Planning Your Determined Life Journey

Questions to ask of yourself

One method to help your create and maintain responsibility and ownership for your actions is to proactively plan them. After all, if you plan your actions and activities, then you are certainly accountable for them.

Planning your Project You Life Journey is also important. For achieving your dreams, hopes, desires, and goals is unlikely to happen arbitrarily or randomly.

Additionally, planning a Project You Life Journey helps you to overcome the concerns, fears and anxieties you have about your personal hopes, dreams, desires, and goals.

The key step in planning your Project You Life Journey is to start with your hopes, dreams, desires, and goals in mind first.

Many people start their self-development planning process by painting a picture of where they currently are and then deciding which area or areas of improvement to tackle first. This is the wrong approach, especially when you look at life-long goals and desired outcomes.

You must start with a clear vision (or at least a semi-clear one) of what your dreams, desires and hopes look and feel like. What will bring you authentic happiness? What will achievement and success feel like to you?

Answering the several questions on your unique personal gifts and talents (see earlier post on Key Questions for Identifying and Understanding the Purpose of Your Life) is the first place to start. Then record any others that spring to mind.

Writing down what you believe to be your unique personal gift and individual talents will help you formulate a tangible view of your visions. Doing so also helps to provide clarity and understanding to what you believe to be your life's purpose.

Only after you have your personal vision firmly figured out is it time to make an assessment of where you are at the moment in your life's journey. The key questions to ask yourself for this stage are:

What are the positive aspects of your life that you can leverage going forward?

What are the negative aspects of your life that need jettisoning?

Who can you rely on for support?

Who is holding you back?

Which areas of your life need fine-tuning?

Which areas of your life need strengthening?

Which areas of your life need a major overhaul? 

You are now almost ready to create a road map from your current situation to your desired state. Defining some parts of your path will come easy. Others will require more thought and effort. It is best not to shortchange yourself by trying to create your path too quickly.

That is why the next step will be to rate your personal satisfaction with seven aspects of your life. We will discuss this step in the next Project You Life blog post.

In the meantime, reflect upon the vision you have for yourself. How does thinking about this make you feel? Excited? Nervous? Motivated? The stronger the feelings, the more you will know that you are on the right path to understanding how you want to Live A Determined Life. 

This article is partially excerpted from the book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.