Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a map, you need to determine your origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks and route.
Origin: Who You Are
Your origin is who you are right now. To gain insights about yourself, you need to pay attention to your beliefs, values and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural and civil status. In addition, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits.
Destination: A Vision of Who You Want to Be
Who do you want to be? This is your vision. Now it is important that you know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be and the things you want to change – whether they are attitudes, habits or perspectives. 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.
Vehicle: Your Mission
A vehicle is what you use to arrive at your destination. It is your mission in life, your goal/s. To a great extent, your mission would depend on what you know about yourself.
Travel Bag: Your Knowledge, Skills and Attitude
You’ll usually find food, drinks, medicines and other traveling necessities in a bag. Applying this concept to your life, you also bring with you certain knowledge, skills and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in achieving 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 your landmarks or measures of success.
Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. Objectives
Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, 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 and time bound. For instance, 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.
Anticipate Turns, Detours and Potholes
The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and sporadic decisions that can make you lose your way. Oftentimes, our plans are modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours and potholes. We must anticipate them and adjust accordingly.
Bon voyage!
