Making a plan for your next step requires idealism and practicality. Dreams give us energy. Practicality turns dreams into reality.
Start with your dream
Imagine that it’s five years from now. Everything about your life is going great! Your work, your finances, your health, your relationships, and how you spend your time are exactly as you want them to be. Write down your ideal, as much as you can imagine. There will be plenty of time for practicality. This moment is for dreaming. Dreams are what give us energy.
Compare your life now with your ideal life five years from now
Before you make a plan, you need to compare your ideal life with your present life. Holding an image in your mind of your ideal, write down your answers to these questions:
- What is the biggest thing that has changed?
- What am I doing differently?
- How have others around me changed?
Take stock of what you already have
Often, when we think about what we want in the future, we focus on what we don’t have, which isn’t very motivating. Start by focusing on what you do have. Write down the strengths, resources, skills, and relationships you already have that will help you get to your ideal.
Make a plan for what you need to learn
Making a plan to “fix” what isn’t working can feel like a punishment. But creating a plan to learn something new is exciting! Start by asking yourself:
- What obstacles will I need to overcome to reach my ideal?
The obstacles could be tangible things, like finances, skills, or where you live. They could be behavioral, like time management. Or they could be emotional, like needing more confidence.
- Based on the obstacles you listed, write down 1-3 areas of your life that you need to develop to reach your ideal.
- Pick the one area you are the most excited to develop.
- Write down a one-year learning goal for that area.
Create action steps to help you reach your learning goal
For example, you might realize that to reach your ideal, you need to learn how to manage your finances more effectively. So, your learning goal might be: In one year, I will have learned how to manage my finances so that I understand the money I’m earning, the money I’m spending, and how much I am saving and / or need to save.
Your first three action steps might be to: 1. Track my income and expenses for 6 months. 2. Ask friends for names of books, podcasts, and classes to help me learn about personal finance. 3. Create a monthly and annual budget.
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If you’d like to work through these questions together, let me know! The first step is to set up a complimentary sample coaching call so that you can ask questions, and we can see if we’re a fit to work together.
These questions and the overall methodology are based on the Case Western University course, Conversations That Inspire: Coaching Learning, Leadership and Change and Richard Boyatzis’ Intentional Change Theory.
Featured image photo by Muhammad Faris Afif Putra on Unsplash