Have you got a five-year life plan? Most people don’t! It is a tragedy that they spend more time planning Christmas than they do planning their lives. Why? Because people focus on escape rather than designing their life.
Christmas is just one day, your life is a far longer journey, that deserves mapping out.
To be successful in your life, you need to have a five-year life plan. Without a plan, many of your dreams will only ever stay as dreams. A life plan, on the other hand, will help you turn your dreams into reality. It works because it gives you not a just a destination, but also a way to get there.
A five-year life plan requires imagining where you would like to be five years from now and then establishing a broad plan on how you will get there.
Let me ask you a question…
Are you where you saw yourself being 5 years ago?
Have you made the most of these last five years and fulfilled as much of your potential as you could?
In most cases your answer will be ‘no,’ and that’s because you didn’t have a five-year life plan to guide you.
I want you to be honest with yourself right now. If you don’t have your very own, personal five-year life plan do you truly believe life will work out the way you really want it to? Leaving it to lady luck, letting events and circumstances determine how each day works out is most likely going to leave you with a life that’s far from perfect.
The solution is easy. Create your five-year life plan, and leave nothing to chance.
A five-year life plan will set you up to reach your important long-term life goals and move towards them with purpose and clarity.
Your five-year life plan doesn’t have to be complicated. It should answer three questions:
• Where are you right now?
• What is your destination?
• How will you get there?
“All successful people have a goal. No one can get anywhere unless he knows where he wants to go and what he wants to be or do.” Norman Vincent Peale
Creating a five-year life plan will bring many benefits to you.
• It brings clarity to how life is for you and what needs to change to bring about dramatic improvements.
• It gets you excited about your future, and the life you will have in five years’ time
• It will focus you on your priorities, ensuring you spend your time doing your ‘high pay activities.’
• It ensures you avoid those time-wasting activities which do nothing but steal away time.
• It gives you motivation to get where you want to go because the reasons for your goals are empowering.
• It helps you track your progress, whether things need to change to improve results or keeping going as you’re progressing well towards your goals.
• You’re more likely to achieve what you want if you are planning to get there and then executing your plan.
Implementing your five-year life plan will ultimately lead to your long-term goal, your big hairy audacious goal, or as I like to call it your breakthrough goal. The one that takes you from where you are, to the life you want to live. Your plan will include all the actions and tasks you need to take to achieve this grandiose goal. Follow through over the 5-year period and this dream will now be a reality.
If you are feeling lost or are not sure where you want to go in life, or you do know but have no idea of how to achieve it, I highly recommend producing a five-year life plan. It will give your life meaning and your daily activities more focus.
Get it done!
Before this day is out, you need to Imagine what you will be doing five years from now. Right now, I want you to think about your future. It is now five years forward in time. You have fully accomplished your goals. You have achieved success. See yourself. What do you look like? What are you doing? Who are you with? What are people saying to you? And what are you saying to them. How does success feel?
Enjoy this vision for a while then I want you to look back on your success. Look back on the process of achieving success. Look back on all of your hard work and effort. How did you reach your goal, step-by-step. What were the little things you did, day-by-day, to achieve success? What did you do at work? What did you do in your relationships? And what did you do inwardly to achieve success? Take a moment to think of all the steps you took to accomplish your goal.
“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” Pablo Picasso
ps. You can learn more about the Single Page Plan, the 5 step process and how to review your progress through the Goal Setting Made Easy With the Single Page Plan book which is available at Amazon here. For those of you who can see the power of the system and want to work with me as your coach to create or implement the Single Page Plan check out my Single Page Plan coaching packages here.
Not grabbed your free single page plan template? Get the Single Page Plan template for FREE here.
photo credit: wizzer2801 OutaTime (P365-196) via photopin (license)
