The indispensable 1st step to get what you want out of life is to DECIDE what you want out of life. The 2nd step is to create goals for each of your major roles in life (see below), the 3rd step is to implement those action plans, and the 4th is to monitor the results and modify and fine tune based upon feedback/results.
BUT buried within each of those major steps are many minor steps! It may be simple but simple is not the same as easy and if it were easy, it would already have been done, everyone would be doing it, and it would just be table stakes!
A significant step within the indispensable 1st step to making good decisions about your life is self-awareness, self-knowledge. A bit of introspection, standing outside yourself and observing your thoughts, world view, actions, and the emotions that both generate those actions and flow from those thoughts and actions. Do your thoughts, world view, emotions, and actions serve you? Do they guide you toward happiness and contentment? Are they grateful, appreciated, and solution oriented? Or catastrophizing, complaining, and criticizing? If the latter, does that doom and gloom mentality make you happy? Pleasant to be around? Attract the associates that will help you create the masterpiece you’d like your life to be?
Observe yourself and your thoughts/emotions when you achieve a goal or have an experience you’ve been anticipating. Break it down: how good a forecaster were you? What did you learn about you? In what ways was it all you expected; in what ways could it have been better crafted? Caution: do not overdo it. Happiness and contentment in life sometimes comes in 3 parts: as much first from 1) anticipation and then 2) memory as from the 3) actual event itself.
Many of the “goals” and “values” we have in life are not truly ours; we have picked up them up willy-nilly, almost subliminally without serious consideration, from others, our culture, social media, and Madison Ave. By observing ourselves we can learn what truly makes us happy and what direction is best for our personal paths to peace of mind.
Six Major Life Roles:
– Career/Financial
– Family/Personal
– Physical/Health
– Education/Mental
– Social/Community
– Spiritual/Creative
As always, I share what I most want/need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier
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