consultancy by 27 achieving his first million by 30, helping someone else to achieve their first million by 32. By preparing to have to slight recalculation in your journey
The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But many times often our plans have to get modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control. As in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes, so we need to have an appreciation of them and have the ability to recaluate our journey accordingly.
If you are readng post and you stuck with it, it is becasue you are on a journey and that journey will either lead to success or it will be a temporary stop on the way to failure. Only you can decide which path to choose.
This blog site is aimed at empowering as many people as possible who have chosen the path to success.
I am Jason Gregory and thank you for spending time with me!
