What is your vision in life and why is it important facts to know? Here is why, because success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route.
Improving self- esteem is important. A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say, Hi I am Jean and I am a 17-year old, senior high school student. It does not tell you about who Jean is; it only tells you her present preoccupation.
To gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status.
Moreover, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses. Upon introspection, Jean realized that she was highly motivated, generous, service-oriented, but impatient.
Her inclination was in the biological-medical field. Furthermore, she believed that life must serve a purpose, and that wars were destructive to human dignity.
What is your passion in life? Who do you want to be? This is your vision. Now it is important that you know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be; and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view.
If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future would also be unclear. Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Continuing the story of Jean, after she defined her beliefs, values, and principles in life, she decided that she wanted to have a life dedicated in serving her fellowmen. She needed a vehicle.
A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent, your mission would depend on what you know about yourself.
Based on her self-assessment, she decided that she was suited to become a doctor, and that she wanted to become one. Her chosen vocation was a medical doctor. Describing her vision-mission fully it was to live a life dedicated to serving her fellowmen as a doctor in conflict-areas.
A travel bag to reach your destination is important because your knowledge, skills, attitude, food, drinks, medicines, and other travelling necessities are contained in a bag. Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in attaining your vision.
Given such, there is a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way. This two-fold assessment will give you insights on your landmarks or measures of success.
In the case of Jean she realized that she needed to gain professional knowledge and skills on medicine so that she could become a doctor. She knew that she was a bit impatient with people so she realized that this was something she wanted to change.
Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success.
These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since the minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years.
Going back to Jean as an example, she identified the following landmarks in her life map: completing a bachelor degree in biology by the age of 21; completing medicine by the age of 27; earning her specialization in infectious diseases by the age of 30; getting deployed in local public hospitals of their town by the age of 32; and serving as doctor in war-torn areas by the age of 35.
Anticipate you will have some life obstacles. The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes thus; we must anticipate them and adjust accordingly. Learn even more by going to: http://www.sonnyjulius.com

Author's Bio: 

Sonny Julius is a retired senior citizen and a health and wellness researcher and author. He is a strong advocate of alternative and natural healing methods. He has been vigorously researching this subject for over six years and has published it in three different ebooks available on his website at: http://www.sonnyjulius.com.
Sonny’s plan to do this researching was prompted by the results of a visit to his wife’s oncologist to talk to him about treatment for her diagnosed breast cancer condition. Sonny recommended that she be treated with alternative and natural healing methods. He refused but is wife accepted his recommendations.
After leaving his office that day Sonny vowed to spend the rest of his life researching for alternative and natural methods of healing which he still continues to do to this very day. All the information he has gathered are in included in his ebooks.
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