Setting Goals to direct your life
When you enter a ship and ask the captain where the ship is headed to, he will answer without hesitation or doubt to where the ship is going, in fact he'll be quite surprised that you entered the ship without knowing where its headed to.
Before leaving the captain meticulously plans out the ships journey with his fellow crewmates and when the ship leaves the harbour it goes for weeks or even months without ever seeing another port yet throughout its whole journey the captain is most certain that the ship will reach the next port just as it has always been doing.
If you Let a ship navigate itself without a captain it'll never leave the harbour and if it does you can be sure that arriving at port will be next to impossible.
We are all just like the ships above, some people know the next 10 ports they'll arrive at while other are still wondering how get out of the harbour. With a path mapped out you can be certain that you will arrive at a port even through stormy seas but the ones with no direction will be swayed by the storms of life.
Planning out your next journey
To Plan your next journey you must ask yourself these questions:
- Where are you now?
- Where do you want to go?
- How will you achieve it?
Where are you now?
For you to know where your going you first must know where you are.
How do you feel about your Life, Finances, relationship with others etc. these are all indicators showing where you currently stand in your life. Getting a feeling of what's right or wrong in your life helps you evaluate what needs to be improved on or completely abandoned.
Some reflection is also needed to know how you got to where you are today, since you can leaning from your past mistakes can help you avoid repeating them in the future.
N.B: As you figure out where you are currently are its just as important to know why you are creating your goals, maybe it's to be financially free at a certain age, learn a skill or attain a spiritual goal. Everything that you do has to start with a why.
Where do you want to go?
knowing where you currently stand you need to figure out which direction you want to head to.
Ask yourself "where do you want to see yourself in the next 5 to 10 years" or "what do you desire so intensely in your heart that you do anything to achieve it"; This can be as simple as wanting to keep in touch with friends to as major as being financially independent in the next few years.
Always remember achieving smaller goals prepares you to accomplish larger goals.
Once you've figured out the goals you want to achieve, don't keep them in your head, set some time to write them down on a piece of paper or in your journal as you will be referring to them often.
Writing down your goals is the first step in achieving them because you turned something that was a thought, something abstract and brought it into the physical world. That in itself will make you conscious of it and also acts as a way to hold yourself accountable when you slack off.
How will you achieve it?
Having figured out the next port that you want to arrive, now what needs to be done is mapping out the journey that you'll use to arrive at your destination.
One way of doing this is by back tracking from the goal and marking out the checkpoints that will lead you to it. A simple illustration of it is shown below.
Goal🏁 - - - ⁜ checkpoint ⁜- - - > ⁜ checkpoint ⁜ - - - -> start
Also think about how long it will take you to achieve this goal; Having an undefined time frame will leave you with room to procrastinate. Having a time frame this will also give some pressure to act on your goals. This can be broken down in this order:
Year –> Month —> Week —> Day
Having these are the two methods that I use when mapping the Journey to my goals. There are many other methods to how you can create your own personal journey to your goals.
Remember what works for me might not work for you, so you have to constantly update and evolve your methods until you find what works for you.
Closing remarks
The best time to hit an iron is when its hot, So how about you create your plan to reach your next port after reading this article and get your next journey started.
It might be a long and uncertain journey but at least you know where your headed in life.