Create Good Things

Until you design your future, you will never be able to take control and create it as you want it to be. Whilst many people allow their lives to unfold according to chance, the end result of such an approach is rarely impressive, and leads to a state of mediocrity at best. Just as a garden that is not maintained will eventually become overgrown with weeds, so a life that has not been deliberately designed will eventually become a pale shadow of what it could have been.

Clearly, if you want to live life to the full, you need to stop being a passenger and choose to jump into the driving seat instead. Designing your future isn’t particularly difficult, and once you have done it you will be able to quickly move on and start creating it just as you have designed. That said, here’s how to design your future…

Step 1 – Define Your Life
First, take a pad and pencil and write down six headings: Health & Fitness, Career, Finances, Relationships, Tangibles and Personal Development. If you wish to rename these headings or add/remove one or two, feel free to do so (for example, a retired person might not feel the need for a Career heading).

Step 2 – Imagine the Possibilities
Next, look at each heading in turn and decide what you want the area of your life to be like in the future. Don’t worry about what you currently think is possible or about how something might be achieved, simply identify what you want. For example, under the Personal Development heading you might want to have learned to speak a second language, and under the Tangibles heading you might want to be the proud owner of a particular sports car.

Step 3 – Write it Down
When you have decided on something, write down a brief description of what you want under the appropriate heading. Write in the present tense as if the future vision is already a reality. For example, under Personal Development you might write, “I can communicate fluently in Japanese.” And under the Health & Fitness heading you might write “I have a sleek, toned physique that makes me feel as good as I look.”

You should spend as much time as you want on this process of designing your future and have fun with it. However, do take it seriously, because when you follow through with the next few steps that I will present in my next two posts, the future you design will be transformed into an actual reality. So design something special!

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