Road to Self-Improvement: Begin With the End in Mind
Planing out the life you want to live is very much the same as planning out a vacation or a long trip. You’ve surely imagined what will happen on the trip. You’ve seen yourself waking up early and going out for breakfast. You’ve pictured that cold dip in the ocean before tanning with a beer on the beach. Maybe your friends or family are there. Whether it be the beach or mountains, you’ve pictured how great that long-needed getaway will be. That imagination is critical for self-authoring because you must begin your trip with the end in mind. To do that for your future, you need to write out what sort of future you want to have in five, ten, or twenty years.
What Do You Want Your Future to be Like?
Now, you should have written out your interests, values, and needs. Hopefully, when thinking and sorting these things, the image of what life could be came to mind. If not, try calling it to mind. Now is the time to apply these images to a hypothetical future.
Imagine, if you could have exactly the life you want in ten years, what would a day in that life be like? What kind of day would be MOST fulfilling? How much money would you have? Would you be married or have a dog? What job are you working, if any, and in what state and city?
If you can imagine exactly how you want a vacation to unfold from one day to the next, then it should be reasonable to imagine a day or a week in your future life. The purpose of this is two-fold.
Find a Goal or Life You will Love
First is to find a life, a goal, that would be worth living for, despite the hardships. Life is rough, yes, but we make it much harder by not giving proper attention to details. However, with the right goal, determined by you as a unique individual, life can be worth living.
The objective of writing out your future is to find a goal where, all things considered, life’s suffering is justified. As Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” If someone has a strong enough reason for doing what they do, they can take on burden and responsibilities. That, in essence, is the meaning of life.
Make your Goal and Future Specific
However, there is a second goal to imagining the future. That is to take the primordial, image-laden concept of “my future goal” and turn it into a finely articulated plan. Just like the vacation that has been well planned and imagined down to the type of foods on the grill, there is also a vacation that has not been planned.
Someone decided they want to go on a spontaneous weekend trip, but it’s already Thursday night. They hit up a few friends, but everyone agrees it’s last minute. They all pack their bags, and the next evening they head out. Only no one thought about what time to leave. They also forgot to bring some water. Food that was supposed to be packed also got left behind, or no one knew who was getting what.
A Poor Plan is a Good Story, Not a Good Idea
Undoubtedly, the trip makes for a good story, but it was a train wreck the whole way. No one had a map, no one had what they needed, and the trip to the beach ended up as a road trip through three cities, a mountain, and then ended early because of rain.
This is what happens when a goal is not finely articulated into a plan for success. The same chaos of getting lost, never making it to the beach, and not having the trip you could have will occur if goals are left foggy. It’s easy to leave them foggy, of course. It is just a matter of not doing anything, or not attending to it.
However, If there is a goal that could be worth the effort, stress, and time put in, then it is only natural that this should be planned. The future won’t write itself, so someone must.
Take Time to Write Your Perfect Day
Thus, take some time. Sit down and write out your ideal day ten years from now. Naturally, this can change throughout your journey to achieve the goal. But, there needs to be an aim in order to start with the end in mind.
So, write out a single perfect day, or two, or a week, in an ideal life. If you are uncertain about what you want to be or do with your life, use the list. Pick something on the list that could truly make life worth living and pretend that thing is the goal. Then, write out as much detail as possible about life at that time.
Write about what you have, what you’ve achieved maybe, and definitely what your day or week holds on an hour to hour basis. Write about how you want to feel, what the morning routine would be like, your job, family, location, and meals. The devil is in the details. So, slay Satan and make the details your personal heaven.
That’s all. That is step three. Write out where you want to go, what you want to do, because if you don’t, how do you expect to reach your destination?
The answer is, you won’t.
So, specify the goal and articulate the future. It might seem tedious, but achieving a fulfilling life worth living has never been easy. However, if you’ve made a goal worth living for, it must be worth spending a few hours writing it out in detail. After all, what are a few hours spent now for a glorious life later?