How Discovering Your Life Goals Can Lead To Successful Planning
Ask a child about their dreams and ambitions, and theyâll come out with some outstanding answers. Theyâll want to be firefighters, astronauts, gymnasts or fighter pilots, and money doesnât tend to enter the equation. Ask an adult and theyâll also have dreams, but somewhere in those dreams money will have become more than a means to an end. While traditional financial planning will suggest you fit your life around your financial situation, life planning takes the opposite approach. If itâs time you made money work for you rather than the other way around, creating a life plan is the first step.
What Are Your Values?
If your answer is âbeing richâ, screw up that thought and throw it in the bin. Every person has values that are greater than money and so do you. These may be spending time with family, helping in your community, seeing the world, saving animals, or spending Sunday afternoons learning the cello.
Once you know your values, they can define your financial situation and help you make empowered choices. Without them, you could find yourself stuck in a job you hate, working 70 hours a week, and being too exhausted in the weekends to enjoy any downtime you have left.
What Are Your Natural Talents?
Everybody is born with a natural skill set. Yours may be exercise, languages, inventing things, or breaking down complex theories. Harnessing your skills often correlates with harnessing something you love, and you can develop these skillsets further through on-going education. If you feel youâre missing something in your life, take some time to bring your natural talents off the shelf and into the real world. When doing a life plan, write these skillsets down. Theyâre likely to come in handy.
What Challenges Would You Like to Overcome?
Is there a ski slope on Mont Blanc that would take years to master? Have you ever dreamed of running the New York Marathon? How about that fleeting moment realising that you really wanted to be the next Banksy? The first step may be the hardest, but chances are youâre using money as an excuse to not get things underway. Seeing money as a way to fulfil your ambition immediately removes it as a barrier and repositions it as a tool.
What Would You Do If Money Wasnât an Issue?
When developing your life plan take time out for daydreams. Ask yourself what you would do tomorrow, if money was no longer an issue. The next step is to ask yourself why youâre not doing it. Chances are there are a lot of fear-based answers in there and youâre simply using money as an excuse. Your passions should inform any financial plan youâll be making in the future, otherwise youâre simply following everybody elseâs rules.
Select Three Times in Your Life When You Were Happy
This isnât about dwelling in the past as much as itâs about finding out what brings you peace and contentment. Take a moment to think back on the times that made you happiest. It may be spending time with your children, travelling through a foreign country, going to a festival, or cooking seven-course meals. Research draws a lot of distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic happiness, with the former lasting longer as it comes from within. Write these down and ask yourself whether youâll ever do them if you stay on your current path. If the best answer you can come up with is âone dayâ, itâs time to rethink how youâre spending your time.
Swimming Against the Tide
For all the talk of not caring what others think, thereâs a small chance you do. Look at your values, passions, natural talents, and bigger goals, and listen to your gut. If there are any of these that you have a burning desire to achieve but are scared of what others would think, creatively visualise yourself doing them and listen to the voices in your head fading into the background.
For more information on how to plan your life goals, get in touch with us today by calling 01993 772 467 or contact us online.
