Press the reset button and start afresh

How do we define life? Many of us would say life is what we do all day long. We go to the gym, spend time with our family, talk to our friends, read books, go to work and do countless other things. New things are added to the list as we grow older & few are discarded. At every stage of life we set priorities for everything we do. Setting the right priorities help us focus on things which need attention, but there are times when we unknowingly neglect others things.

One such example is people neglecting their health for their work. They spend 8 hours in the office excluding travel & yet have no time for their health. Some people are so active socially that there are chaos in their own families. So, where do things go wrong? Do we fail to set the right priorities? Are 24 hours a day too less for us to live a balanced life? After being in this situation for quite long, I feel the reason is that we fail to look at the big picture of our lives.

Some of us only see work, not just in the office, but some of us bring it home as well. Some of us only see our social life, not to mention the time we spend on socializing over the Internet that we’re least bothered how are our siblings doing! So what is this big picture? Let me share some of my personal experiences which helped me discover the big picture of my life. Before quitting my job with an MNC few years back I had decided that I will start on my own. So what did I do was just pressed reset button and started writing my CV again afresh forgetting what positions I have held before, I just jotted down the plus points I gathered over the years so that I can start really fresh something new in my life.

After pondering over my situation for a few days I asked myself a question – Does a near-perfect life exist? And if it does, can we define it on paper? Can we measure its progress? I went on to find the answers. After all the thought process, I started categorizing everything I did all day. For example, sleeping, eating, exercising, meditation come under the “health” category. Making money, managing personal finances, learning about investment options come under the “wealth” category.

The way you dress up, talk & walk come under the “personality” category. Your interaction with your friends & colleagues come under the “networking” category, and so on. All these categories put together define our life. As we grow older, more categories are added & some existing ones are discarded. So, being in my late twenties, I was able to define my life as a set of some categories or areas not in any priority / specific order. :

Health, relationship /romance, business / day job, wealth (asset & cash-flow management), spiritual knowledge, home I live in with all the comforts, family, network both social & professional, leisure with all the fun, travelling, reading, adventure, personality like the way I dress-up, walk & talk, life skills like the way I handle stress, failures & success, education financial education, business knowledge including management skills.

Each of these areas is an important part of my life. If I focus only on my business & neglect my health, I’ll have problems in the long run. If I only focus on building a strong social & professional network & don’t spend much time with my family, I’ll still have problems. My life would be near-perfect & balanced if I manage to handle all these 12 areas well. This answered my two questions that a near-perfect life exists & it can be defined on paper. However, the third question still remains – Can we measure its progress?

We can never tell if something has changed today if we do not know what it was like yesterday. Hence, to answer my third question, I attached two things to each of the 12 areas – “current state” & “desired state”. The “current state” of an area tells me how am I doing at present in that area. For example if I talk about “health” area, then the “current state” in that area can be how much my weight is, what is my waistline, my vitamin levels, etc. The “desired state” of an area tells me how I want my life to be in that area.

And again, taking the example of “health” area, the “desired state” can include statements about how I want my health to be – my desired waistline, my desired vitamin levels, etc. The “desired state” of the “Relationship” area can include a description of how we want our relationship with the present or with a future life partner if the current relationship is not working or has already ended. I was amazed to learn after a few days that a similar concept exists in Feng Shui as well. They have something called a “bagua map” which is a grid of 9 areas – Wealth, Fame, Health, Family, etc. So, now I was convinced I’m on the right track.

After putting all these “areas” along with their respective “desired states” in my “Wish book” for this year, I’m able to take control of my life to some extent & continue to get better every day! Now I know what my life would look like 6 months down the line.

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.” You can dream it. You can plan it. You can try to make it happen. But you can never really prepare for the future unless you have a future-focused mindset. Thanks to Peter F Drucker for this inspiration. You may want to explore this self-renewal process with a strategic and tactical approach by trying to do a postmortem of your last few years, the longer the better; pinpoint your pleasure points (e.g. successes, accolades, etc.) as well as your pain points (e.g. setbacks, disappointments, etc.), if any, at both your personal and professional levels; isolate what you can learn from your multitude of pleasure and pain points, so as to draw out your CSFs (Critical Success Factors);

Always remember this maxim: the past doesn't define you; it's what you choose to do today that's is critically important in your forward trajectory; if you feel like it, you can go to the net to download these freely available self-assessment tools: (i) Personal Interests Inventory; (ii) Career Directions Inventory, and complete them; they are not rocket science, but at least, upon completion, they can give you a rough sense of your interest and career inclinations;

Also you may also want to download the freely available SWOT Analysis Grid, to help you conduct a proactive self-assessment, in terms of creating a strategic fit, using your personal strengths, personal weaknesses, potential market opportunities available out there, and potential threats that may come up your way, from the perspective of your future employability and career tracking; Drawing upon all the fresh insights you have thus generated from the foregoing analyses, now apply my 'Goal Setting and Goal Achieving Template' to re-chart your life blueprint for the next five to ten years or so. Cheers!