Your life strategy is specifically shaped by your values, beliefs, goals, desires and needs and all the decisions you make about how you will spend your time, money and energy.
Wanting to succeed and be happy is simply not enough. Like anything worth getting in life, you need a strategy for how to achieve it.
Dreams are great, but without a plan, they will forever be unattainable.
A successful life strategy can lead you to the life you want to live. Wishes and dreams are not a strategy, so it will take some hard work and critical thinking to turn your wants into reality.
In order to effectively shape or design your life, you have to embrace some key elements to this strategy. Without understanding and following these principles, your design will not accurately reflect you and your dreams, so it’s important to master this foundation before setting out to design your life. While these principles are basic, they are nonetheless pivotal to actually attaining what you want in life.
The key to being happy is knowing you have the power to choose what to except and what to let go.
Dodinsky
Be Honest with Yourself
There is no more important concept to a solid life design strategy than total and utmost honesty. Your journey to achieving your dreams will never be successful if it is based on lies that you tell yourself. Identifying what you want in life, as opposed to what others want for you or what you have always told yourself that you should want, is crucial for this process to be successful.
Honesty with yourself is something that can be difficult for some to achieve. It involves accepting some hard truths about yourself, asking yourself some tough questions about which you may not like the answers, and digging deep into your true ambitions and motivations in life.
Think Thoroughly About What You Want
As you’ll see below, shaping your life means thinking thoroughly through every aspect of a well- led existence. It’s not just about considering one goal or gaining clarity about one part of your life. It digs deep and forces you to consider all the components that make up a well-rounded and full life. Why is this so important?
Consider this scenario. You design a life based solely on the financial and career aspirations you have. You plan meticulously to achieve the job and financial security you have always thought to be important. But a few
years down the road, you realize that this design neglected to include how important family and relationships are to you or left no room for your artistic passions. You find your life at odds with itself, and you are unhappy.
If you are going to design your life, you should be sure your plan includes all aspects of what it means to really live. Life is about so many things, including friends, leisure activity, your spiritual beliefs, your commitment to others and your own health, and your beliefs about your own growth and development.
Only when you stop to consider all of these aspects and create a plan that encompasses these multifaceted components of life will you find that you can achieve real fulfillment and happiness.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Reach for The Stars But Stay Grounded
The honesty and thoroughness of this process helps you consider and plan for amazingly complex goals, but it also allows you to work toward things you can actually achieve in life. Your personal exploration and defining of your values assist you in creating a plan for reaching for the stars while also recognizing your own strengths and areas for growth.
When you build a plan based on deep exploration and honesty, you can create realistic expectations for
your dreams that are attainable through hard work and focus. This process provides you with all the information you need to examine your choices, to weigh your limitless options, and to select the ones that will mean the most to your overall joy and contentment in life. And if that’s not worth achieving, what is?
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
William Shakespeare
Personal Growth
You have a duty to yourself to become the best version of yourself you can possibly be. Committing to developing a life strategy and engaging in regular personal development as well as persistent growth will help you achieve your dreams.
The daily work of personal development means gradual shifts in who you are as you examine yourself and learn from life’s experiences. Upon this foundation of growth and engagement, you can build a life strategy that helps you attain self-actualization and personal contentment.
While the end result may seem like the prize, the joy and reward you experience from personal growth and development becomes intrinsic motivation. And, when you see how you are personally and positively influencing your own life, you’ll see that your mark on the world is indelible. So, let’s start by examining what a life strategy is and how you can start your journey to developing your own.
Beliefs and Values
To begin to determine your life strategy, you must first identify your beliefs and values. These will guide all of your decisions, including the people with whom you share your life, how you devote your time and energy, what you want to do to make money, how and to what end you develop yourself and your mind, and how well you care for your own health as well as that of others.
Once you have gained clarity on these matters, you can then focus on carefully constructing a life plan that will keep you on a path aligned with your beliefs and help you attain goals that are meaningful for you.
It is better to walk alone, then with a crowd going in the wrong direction.
Herman Siu
Your Passions
When designing or planning your life, there are a number of focuses you can choose. The two main focuses are passions or money. For example, if you follow money when designing your life,you’re likely to choose a career based on how much it pays, rather than whether or not you’d enjoy it; likewise, you’re likely to choose a place to live, friends, and significant others based on their careers or social standings.
However, if you choose to let your passions be your focus, you’re more likely to choose a careerthat makes you happy. We favor the notion of designing your life based on your passions and, in this article, we’ll provide you with five reasons for why we feel this is best.
1) Happiness
Those that choose to let their passions design their lives tend to be happier in the long-term. They choose their career because it makes them happy and they enjoy doing it. This gives them more of a chance to enjoy their career longer, rather than growing bored of it or growing to resent it.
The same is true for the places they choose to live, the company they choose to keep, and the romantic partners with whom they choose to spend their lives. Those who are driven by their passions tend to be happier in their lives.
2) Improvement
Following your passions can help you to also be better at what you do. When you enjoy yourwork, you’re more likely to practice it and to work harder at it, improving your skills.
When your passions design your life, you tend to improve faster, as you care more about whatyou’re doing. You’re more dedicated to honing your skills and improving your work.
3) Less Stress
When your passions design your life, you tend to feel less stressed. You make decisions based onwhat makes you happy and do things that you’re passionate about, which tends to lead to lessstress.
Tasks that could be stressful in a career about which you don’t really care much could be stress-free and easy in a career about which you’re passionate. As we said earlier, those that followtheir passions tend to be happier, which also leads to a less stressful life.
4) Ease
Your passions are your passions because you enjoy them; this makes it easier and more enjoyable to complete your work, tasks, or other responsibilities. When your passions are your guide, planning your life, working, and other difficult or hard tasks become easier and far more enjoyable to complete. Those that let their passions design their lives move through said lives with much greater ease.
5) Friendships
When you let your passions guide you, they tend to guide you to jobs, places, and people that make you happier. This can lead to stronger, longer lasting friendships and relationships.
When your both passionate about a common interest, you have more to talk about and can form a deeper connection. Common interests and common ways of thinking are stronger bonds than common situations or circumstances.
