Planning the Future You Want to Live
Planning for the future that you want to live is a rather large project and one that can seem overwhelming, and yet exciting at the same time. Having gone through the process myself I know the benefits that come from taking small incremental steps to make it happen. My first ‘future life plan’ was to move to Lincolnshire to the house of our dreams. This one took five years from initial conception to the actual move. Now I’m working on the next version – making this location work well for us.
Have You Planned Before?
I frequently hear people talking about how unhappy they are with their life. Whether that’s with life as a whole or just one aspect of it. When I ask if they have taken the time to think about just how they would want their life to be the answer is often no. It’s certainly more common to find someone who has planned their working life, their retirement or the travelling they would like to do. I think this is because these areas are relatively simple to plan and fun to dream about.
Looking at your life as a whole can be rather overwhelming. I know from my own experience and the way that I managed to do it was using the LifeBook process designed by Jon and Missy Butcher. (If you want to take a look at this it’s on the Mindvalley website).
12 Categories of Life
What makes this process work so well is that it breaks your life into 12 categories that you then look at in more detail. These are as follows:
- Health & Wellbeing
- Intellectual Life
- Emotional Life
- Character
- Spiritual Life
- Love Relationship
- Parenting
- Social Life
- Financial Life
- Career
- Quality of Life
- Life vision
Just having this list to help break down the overwhelm of looking at all my life in one go was useful and it prompted me to think about areas that I otherwise wouldn’t have considered. While thinking about health and wellbeing is an obvious part of the picture, thinking about what you’d like your intellectual life to look like isn’t something everyone would think about. Likewise deciding what your character will need to be in order to be able to achieve your wonderful life is not something that instantly springs to mind.
Creating the Vision
The LifeBook process looks at all categories first and then uses each to create the overall Life Vision. As a coach I found this interesting as I’m used to looking at the vision first and then breaking it down into the different areas. Both versions can work and it is definitely interesting to use both and see if you create different visions.
Starting with the vision I would use a vision board as part of the process along with a system of visualization through meditation and awareness of the things that you don’t want in your life.
Knowing What You Don’t Want
In general discussions you’ll find that people are much clearer about what they don’t want than what they do want. As that’s the case harness this information and once you are clear about the things you want to remove from the picture it is easier to think about what you would like to replace them with.
Letting Yourself Dream
As adults we tend not to spend too much time day dreaming, maybe we’ve been told off for doing that too much as a child. However this is a vital part of creation, especially when you are looking at the huge project that is your life. I found day dreaming really helpful when I was thinking about the house I’d like to live in. One that I had seen had an outdoor swimming pool. As I dreamed each day about what it would be like to live in that house I realized that I probably wouldn’t swim in the pool much as it would be too cold. There would also be lots of maintenance work clearing the water of leaves, especially in autumn. The time spent daydreaming about that house really helped me to get clear about something I didn’t want.
From Vision To Action
Once you have completed the fun of creating the vision, and you know what you would like to future to be like, then you have to actually take action. Though people who use vision boards will often tell you that it’s amazing what happens without you consciously working on it, you’ll find that though true for some aspects, it’s unlikely that you will create the whole of your future vision without taking action. This is another stage where overwhelm can kick in. Breaking it down into small steps and looking at it as a project will really help.
Personally I aim to read my LifeBook life vision every day. This helps me to fine tune the details and also inspires action. Having read about how important it is to me to put our mark on our house and make it easier to care for, I suddenly found myself clear about how I wanted to decorate and how I could make cleaning easier. Before I knew it I was inspired to take action and start painting and planning.
What Do You Need To Do?
Getting clear about the actions that you need to take is a process that really benefits from you allowing yourself time. Factor that in and commit to it. Both in terms of getting the overall vision clear, knowing why you want it and then breaking it down so that you can take action. If you’d like some help working on this I highly recommend the LifeBook program but if you feel that this isn’t for you and you’d like to create a vision board or have the support of a coach on a one to one basis then please get in touch as I’d love to help.
