What's your next? An Annual Question from a Life Coach

On Wednesday I celebrated my 54th birthday. It was a quiet day but a happy one shared with close family. Gone are the days when I would or could go out and party and suffer the next day with a hangover. For many years I have not really done the birthday thing, whatever the birthday thing is.

The Day After My Birthday

It was the day after my birthday when I had my most important birthday message. For almost a decade I have been working with a Life Coach and despite me no longer being a paying customer I am still one of Teena's first and most special. Every year since I first started with my Life Coach I have been asked one very simple question on my birthday. It's not a question with a straight answer and it's one that requires a lot of thinking.

What's Happening Next?

The question may be simple but it is profound, complex, and even life-changing. Teena Douglas asks "So, Matthew, what's next in your story?"

As a writer and author, the question is well-phrased. It's done so on purpose because my life, as is the same for everyone, is a story. It's a story we all tell by living it each day. Just as I write my characters in Space Ranger Fred and my almost-ready-for-agents Children of the Tree and give them things to do to make their story, I can quite literally write my story.

What's Next Matters

It wasn't until a few years ago when I turned 50 that I began to understand why I was asked the same question every year. "What's Next?" is not like a New Year's Resolution but is a question about facts with an associated action plan. It's not just what I will do, but how I will achieve it, and somewhere in the mix is a why. I have learned that having this what next and knowing what it is is important for self-development and getting things done. I am a dreamer, ask my mother, and my "what next?" matters for my dreams to be fulfilled, achieved, or just proven to be hopelessly impossible.

A Full Year Of What's Next

Ahead of me are 365 blank pages for me to tell my story. We all have the same empty notebook but few of us try and write it, or at least sketch it out before we begin the story ahead. Having a series of goals and milestones that can fill up 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months, or 1 solid year makes the time ahead exciting and gives life purpose. I've had many years where I have just floated, and there is nothing wrong with that but floating achieves very little of any significance.

I now expect my "What's Happening Next, Matthew?" and I prepare my answer in advance. There is no right or wrong answer, but your own answer can have a profound effect on the gap between your last birthday and your next.

A Story to Be Told

We are living our story. Some of us live our story quietly sharing it with only those we trust or love most, if we share it at all. There are a few of us who live our story out loud and want to world to know it, it may be that we have a message to share or it may be that we want to inspire, encourage, or help others. Either way, we all have a story to be told that one day when asked, and you will be asked, we can tell it with confidence knowing time was not wasted, rest was used fully, and our gifts were put to good use.

My What's Next

My What's Next has been a challenging one this year. Long COVID has shaped my previous year and taught me lessons that I would not have otherwise learned. With this crazy condition, I know what frustration feels like, I understand what being a failure means and I know my inner body and soul better than ever before. I have battled fatigue, and brain fog and felt left out, left behind and utterly useless. But all this has made me strong, I have learned resilience and the power of not giving up even when tears stream down my face when I can't climb the stairs in my own home or I can't do or enjoy what others take for granted.

For me, My What's Next is about recovery, showing others with Long COVID that it can be beaten, and then, while fighting a health battle, I have some goals. Sort out my finances, so, find some work I can do that pays but doesn't completely exhaust me to the point where I don't know left from right, get another Space Ranger Fred published, get my current Space Ranger Fred screenplays in front of the right people and get my first novel finally published with an agent and all the bells and whistles. I have started planning this and on Monday I have two hours set aside to plan and make my What's Next happen.

Your What's Next?

What is your "What's Next?"

It's a question I struggled to answer a few years ago, I had no clue and what I put forward was stupid. It was stupid, not because it was a poor idea but because I had no plan, had no support, had no encouragement, and had no clue why it was important. What's next really matters!

If you can answer "What's next?", have a plan to make it happen, and have some support around you you can do it and you will soon be living a story where you can't wait to turn the page because that's just it... What's next?

Thank you for all the birthday wishes, by the way.